Gilmore Girls - Season 5
The fifth season of Gilmore Girls, an American dramedy television series, began airing on September 21, 2004, on The WB. The season concluded on May 17, 2005, after 22 episodes. The season aired Tuesday nights at 8/7c.
Gilmore Girls - Season 5
The season picks up at the exact point the previous season ended, with Lorelai embarking on a relationship with Luke and Rory beginning an affair with married Dean. Having finally admitted they are separated, Richard and Emily formalise things by having Richard move into the pool house, with the girls splitting Friday nights between the two of them. Dean's marriage to Lindsay comes to an abrupt end when she finds a letter Rory wrote to him about their night together. He and Rory try dating again but have difficulty spending time together and quickly split for good.
In the season finale, Rory has been charged for the yacht theft and announces she is dropping out of Yale. Lorelai refuses to let her come home so Richard and Emily let her move into the pool house and get a job, hoping she will change her mind. Luke tells Taylor he's pulling out of the house purchase when he discovers Lorelai is considering selling the inn, while Lane's mother arranges for her and the band to tour church theatres. The season ends with Lorelai asking Luke to marry her.
Rory had her own romantic complications last season when she slept with her former boyfriend Dean (Jared Padalecki, Cheaper by the Dozen, House of Wax), even though he is a married man. After spending the summer in Europe with her grandmother, Emily, Rory returns to Stars Hollow, ready to try to figure out what kind of relationship she and Dean really have. As her second year at Yale begins, Rory will become even more involved in the college newspaper, and she will meet an intriguing young man named Logan (Matt Czuchry, Eight-Legged Freaks), who comes from the same old-money world as her grandparents.
And a continuity gaffe crops up when Rory takes an internship at the Stamford Eagle-Gazette in the midst of a full class schedule and a job at the Yale Daily News. Even worse is when Taylor is still the town selectman after he loses the election to Jackson. More examples of the sitcom style come in the season finale, when an annoyed Luke chases cyclists with a bat and later brazenly walks through the middle of the course, causing a massive pileup.
Number of times Rory or Lorelai treat their bff like shit:The Gilmore girls are too busy dealing with their own respective crises to interact with Sookie, Lane, and/or Paris. I do find it strange that Rory and Lane never rely on each other when they're dealing with personal shit. If I was arrested for stealing a boat, I would immediately call my three best friends for advice. The same goes for Lane, who has a temporary meltdown when it seems like Hep Alien is breaking up. Thankfully, Mrs. Kim steps in and uses her "all-girl Christian tambourine band" experience to put together a tour.
A good partner would help Lorelai think about the situation differently instead of enabling her to make more irrational decisions. To be fair, Luke does this in the next season when Lorelai and Rory's rift shows no signs of ending. In this moment, though, his reaction does nothing but affirm Lorelai, making her proposal feel especially egocentric.
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Hey, we did it! We made it through season five, even when SOME PEOPLE made it hard for us to keep going (coughcough LOGAN coughcough) and we struggled to maintain our suspension of disbelief during incidents involving boat theft, colonialism cosplay, rehashed plot lines from previous seasons, and Richard and Emily\u2019s transformation into mustache-twirling villains. Uh\u2026 what did we just watch? Let us walk you through the many ways this season made us cringe, furrow our brows, roll our eyes, and luxuriate in the few glitter-dustings of old Gilmore Girls magic we could find among the interminable drama.
Speaking of which: Next week, we\u2019ll take a break between seasons for a Fall Vibes Flashback installment of the newsletter. Instead of getting into the upsetting season to come, we\u2019re taking it back to the early seasons of show, the ones we watch in the fall for autumnal vibes, Rory\u2019s personality (RIP), twinkle lights, and that cozy familiar feeling that pairs perfectly with a fluffy blanket, a cup of hot coffee, and crunchy leaves on the windowsill. Hot girl summer is fun, but we\u2019re ready for cozy girl fall. Before we get to it, join us in saying good-bye to season five. You certainly were a season. \u2014 Maggie & Megan
Aw, media, we are sad to see you so slandered by Gilmore Girls, which this season suggests being a journalist means wearing going-out tops to work, being a glorified personal assistant for free at an \u201Cinternship\u201D that produces zero (0) clips EVEN THOUGH CLIPS ARE THE POINT OF JOURNALISM INTERNSHIPS, getting hella above-the-fold front-page stories BUT NEVER WRITING OR BEING EDITED, and having your entire career controlled by one middle-aged guy whose family company acquires a few small-town papers and yet somehow he\u2019s the kingmaker in charge of all media and can ruin your entire career and sense of self with a few unkind words, when the secret to succeeding in journalism is to never take those guys and their opinions seriously. Listen, Maggie and I both know the challenges of working in media, and it is an industry that often leaves a lot to be desired, but it does not look like this and now we know how doctors feel when they watch Grey\u2019s Anatomy. We wish we didn\u2019t. \u2014 MB
If you ask me, Logan is the ENTIRE problem with this season. Megan and I both agree that Rory would likely be attracted to Logan, and yes, even date or have a fling with him, but this as a long-term relationship is what ultimately dooms the series for me. Why? Let us count the ways. When his character is first introduced, he turns Rory off entirely by the gross, classist way he treats Rory\u2019s friend, Marty. This is somehow played for sexual tension, which leads to Logan leading Rory on, first for the benefit of journalism (getting a scoop on the Life and Death Brigade), then to toying with her (remember the big gross stunt he pulled in her class??) until she agrees to have a \u201Cno strings attached\u201D relationship with him. He\u2019s emotionally manipulative, even when he agrees to be her boyfriend, which he acts like she has forced him to do (though she was willing to break up with him). Later, he enables her to steal a yacht. Also his friends are misogynistic assholes. Need I say more? (I will, I will say more. A lot more.) \u2014 MM
Did you know that being in a long-term committed partnership can be hard sometimes? If not, this season will take every opportunity to remind you as it delves into the mounting marital woes of Richard and Emily. We\u2019re all for a nuanced study of complex relationships, but\u2014oh, wait, we already saw this arc many times over in the show\u2019s first three seasons. Marriage is hard, we get it, but it shouldn\u2019t be this hard on us, Amy Sherman-Palladino! If I wanted to stew in the particular sadness that sometimes accompanies a long-term partnership, I would rewatch all the couple-fighting in Marriage Story or Before Midnight. But I don\u2019t really want that from my Noah Baumbach or Richard Linklater movies (Frances Ha and Before Sunset forever, I am a romantic not a realist, sorry) and I certainly don\u2019t want to see it when I turn to my comforting WB-era family dramedy. Amy Sherman-Palladino is at her best when she\u2019s a pale imitation of Nora Ephron, and there\u2019s a reason we never saw what happened to Ephron\u2019s heroes and heroines after they got together. BECAUSE WE DIDN\u2019T NEED TO. Also, for the love of god, please do not hit your estranged spouse\u2019s car as revenge that they went on a date. What the hell, Richard?! \u2014 MB
Perhaps this is a continuation of Logan Is the Worst, but here goes...yes, this show plays with \u201Cclass\u201D a lot. Lorelai \u201Cgave up\u201D the big house and maids and yadda yadda to live her own life, which is supposed to be, like a working class life? But, they own their own large Victorian home and seem to shop for new clothes every other week, and eat out for almost every meal so, you know, these depictions are not perfect. But you get the idea, there\u2019s \u201Cthose people\u201D and \u201Cour people.\u201D This season, however, thanks to Logan, Rory delves into this whole \u201Cthose people\u201D phenomenon, attending Life and Death Brigade gatherings (albeit as a reporter), donning a tiara at a Yale suitor party, and instead of eating castoff hors d'oeuvres while having movie marathons with Marty, now she\u2019s going to the parties where college students hire their own help and have cars with drivers at their disposal, and dragging Marty to dinners he can\u2019t afford where everyone says \u201Cwe\u2019ll just split the bill,\u201D and embarrassing him in front of everyone, etc. etc. Instead of seeing the snobbery and classist behavior as disgusting, Rory is just like, cool with it? I get that she\u2019d be curious as this world is a part of her family and upbringing, and certainly her university, but, it doesn\u2019t feel like a world she would actually revel in! (See next section.) \u2014 MM
Because fall is here and also my entire personality, I\u2019ve been revisiting the early seasons of Gilmore Girls and do you know what I noticed? Teenage Rory is fun, funny, weird, insightful, playful, legibly smart, and a general delight. She is the patron saint of weird girls who read classics for fun, and I think that\u2019s one of the reasons I got so into this show in the first place. Because that was me in high school, and it feels nice to be seen. Season five Rory, on the other hand, seems like she has nothing to do with teenage Rory. Her personality is flattened, she\u2019s obsessed with her bad boyfriend, she\u2019s no longer curious about anything, and she\u2019s lost her fun speechifying tirades. Worst of all, she is boring! It really seems like the real Rory got body-snatched and taken to a parallel reality (The Handmaid\u2019s Tale?) and replaced with a pod-person Rory who is trying to pass herself off as the old Rory, and failing miserably. This is not Alexis Bledel\u2019s fault - she\u2019s good at playing a weird, smart, young person, but it must be terrible to play a character and then to have that character suddenly change for unclear reasons. The strain of it seems to show in her performance, and in what seems like very bad direction: In the show\u2019s worst betrayal of its viewership, Rory Gilmore, once an icon for weird girls everywhere, suddenly has a sexy baby voice. This will never be OK with me. \u2014 MB 041b061a72