Episode 7.01: The Long Morrow - Discussion

I thought it might be nice to have a 'thread' for each new Gilmore Girls episode so we could all share thoughts, ideas, and impressions. 

Quick recap of the storylines: 

• Timing:  The day after the season six finale.
• Logan left Rory a parting gift when he left for London: A model rocket.  Rory spent the entire episode trying to figure out what it meant, and by the end discovered that it was a reference to Logan's favorite Twilight Zone episode.  Long story made short, the rocket represented true love.  She called him to say thank you, and to tell him that she wanted to fly to London to be with him for the summer.  Logan threw a cog into her plan, though, by telling her that he'd bought her a plane ticket to visit him over Christmas for two weeks.
• Paris started a SAT prep-type class business.  She'd applied to work for the Princeton Review, but decided that the $20 an hour they'd have paid her wasn't enough since they charged the students $60 an hour to attend.
• Lorelai and Luke are most definitely over (for now, anyway).  Lorelai spent the entire episode brooding over the break-up:  First she didn't want to talk about it, then she went through her house and got rid of everything that either belonged to Luke, or that reminded her of him.  (The result was a nearly empty house.)
• Despite Lorelai and Luke being over, Lorelai told Chris that she wasn't interested in starting up a new relationship with him, either.  Chris didn't seem happy about the rejection but said he'd be there for her if she needed anything.
• Taylor installed a red-light camera in the middle of town across from Luke's Diner.  During the grand unveiling ceremony, Kirk was supposed to demonstrate how the camera worked by driving Taylor's car through a red light.  The flashes from the camera blinded him, and he drove into Luke's.
• At the end of the episode, Luke showed up at Lorelai's and asked her to elope with him. She responded by telling him that she'd slept with Chris, and Luke left.

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Oh, my, where to begin!  I could absolutely tell that there are new writers this season.  The dialog was much slower, in my opinion; they seemed to be taking more time to think about their words and the pace wasn't nearly as feverish as it used to be.  This is a minus to me - I liked the mind-numbing, on-your-toes quality of the old scripts.  The humor of previous seasons just wasn't there.  That said, though, I still enjoyed the season opener and am glad that they're back.

I nearly cried at the end when Luke showed up with his truck all loaded down and tried to get Lorelai to leave with him.  I thought Scott's performance was really believable - bursting with desperation.  It seemed like he really regretted not committing earlier and was trying to not lose her.  I wanted to smack Lorelai - while I can understand why she was upset with him, I also wished she would just cut Luke some slack.  Her insistence that it was just over - no discussions - was frustrating to me.  But, I guess the writers have to keep them apart as long as possible.  In general, though, there was something about Lauren Graham's performance that bothered me.  She wasn't really acting like she'd just broken up with the love of her life, in my opinion - more like she was just walking away from a bad relationship.  And since I didn't really see their relationship as 'bad', per se, the portrayal seemed awkward.

I was glad to see that Rory wasn't completely pining over Logan, even if she DID spend a lot of time Googling to find out what the rocket was supposed to mean.  I was reasonably happy with Alexis in her role - she seemed essentially like the 'old' Rory. 

Random notes:  Michel and Sookie's arm wrestling was vaguely amusing, but not super funny.  It was good to see Paris being herself as always.  The red light camera thing was totally a Taylor-thing to do, and Kirk was the ideal vehicle for destruction.  And Babette and her delicates - totally odd, but totally something I could see happening in Gilmore land.

So what did you think?