THOUGHTS WHILE WATCHING GILMORE GIRLS-SEASON 3, EPISODE 1: LAZY HAZY CRAZY DAYS (PART 5)
Faces of Fear.
Bozo got an early flight home, bringing with him an immovable stench cloud that is hanging over the day's festivi-titties. The city of Chicago is letting out a sigh of relief, though.
In the middle of her crisis, Lorelai immediately abandons Rory, who is shaking in Dean's presence like a flu-stricken chihuaua. But not before reminding Dean how much she's missed him.
I heard there's a vacancy at the Shane and Jess Tree now, why don't you two make a reservation?
What the what! They're still going, in the same spot, completely uninterrupted! The Foreplay King and Queen! I am not worthy! Have they been making out in public so frequently that they just blend in with the scenery and hundreds of people walk right past them without even glancing? They've fused with the FuckTree. The 69 Pine.
Witnessing this peep show, Rory experiences an instantaenous full blown sexual awakening so seismic the earth threatens to crack open beneath her.
At FND, Emily and Richard take the news of the Lor & Crusty breakup just as well as anyone would have expected, which is to say, Not Well.
When Lorelai returns home...presumably after 8 pm,as it's pitch black outside but the summer festival is still underway, somehow, with hundreds of people roaming the streets. The Barbershop Quartet is still singing "Lazy Hazy Crazy Days" into the night sky, creating an eerie scene. This is like something out of the Twilight Zone. The festivals never end, Taylor Doose in his never ending quest for power and money is forcing the citizens of The Hollow to listen to the same song (actually, more like two lines from the same song) on a loop until they go mad, forced to sell corn dogs and cotton candy until they drop dead, while Shane and Jess are still making out against the Poke Oak.
Again, the last few episodes have been making me feel like something was missing, then I remember Luke still exists. Hi Luke! Why don't you put a light on or something, why are you working in the dark?
Looks like someone decided to put on her big girl panties and be brave.
With Lorelai breaking in and Jess always escaping it seems like Luke doesn't know what a lock is.
Lorelai states she isn't there to beg for forgiveness or have a conversation with him or to talk to him or interact with him in any whatsoever, but she had a bad night so she wants him to make her coffee. DIdn't you hear the man? He's closeddddd.
When Luke won't budge, Lorelai asks him to just pretend she's some other random customer she made up called Mimi, as if it's in any way possible for Luke to imagine this ridiculous woman as someone else. There's no way these two have ever successfully engaged in role play.
I guess he could pretend she's Kirk, both of them take up space for hours at his establishment and don't tip and make him want to lay down face first on the grill with his hand in the deep fryer.
Luke won't assist her, so Lorelai helps herself to a pot of tepid coffee, sits down at his counter and starts crying about all the fucky guys she's dated in the last two years.
"Crusty's gonna have a baby with this woman" True
"He's gonna be there for her when she's pregnant" False
"He's gonna be there with her to see his child grow up" False
"He's gonna be there for her while she does whatever it is she does."
You mean be super duper creepy? #CreepySherry
Am I supposed to feel sorry for you or something? Go cry to Dean Forrester.
You got a LONG wait ahead of you, sister.
Wah wah wah. I want a Tyrannosaurus to storm the streets of The Hollow and swallow your boyfriend Dean Forrester, then I want the t-rex to spit him out so he can be eaten a second time by another t-rex, but we can't always get everything we want, right Lorelai?
Here. Have a 14 hour old donut to ease your pain and hopefully make you go home.
Me, Outloud (Very Animated): What the what, she was about to pay you for the first time ever and you stopped her?!
A flipped script, but that's more or less the same reaction I have during A Year in the Life when Jess offers Rory money. “Why aren’t you taking her money” vs “why are you giving her money”
Is she gone?
Lorelai returns home to find Rory in the living room. It makes me verrrry nervous when Lorelai and Rory meet on the couch at the end of an episode. Shit always goes down on that couch. It's the Scary Couch. The couch where Lorelai imparts horrible wisdom. It turns out my intuition would be correct in this instance. So horribly, horribly correct.
Lorelai apologizes to Rory for reacting in the town square earlier, even though for once in her life Lorelai was actually the reasonable one who was totally in the right about Rory's behavior being slimy, and even if Lorelai is a hypcorite of the highest magnitude to try and impart on her child that you shouldn't mess around, cheat and play games. We can throw her a sprinkling of "Do as I say not as I do" points as long as she doesn't fuck it up in the last two minutes of the episode.... Hahahahaha. Ha?
LORELAI GILMORE GO 15 SECONDS WITHOUT MENTIONING DEAN FORRESTER CHALLENGE. GO!
Lorelai plops down on the couch with 2:58 left in the episode. *starts timer*
2 minutes and 43 seconds left. From sit-down to How's Dean was 15 seconds, she then asks "How was Dean" three more times.
That fucking couch!
Oh, and of course, after she took off and abandoned Rory earlier when Dean approached, Lorelai has yet to ask Rory how she's feeling.
Yay.
Unfortunately, yes. I called the T-Rex to eat Dean but she's booked to the gills, like, you really gotta know someone to get her to show up in your sleepy Connecticut town.
17 seconds from the last Dean mention to the next.
Oh..honey....
It's crazy NOW? No one tell her what a Three Ring FuckCircus the Jess Thing is going to turn into. She has to find out on her own. It's the only way she'll learn.
She says "I love Dean" with as much conviction as someone saying "Yes, I love walking around in wet socks."
But..ya kinda do, miss "just because you and Rory broke up doesn't mean we did, Dean." Lucky for you your daughter is a pathological people pleaser who won't dare to upset you or Dean, So you can rest easy knowing your precious Dean won't be going anywhere, for like, another 7 episodes.
He deserves to have his nuts crushed by a wooly mammoth.
You know what *deep breath* I'll choose to hear "In this alternate timeline, the HPV vaccination has already been invented in 2002 and I'm going to take you to the gynecologist to get it because I want you to be safe in case you one day decide you want to have sex with Jess" instead of unleashing Double T Rex's on Lorelai.
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In which Joel Maisel passes away the week before Stars Hollow finds out about Rory and Dean’s affair.
Midge takes all of this...poorly.
Lenny calls Jess in for backup.
Big thanks to @alixinwwonderland for chatting with me while I wrote this.
His cell phone rings as he’s getting in from work.
“Lenny?”
“Oh, good I caught you,” Lenny’s voice says. He sounds tense. “You busy?”
“Tired. Just home from work,” Jess responds. “Something wrong?”
“Yes, but it’s not life threatening, so if you wanna tell me to go fuck myself when I ask this favor, that’s fine.”
Jess frowns. “What’s wrong?”
Lenny sighs heavily. “Okay. So. Midge’s ex- the cheating idiot - passed away about a week ago, and this week, the entire town found out that Dean - you remember Dean, tall, brainless - cheated on his wife with Rory.”
Jess stays completely quiet, attempting to process that information.
“And I am aware that this is a big ask, considering your…previous entanglements with Lorelai the younger but Midge is taking this very, very badly,” Lenny goes on. “Very badly. And I know you just escaped from your mother’s circus of a wedding, but-”
Jess takes a deep breath and lets it out slowly. “Midge isn’t okay.”
“She is not, in fact, okay,” Lenny confirms. “I thought maybe you could drop in, spend a few days with us, help distract her a little -”
“I’ve got the next couple of days off,” Jess tells him. “I can drive in tonight.”
“Oh, kid, you are saving my life here,” Lenny tells him. “Seriously.”
“Well, you did your best to save mine when I was fucking up, so…I figure I owe you a little.”
“Why don’t you leave the car, take the train in. I’ll buy you a ticket and pick you up in Hartford,” Lenny offers. “You can nap on your way.”
He almost says no. The idea of not having a quick exit putting him a little on edge, but he’s got the Schneiders and Luke in Stars Hollow to protect him from whatever bullshit he might encounter. And a nap in a comfortable train seat sounds really nice.
“Yeah. Okay. Thanks, Lenny.”
*****
By the time they get back to the Schneider’s house from the train station, Midge has cooked everything in the house.
“Jess! You’re here! You’re hungry, right?”
He blinks. “Uh…”
“I made two kinds of kugel, and I made homemade gefilte fish - so much better than the jarred stuff, blech. There’s roasted chicken and lamb chops, and tzimmes and I made potato knish, which I know you both love, and there’s apple cake and I was just about to start the sufganiyot!”
“The what?” Jess asks.
Lenny sighs deeply. “She’s gonna fry jelly donuts. Sweetheart, there’s so much food.”
“But the donuts will be great with coffee in the morning,” Midge beams. “The guestroom is all set for you, Jess. I pulled out all your favorite records to listen to including that noisy Pavement thing I hate, but if you keep the door closed I don’t hear it.”
Jess shakes his head, bewildered. “Thanks?”
Midge beams at him. “Sit! Eat! How was the train?”
“Fine,” Jess says slowly. “Midge, are you okay?”
“I’m good,” she tells him, patting his shoulder as she passes him plate after plate of food.
Lenny rubs his eyes and sits down. “Hand me the fucking knish.”
Midge lights up and hands them over.
*****
Eventually, Lenny is able to convince Midge to get some sleep, and he and Jess sit out on the front porch, each smoking a rare cigarette.
“Joel’s funeral was tough,” Lenny confides in him. “Mei - Joel’s second wife - wanted Midge to give a eulogy, and Midge wouldn’t do it. Mei shouldn’t have asked. I warned her not to, but Mei didn’t want to give a eulogy either.”
“So what happened?” Jess asks.
“Neither of them did. Ethan gave one, and Joel and Mei’s daughter gave one,” Lenny sighs out a puff of smoke. “But the entire day was a mess. Midge wanted to be in the background. She didn’t want to play the grieving wife because she hasn’t been Joel’s wife since 1958. But everybody was treating her like she had never gotten over Joel…so…she got day drunk, told Mei ‘I hadn’t seen that penis since 1958, stop treating me like a fucking sister wife’ and then…we left.”
“Jeez. Poor Midge.”
“Grief does very strange things to people,” Lenny shrugs. “When my mother died I drank an entire bottle of whiskey and wandered around her house with my underpants on my head, yelling at her for being a terrible parent.”
“That is extreme.”
Lenny shrugs. “I was alone that day. I didn’t feel too bad. But Mei is in this weird space where she’s pretending she didn’t spend the last fifty years with that guy. That Midge was always Joel’s one true love and so Midge should take responsibility for…I don’t know. Something. It’s strange, and it’s sad. And Midge…has been reliving the night Joel left.”
Jess nods, listening and taking another drag off his cigarette.
“She threw out our suitcases the other day,” Lenny says quietly. “She said she didn’t want to take any chances, as if after all this time I’m going to find something better than this. Better than her. So they went into the garbage. Suitcases, who gives a shit. If it makes her feel better, I’ll buy fifty more and she can throw those out too.”
“And then there’s uh…the Rory stuff,” Jess says hesitantly.
Lenny sighs and looks at him sympathetically. “I’m sorry, kid. I know I dropped that on you without warning, that wasn’t fair.”
“It’s-”
“Not fine,” Lenny finishes. “It’s not. Rory fucked up. Dean fucked up. It’s a mess.”
“What happened?” Jess asks.
Lenny takes another drag, blowing out the smoke. “They slept together the night of her mother’s inn opening, and then she immediately left for Europe. While she was gone, she had Lorelai give Dean a letter telling him it couldn’t happen again because it was wrong, and Lindsay found it. Now the whole fucking town knows.”
“Shit.”
“Yep.”
Jess pulls out another cigarette and lights it, taking a more stressed out drag. “You know, I -” he stops. “You know what? No. Rory isn’t my fucking mess. If my asking her to leave with me drove her to fuck Dean? That’s a sign.”
Lenny looks at him as if he’s crazy. “You asked Rory to leave with you?”
Jess rubs his face. “I…I asked her- I - I just thought-”
“Aw, Jess.”
“Nope. I’m here for Midge. Rory can clean up her own crap.”
“Jess-”
“I’m gonna go to bed.”
Lenny watches him go and stubs out his cigarette as well as Jess’s that he dropped as he went inside. “Fuck.
*****
“Oh, my god, you have to be kidding me.”
Jess closes his eyes at the sound of Rory’s voice behind him in the diner. He’d stopped in to grab coffee and donuts since Midge hadn’t fried hers the night before. As well as check in with Luke, let him know he’s in town.
“What, are you stalking me now?” Rory accuses, obviously upset.
“Outside,” Jess tells her, gesturing towards the door, and the two of them stalk back out to the sidewalk.
“Midge’s ex husband passed away last week. I’m here to visit her,” Jess explains. “She’s having a really hard time and Lenny asked me to come back to town.”
“Nobody believes that, Jess,” Rory tells him in an annoyed tone.
“Not everything is about you, Rory!” Jess snaps, louder than he means to. “Or did you forget that in all of the drama of fucking someone else’s husband?”
Rory stares at him for a long moment before storming away.
Jess shoves a hand through his hair. “Shit.”
*****
"Oh, please."
They decide to hit the diner for lunch the next day as Jess helps Luke with the lunch rush, but it’s less than a great idea.
Lenny sighs heavily. "Shit."
Teresa Lister has been bitching about her daughter's impending divorce and "that slut Rory Gilmore who broke up my baby's marriage" for a good twenty minutes and Midge has clearly had enough.
"Excuse me?" Teresa snaps. "How dare you-"
"How dare I. You're the one blaming the wrong person. Did it ever occur to you that Rory or no Rory, Dean was always going to find a way to cheat? That's what cheaters do."
"Dean isn't a cheater!"
"What the fuck do you call coming onto another woman behind your wife's back, and sliding off your wedding ring to fuck her?"
The entire diner goes silent and still. Dean has just walked in. Rory and Lorelai have been huddled at a corner table. Jess and Luke are behind the counter. Babette and Miss Patty had been trying to talk Teresa down.
"No?" Midge asks. "Nothing? No accountability for the man who did the cheating, just a good old fashioned verbal witch burning for the woman he cheated with? Typical."
"Dean was seduced!"
"Happily married men don't get seduced. He was looking! And Rory did your daughter a favor with that letter. Dean was too dumb to actually hide it, though she didn't think of that."
"That slut-"
"Saved your daughter from months - maybe years - of being lied to," Midge snarls. "Because that's what men like Dean do. They stay in their unhappy marriages because they're fucking comfortable, and they promise their side pieces they'll leave eventually and then they don't because who the fuck would give up a nice home with someone who cooks for them and washes their underpants? Thank god Lindsay is getting out before they had kids. Co-parenting with a man who deems you unworthy to be his wife after years of marriage and partnership is hell. It is literally hell, Teresa. And I wouldn't wish that on anyone. If it hadn't been Rory, it would have been someone fucking else." She takes a breath, trying to steady herself as Lenny takes her hand gently.
"And no one will ever blame him!" Midge cries, starting to get really upset. "What is it, Dean?" She asks, looking at him. "You're too dumb? Too innocent? Easily seduced? Rory used her underdeveloped feminine wiles to trick you into bed?"
He stands at his full height and opens his mouth, but she beats him to it.
"I swear to God, if the words 'I love Rory' leave your damn fool mouth, I will beat you to death with a hot frying pan from Caesar’s stove. You wanted what you wanted, and it has nothing to do with either of the women you've hurt. You don't love Rory. That's not love. That is lust. And I'm right, aren't I? You were never going to leave Lindsay. You were always going to do your damndest to have your cake and fuck it to."
Lenny squeezes her hand. "Midge"
She stops talking, squeezing his fingers back.
"Out, Dean," Luke says evenly.
"But-"
"Out. Now."
*****
“That was some rant,” Lorelai says quietly as she sits next to Midge in the gazebo late that night. “Like Mrs. X at the Gaslight take 2: Electric Boogaloo.”
Midge snorts softly as she takes a puff off her cigarette, offering the pack to the younger woman. “I am nothing if not verbose when I’m pissed off.”
Lorelai declines and sits back. “Luke told me about Joel. I’m really sorry.”
“He wasn’t a particularly good man,” Midge shrugs. “He wasn’t…kind or generous. He wasn’t exceedingly smart. But for a few years, he was my husband. And that means something. I don’t know what. But something.” She sighs out some smoke. “You know, Joel’s mistress was about as dumb as a box of hair. She was a certified idiot. Rory’s a smart girl. She’s not supposed to fall for the kind of shit Dean was selling that night.”
“I think she’s just…feeling lost,” Lorelai says quietly. “She knows it was wrong.”
“That won’t stop her from starting a relationship with him now that Lindsay’s thrown him out,” Midge smirks wryly.
“I don’t know,” Lorelai admits. “I don’t know what happened. I couldn’t believe it when I found out, and then she went to Europe and had time to think and realized how bad it was, and now…”
“Now he’s fair game,” Midge shrugs. “What a fucking mess. I don’t envy you. LIving through it was bad enough. Watching your kid live through it is probably a sonofabitch.”
“It hasn’t been my best summer, that’s for sure,” Lorelai agrees. “What do I do? How do I…shake her out of this.”
“You can’t,” Midge tells her. “She’ll either realize she’s fucking up or she won’t.” She looks at Lorelai. “And eventually Dean will remember that Rory is too smart for him and find an idiot to fuck. And then the shoe will be on the other foot.”
“Maybe you should talk to Rory,” Lorelai suggests.
Midge chuckles darkly. “She may not survive that talk.”
“Really, though. You’ve lived through this. You…you were in Lindsay’s shoes. She’s not seeing Lindsay as anything but someone who was making Dean unhappy. If Rory hears what you went through, she might…snap out of it.”
Midge thinks about that for a long moment before nodding. “Okay, then. I’ll kick the boys out tomorrow afternoon, and she can come over.”
*****
When Rory shows up at the Schneider’s the next day there is a veritable feast of leftovers sitting on the dining room table.
“I figured you might be hungry,” Midge shrugs as they sit down together.
“This is a lot of food,” Rory comments quietly.
“It’s been a tough couple weeks,” Midge admits. “My ex-husband passed away a week or so ago, and while funerals are never really enjoyable, this one was particularly terrible.”
“I…Jess mentioned, but I thought-”
Midge shrugs again as she takes a couple of knishes onto her plate. “Lenny called in some backup to help handle my…well, I didn’t have a breakdown, but it wasn’t like I was totally sane.”
“I’m really sorry, Midge,” Rory says. Her voice is still quiet.
Midge takes a breath. “Thank you.”
“I guess-” Rory stops and considers her words for a moment. “I guess what’s been going on with me hasn’t been…helping. With grieving the guy who cheated on you.”
“It hasn’t,” Midge admits.
Rory sits in silence, poking at the food on her plate, unsure of what to say.
Midge takes a breath and lifts her hands, slipping her engagement ring off before taking off her wedding ring and holding it up. “Consider the simple wedding band.”
Rory looks at it, swallowing. “I never really looked at yours. I guess I thought you would- have a fancier one. Famous and all.”
“There’s a lot of beauty in simplicity,” Midge tells her. “I didn’t used to think so when I was younger, but as I got older, and lived a little more, I learned that very basic things can be very beautiful. And more than that, meaningful. It means something to put one of these on and promise to be someone’s partner.”
Rory looks away.
“Even when I’m not wearing it, it still means something that I put it on in the first place. When I take it off to do the dishes or take a shower, I’m no less Lenny’s partner.” She pauses for a moment. “Dean wasn’t any less Lindsay’s partner when he took his wedding ring off that night, Rory.”
Rory finally looks at her, getting heated. “Lindsay was-”
“His wife,” Midge finishes. “Lindsay was Dean’s wife. Whether she was making his life miserable or not. Whether he was happy or not. Whether she was whatever he said she was or not. Lindsay was Dean’s wife. And that’s meaningful. The second he put that ring on for the first time, he became Lindsay’s partner. If he didn’t want that anymore, he needed to deal with it on his own. He made it your problem, and that was wrong of him. It was wrong of him to prey on the fact that you were attracted to him, and it was wrong of you to give in to that attraction..”
Rory swallows, staring at her.
“The sooner you realize that, the sooner you can move forward from this.”
“It’s not fair,” Rory blurts out, looking upset. “He was- he was mine first.”
“I don’t know that I’ve ever heard you say anything that childish, and I have known you since you were in diapers,” Midge says. “You’re not a little girl anymore, Rory. You’re going to be twenty. You’re an adult, and these are adult matters, and adult feelings, and if you don’t have the ability to deal with them like an adult, you shouldn’t be having sex yet to begin with.”
“That’s not fair!”
“Neither is finding out the man you married fucked someone else behind your back,” Midge says evenly. “You helped Dean destroy his marriage. You helped him break Lindsay’s heart. And if you’re unwilling to come to terms with the part you played in this then you’re not the person I thought you were.”
Rory says nothing.
“Is this the way you want to live your life?” Midge asks. “You want what you want and fuck the consequences? Fuck the collateral damage?”
“That’s not what I want!”
“You cannot go through life like a bulldozer,” Midge warns her. “What you want is not the only thing that matters.”
She’s about to respond, but stops, staring at her.
“If you don’t start thinking about the feelings and the wellbeing of the other people around you, you’re going to wind up very, very unhappy,” Midge tells her softly. “Nothing happens in a vacuum.”
Rory stays quiet, tears starting to well up in her eyes.
“Your actions hurt Lindsay. They hurt your mother. They helped Dean hurt the people in his life,” Midge goes on. “Accept that as reality. Let yourself feel guilty, and disappointed in yourself. Let yourself feel pissed at Dean. And Pissed at yourself, and then move on.”
“Without Dean,” Rory says bitterly.
Midge nods. “Without Dean.”
“Why?” Rory snaps.
“Because cheaters rarely cheat just once,” Midge tells her. “And next time, he might be telling some other unsuspecting girl how unhappy he is in his relationship, and he’ll be talking about you.”
Rory swallows. “Dean wouldn’t do that.”
“He did it once,” Midge shrugs. “There is absolutely nothing stopping him from doing it again.”
“Dean loves me.”
Midge closes her eyes and takes a breath. “Dean doesn’t know anything about loving someone.”
There’s a long, long moment of silence, before Rory eventually bursts into tears over her plate of food.
“I don’t want you to be right,” she sniffles.
Midge nods, putting her rings back on. “I know. I don’t want me to be right, either.”
*****
Jess steps onto the Schneider’s from porch that evening, finding Midge sitting there with an untouched bottle of wine.
“Am I interrupting, or…?”
She grins a little and pats the seat next to him. “I’ve been thinking too hard to drink. Where’s Lenny?”
“He stopped by Al’s to pick us up some dinner,” Jess explains. “He says you’ve cooked enough, and he’s dying to try Al’s Kung Pao Quesadillas.”
Midge wrinkles her nose and laughs. “He can’t get enough of Al’s bizarre creations. I swear it’s like the flea circus fixation all over again.”
Jess chuckles a little and sits back. “How’d it go?”
“It…went,” Midge nods. “I think she listened. I don’t know if she’ll actually heed any of my warnings, but…there were tears. But no broken bones, no bloodshed.”
“That’s somethin’ I guess,” Jess says.
“What about you?” Midge asks.
“Me? I’m dandy.”
“You are not the bullshit artist you think you are, Jess,” she tells him. “C’mon. Talk to Grandma.”
Jess sighs heavily. “She’s going through some stuff. I can’t help with it, and I don’t really…want to.”
Midge nods. “And that’s hard.”
“It’s really hard,” Jess agrees. “But I gotta wait for her to come out the other side of this, and…I guess maybe we might be friends again.”
“Just friends?”
Jess shrugs and looks out at the Gilmore house.
Midge rubs his back comfortingly, as she’s done a million times with her own (other, really), grandchildren. “It’ll all work itself out.”
“You think so?” he asks, glancing at her.
“Generally,” Midge shrugs. “Look at my life. By all rights I should have died sad and alone after Joel left me.”
Jess rolls his eyes. “Bullshit. That’s not you.”
“It was a lot of other women,” Midge says quietly. “A lot of divorced women just…stayed unhappy. I got pretty lucky.”
“Lucky my ass,” Jess tells her. “That was all you. You saved yourself.”
Midge huffs out a soft laugh and ruffles his hair. “Cut this.”
“No.”
“Dinner!” Lenny calls as he walks up the porch steps, holding a takeout back. “Kung Pao quesadillas, and chow mien subs.”
“Gross, I can’t wait,” Midge tells him, standing up to peck his lips.
“Chow time, Jess,” Lenny says as he opens the door, letting Midge in first.
Jess takes a breath and gets to his feet, giving one last look to the Gilmore house before following them in, grabbing Midge’s unopened bottle of wine on his way.
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