3.17 - A Tale of Poes and Fire

[ErinG]

I love the part where Lorelai is refering to tell-tale heart to the wrong guest and their all freaked out. I think its a little weird that Lorelai just leaves her house with a ton of strangers in it, and its because those dumbasses showed up at the last min

[Stars-n-Moons]

I love this episode! The end is so emotional.  I love a good episode that takes you through all of the emotions. 

One of my all time favorite Gilmore-moments is when Rory holds up the "Rory's going to Yale" shirt will all of the Yale paraphernalia in the background.

[Imy]

i love this episode but it is very sad. very emotional!
i love the bit with rory and lane about yung-chui falling in love with lane!
i love the bit when the poe and is wife are stayin in rory's room and they don't seem very romantic!!! hilarious!!!
i love this too "by the way your boyfriend snores!" !!!!!!!
lorelai is hilarious!
i love the part with luke and lorelai when she tells him about her dream!!
i like the way jess and mrs.kim interact with each other its just so funny!!!!

[Gross123987]

This is definitely in my top 10 episodes.   I just watched it again recentlly.   Here are a few of my favorites:

-- "Looks like Nicole has a little Lindsay attitude"
-- I also like Lorelai trying to cute things up and not doing a good job is funny
--- Kirk selling the T-shirts is great.  (Babbette ate Oatmeal)
---  Paris watching the soap operas is hysterical
-- Paris playing the tape recording of her Harvard interview is great!
--- And, of course, Rory finally deciding on the next 4 years of her life is great

[xxLL4Everxx]

I thought this episode was funny and I loved Lorelai telling Luke about her dream. It was so good. And Kirk selling the Tshirts was hilarious. Babette ate oatmeal!! 

[GlmrGrltAtHeart]

This episode is hilarious! Like when Sookie came into the diner the morning after the fire and told her guys to get rid of all of Luke's stuff. The end when they came in the Inn after the fire was sad though. All the stuff was ruined and poor little Papia(sp?)! 

[gilmorefriend]

I wonder what happened to the cat! I bet it went somewhere else to live or something. Maybe she became friends with cat Kirk!

[violaplayer1234]

Okay, so, I haven't truly decided how I feel about this episode.

Parts of it are funny, really truly funny.  I love the awkwardness as Lorelai tells Luke about the dream and I love the cat, Papaya, just there.  I really love Michel calling the other inn to see if he can get work and I love Rory doing the sock puppets.

But I don't know if I like Rory's choice.  This is not to derail Yale (haha, it rhymes) but it brings up questions.  Rory has been dreaming of Harvard for years.  Do we not think she would've made out pro/con lists before?  She knew the distance of Harvard, she knew about all that stuff, judging by the fact that she read the booklets and such.  And so suddenly it comes into play, and Yale wins.  It's not like she didn't get into Harvard, she got in.  But she chose Yale, which never makes sense to me.  She had dreamed about going to Harvard for 18 years.  But then in the course of one day, it all changes.  Suddenly Harvard isn't as good, but I don't understand why.  Rory had probably figured that by her grades and such she would get into Harvard, and then most likely Yale and Princeton.  I just don't like the decision to change her dream college.  Rory had to have known all these things before. 

The inn burning down was sad.  It was very very sad to see it all gone, not there anymore.  To watch it up in smoke.  Although I really don't understand why Lorelai left all those people in her house, alone...couldn't she have just said there was no room?  Or told them to go somewhere else. 

I love the Jess/Mrs. Kim interaction.  It's great. b

[Tucker]

Ok I just have to start off by saying, Luke should have really had his hair this way the whole show... he looks so much younger, cleaner and better.


@Viloplayer

One Theory I have is that It always seemed that Lorelai was pushing Harvard on Rory because she knew Richard went to Yale and for the most part of her life she kept Rory from her parents world... which would include keeping her away from Yale. I think it really hit her that Rory could be close to home if she went to Yale after Emily brought it up, as much as she'd hate to listen to her mother. Then after the arguement at the Thanksgiving party it seemed to Hit lorelai that putting all of Rory's eggs in one basket probably isnt the smartest thing to do.


Another way to look at it was that Lorelai and Rory were just "using" Harvard as a goal for a top Ivy league school at first but then just got hung up on Harvard the school rather than a top college and when the time came Rory knew she couldn't just apply for one college but it took lorelai longer to come around.


Either way, I think the close to home factor really had a major effect on the decision when the crunch time came and they actually faced being away from eachother.

[Carrie Ann]

But I don't know if I like Rory's choice.  This is not to derail Yale (haha, it rhymes) but it brings up questions.  Rory has been dreaming of Harvard for years.  Do we not think she would've made out pro/con lists before?  She knew the distance of Harvard, she knew about all that stuff, judging by the fact that she read the booklets and such.  And so suddenly it comes into play, and Yale wins.  It's not like she didn't get into Harvard, she got in.  But she chose Yale, which never makes sense to me.  She had dreamed about going to Harvard for 18 years.  But then in the course of one day, it all changes.  Suddenly Harvard isn't as good, but I don't understand why.  Rory had probably figured that by her grades and such she would get into Harvard, and then most likely Yale and Princeton.  I just don't like the decision to change her dream college.  Rory had to have known all these things before. 

I rewatched this last night and I thought the same thing. Wouldn't she already have done these pro/con lists when applying or even before? Even Yale's list was "twice as long" as Harvard's and Princeton's, wouldn't it have been obvious to both of them what her decision would end up being?
Or, was she swayed by Richard's and Emily's influence, now that they are closer than they were growing up. Not just the fact that Richard went to Yale, but being close to her extended family as well, and not just Lorelai?
Or maybe she really was only going to apply to Harvard all along and only applied to Yale b/c of Richard's influence and b/c Chilton made her apply to more than one, as was stated in a previous episode.

Or maybe AS-P didn't realize the series would go for more than a couple years and realized that having Rory at Yale, closer, would be better for the storyline? Then, why not make it Yale from the beginning?

Anyway, the bottom line is, I feel like this is a flaw in the writing. If Yale's pro's were "twice as long" as Harvard's, they would have realized this before this moment. It doesn't ring true to me.
Carrie

[Gross123987]

I don't think it is a writing flaw at all.    People change their minds about things all of the time.   It is certainly reasonable that she would have changed her mind after the choices were concrete.   In the past, the college choice was abstract, she was not accepted to Harvard, Yale or any school.   I am not convinced that she would do a pro/con list ahead of time, when it was all speculation.    Rory (as a humble person) will likely not just have assumed that she would be accepted to colleges with such tough competition.

And I think this is such a great episode (top 5 of the series!).  There are so many funny scenes.

Lorelai trying to be funny with the guests (and it not working)
Kirk's t-shirt "Faux Poes Foes" is funny on many levels.
Rory's puppet show
Paris watching soap Operas

[bingbong]

I think there is something to Carrie Ann's suggestion that ASP didn't think ahead to Rory's high school graduation when the show kicked-off. It was important for the show to keep Lorelai and Rory in regular contact and Harvard wouldn't have worked for that. Even Yale, about an hour's drive away, was awkward. It was odd and sometimes funny the way Rory spent so much time in Star's Hollow during the Yale years.

When Gran made her initial appearance in the first season she raised an objection to the idea that Rory would go to Harvard and not Yale. But Richard (and Emily) did not object to Yale at that early point.  I don't know exactly at what point Richard started pushing hard for Yale. A person (or fictional character) is entitled to change her mind but i agree her decision for Yale played out awkwardly. ASP could have handled it differently. For example, she could reversed it by making Richard a Harvard man with Rory's goal for Yale. There still could have been a conflict, except Rory would have gone with her original choice of Yale. There were other possibilities i'm sure. I suspect ASP was looking for a way to keep Rory close to S.H. and wanted to work in yet another conflict between Lorelai and her parents in the process.

[Imy]

But I don't know if I like Rory's choice. This is not to derail Yale (haha, it rhymes) but it brings up questions. Rory has been dreaming of Harvard for years. Do we not think she would've made out pro/con lists before? She knew the distance of Harvard, she knew about all that stuff, judging by the fact that she read the booklets and such. And so suddenly it comes into play, and Yale wins. It's not like she didn't get into Harvard, she got in. But she chose Yale, which never makes sense to me. She had dreamed about going to Harvard for 18 years. But then in the course of one day, it all changes. Suddenly Harvard isn't as good, but I don't understand why. Rory had probably figured that by her grades and such she would get into Harvard, and then most likely Yale and Princeton. I just don't like the decision to change her dream college. Rory had to have known all these things before.

^Grace, I totally agree. It really really really bugs me. plus if she had never gone to Yale she would have never met Harvard...if only! (sorry headliners!) I mean honestly who changes their mind after like 18 years of dreams? who?! And I think that this is where rory starts to change a lot.  I understand the issues brought up about it being far and Lorelai and Rory needing communication regularly and I understand that people change their minds about things but I think that if rory had gone to Harvard then that would be something that like is consistent about the character because people go through changes through life especially at her age I think that having that passion and ambition about Harvard is something that is concrete and can stick.

[monsoon]

I love this episode! The end is so emotional.  I love a good episode that takes you through all of the emotions. 

One of my all time favorite Gilmore-moments is when Rory holds up the "Rory's going to Yale" shirt will all of the Yale paraphernalia in the background.

Yes, the episode is one of the very best GG episodes and the last scene is one of my "top ten favourite" closing scenes of GG  - every time I see the episode, I rewind and watch this scene again and again!

That said, is there a blooper in this scene? I mean when does Lorelai do all this? She has the "Yale, Yale, Yale" conversation with Rory, goes over to Luke's, sleeps, wakes up, eats breakfast at Luke's and goes to the inn! It seems like she never went home.

Is the explanation is that she somehow got a chance to call Kirk, who snuck in after the guests woke up and  left Rory's room, changed the Harvard stuff to Yale and left the T-shirts there?

[starshells]

Rory's Going to Yale!

 

I loved when Luke was really trying not to laugh at Jess for working at Walmart