Bumblebee Tights

16,21,41,44.

16, 18, 43, 46.

16,17,37,38.

16,17, 19, 37. I feel this way about 2 as well...and although I think it is maybe, for me, Lorelai 's least flattering moment, I also LOVE Luke here, and it's very powerful. I guess I'm voting more in the spirit of powerful/ memorable moments....Though I totally get why people hate it!

16-because the whole Francie debacle is one of the few things on GG that truly annoys me. 19- because it's similar to 18, and 18 is more memorable to me. 26-because the whole Nicole debacle is another one of the few things on GG that truly annoys me. 37-because something about this just didn't sit right with me.

What a list! Do we vote against three?

I have some more... On the funnier side: -Sookie and Jackson fight over Sookie's attempts to redecorate their house in a more "masculine" fashion (" It's terrifying! swear I’m gonna come out in the middle of the night for a drink of water, turn around, hit the floor and play dead!)...3.01 " Lazy Hazy Crazy" -Emily and Richard fight as she decides to leave for Europe ("Only prostitutes have 2 glasses of wine at lunch!"; "Well then buy me a boa and drive me to Reno because I am open for business!")..5.01 "Say Goodbye To Daisy Miller" Then we have the actual physical fights: -Jess and Dean's animosity finally comes to a head...all over Kyle's house (Bonus: Dave and Young Chiu confrontation)..3.19 "Keg! Max!" -Luke and Christopher fight amongst the Christmas decorations..7.10, "Merry Fisticuffs" On the incredibly uncomfortable side: -Luke and Dean fight over the bop it...5.04 "Tippecanoe and Taylor too" And then an almost forgotten favorite of mine, just because I like to see this side of her: -Rory stands up for Jess (and herself) post car accident to Lorelai and Emily at Richard's launch party ("I’m sick of this. I’m sick of everyone treating me like I’m some kind of mindless idiot being led around by a guy....I was just as responsible ..")..2.20 "Help Wanted"

Ok, got it. Well, top 4 that first occur to me, other than the ones that have been mentioned above: 1) The Emily/Lorelai/Rory three way fight after Rory's Dance (Emily attacks Lorelai "She's going to get pregnant!", Lorelai kicks her out, then turns on Rory when she gets home "You're going on the pill!") ..1.09 ,"Rory's Dance." 2) Luke and Jess fight after Luke finds out that Jess isn't graduating. "Then you gotta go"..3.20, "Say Goodnight Gracie" 3) Christopher ambushes Lorelai at FND and has an emotional confrontation with both she and Rory, then is kicked out by Emily...3.02, "Haunted Leg" 4) Lorelai and Richard have a heated discussion about why Richard stood up for her to Straub :"Yes it does matter why I did it, it matters greatly!"..1.15, "Christopher Returns." Ok, and a fifth.. 5) Emily's smiley confrontation with Shira Huntzburger after she discovers the truth about how Rory has been treated..6.05, "We've Got Magic To Do"

Fights is a great idea! Why don't we go ahead with that, since it sounds like there's a consensus, and then we can do characters if we want? Do we think we can do fights in one round, or are there so many that we should break it up by season?

I think L/L definitely deserved the win here. So I have a couple of different ideas about what might be fun to do next... I didn't see where a straight favorite character elimination had ever been done... Or maybe favorite romantic pairings? If the winner of either of these seems too obvious, or if we'd rather keep going with scenes, maybe we could do romantic scenes? We could do those season by season.. Any opinions/ Other suggestions?

(Sorry about the spoiler box, I added it on accident and my phone is very stubbornly refusing to get rid of it) My vote is 6. I love all of these, but 11 just has a lot of great stuff going on all at once..and it has this line: "I thought at the end, you could do more about the sweater" Kills me every time!

??? . I love this comment so much!

3

This is getting hard...I'll go with 17 as well...

See, I'm the opposite..I think my UO is that I don't really have an "ugh" reaction to any of Rory's guys. Dean IS my least favorite as well, just in terms of which relationship I think is the most interesting to watch/provides the most growth for Rory/has the most potential to be a long term thing, but I don't dislike him, and there are times (ok, mostly in season 1), when I actually quite like him. My only real issue with Dean is that as the seasons go on, we watch him become more and more traditional/conservative/"all American high school guy", to the point where it's sometimes difficult for me to suspend my disbelief about it. I mean, in S1 we have Dean driving a motorcycle, telling Rory she should read Hunter Thompson, and saying that he's "not much of a joiner". By S3, he's playing multiple school sports, attends all the town events, and there is nary a book or leather jacket in sight. I do recognize that even as early as S1, he was voicing some more traditional values ("That Damn Donna Reed"), and that he certainly came from a more traditional family unit than Rory, but still that's quite the character adjustment. I have to fanwank that as he assimilated into SH, he began to take on some of their values, and just changed. That can happen, especially to someone who's only 16. My other big UO concerning Dean...I think the Dean/Rory affair at the end of S4/beginning of S5 made sense. I think it was in character for both of them, and I think the series had earned it. I definitely don't think it came out of nowhere, or was hard to believe. Hard to stomach, maybe. But the show had been building towards it ever since Rory had first "chosen" Jess. First, did she really choose him? I mean, I definitely think it was what she wanted, but if Dean hadn't made the choice to end things at the dance marathon, who knows how long that would've dragged on...they may not have broken up that year at all. Watching Rory in S2-S3, I see a girl that's pining for Jess, yes, but she's also clearly pretty conflicted. Some of that has to do with guilt and passivity and wanting to be the "good" girl, but that's not all it is. Rory has this undeniable attraction to Jess, they have crazy chemistry, and he challenges her, and that's exciting. But to someone like Rory, that's also scary. It means a risk, and we know how careful and deliberate Rory is. Dean is just the opposite. For Rory, he represents stability, comfort, and safety. They also have a deep friendship that comes from their familiarity. Rory's an introvert, and there aren't many people that are that deep into her world. So it's hard for her to let go, and she's not ready to let go of Dean yet, even though she does want to be with Jess, which is why we got the love triangle. So she makes her decision (or it's made for her), and she takes the risk on Jess. And honestly....it doesn't turn out so great. He doesn't treat her well. There's also some evidence that she's still not totally ready to let Dean go. Even during the Jess relationship, we see her comparing him to Dean ("Sure, Dean always called when he said he would...") She's shaken up when she finds out about Lindsey. Then Jess bails on her, and it hurts her. She leaves for school and we can see her struggling to figure out where she fits in. She feels a little lost and insecure. Like lots of college freshman, she's longing for comfort and security and familiarity. We see it in Incredible Sinking Lorelai's when she's crying on Dean's shoulder and talking about Lane leaving her dorm (" I know she had to go but I liked her there.."). Dean represents all of these things to her. By the end of S4, she's fully regretting the risk she took with Jess. She summarizes it perfectly in Raincoats when she's telling Lane how Jess showed up at her dorm. LANE: Dean was very dependable. RORY: It was more than that. He's -- well, he was so... um, I was safe, and he was so nice to me. LANE: He really loved you. RORY: I think I really blew it there, you know? I didn't appreciate it. Of course, on Dean's part, he idealized Rory , even more so after the dust had settled with Jess. The Lindsey (Lindsay?) marriage was obviously an incredibly immature decision born out of desperation to move on, and in the end only served to make him idealize her more, since she was a fantasy and he was living in a not so happy reality with Lindsey. So, all this to demonstrate why I think it made perfect sense that they came together, even with Dean being married. I didn't like to see it, but I could never understand why people were surprised by it. It's almost as though Jess was this bomb that went off inside their relationship, and because of it, they weren't able to grow apart naturally, like I think they would have if he'd never come to town. For Dean especially, there was a lot of unfinished business that needed to be played out before they could move on. (As an aside, I want to stress that I see Jess's part in Rory's life as much much more than just a bomb that went off in her relationship with Dean, but in the context of that relationship, that's how I see him.) That said, I did hate Dean's last scene as well. I'm hoping in the revival they'll allow him a more dignified exit.

18

16

14,..16

Yeah, I'll say 9 and 12 as well.

3,15

I agree, they were each very stuck in their roles in regards to one another. Since we're talking about UOs, I'll add that another one of mine is that the whole "one step forward two steps back" dance that Emily and Lorelai have throughout the series works for me. Maybe it's just because I have both seen and experienced similar parent child relationships, but for me it just rings really true. While it was abundantly clear that Emily loved Lorelai pretty fiercely, and that Lorelai not only loved her mother as well when it came down to it, but actually was more similar to Emily than she wanted to believe, the two women had such fundamental differences in their belief systems about pretty much everything, (not to mention that they were both stubborn, opinionated, and fairly emotion-ruled people), that they were always going to butt heads. It was just the nature of their relationship. I understand it was frustrating to watch them tread the same ground over and over, but sometimes life is just like that. Progress isn't always linear. I do think they made progress though..I mean, Lorelai of season 1 would have NEVER considered going to Richard and Emily when Rory wanted to drop out of Yale . There's also a scene in season 1, after Rory's dance, where a panicked Emily is screaming at Lorelai that Rory's going to get pregnant, and that "You're going to lose her like I lost you"! Lorelai basically yells back that that will never happen, because of how she's raising Rory differently, and ends up kicking Emily out. Flash forward to season 6, when Lorelai finds Emily attempting to time share a plane after Rory moves out. Emily says to Lorelai that "I lost her like I lost you, it feels remarkably similar". Lorelai goes on to explain to her why it's different, and ends with "...and you didn't lose me." Then she walks away, and we get to see Emily react by breaking into tears. That scene was so moving to me because of the juxtaposition with the S1 scene. I don't think it could be denied that that is progress. Whether or not Richard and Emily deserved Lorelai 's vitriol is a stickier issue. I don't doubt that Richard and Emily always did what they thought was the right thing when it came to Lorelai, and that they tried their best to give her everything they thought she needed. Lorelai herself acknowledges this more than once during the course of the series. Did Lorelai have it better than Jess? Definitely. It's just, I think, there was so much dissonance between what they thought of as the "right" way to raise Lorelai, and what Lorelai actually needed. I think we can see some things that illustrate this is S1. There are 2 main scenes that stick out to me. The first is in Rory's Birthday Parties. After Rory has refused to thank the guests at the party Emily throws for her, and they have some intense words, Rory invites her grandparents to the party in Stars Hollow the next night. Emily declines, Lorelai implores her to come, and Emily says that she already had a party for her granddaughter, and lists all the work she put into it. Lorelai says "Well that's not what she needed mom. What she needed was for her grandparents to come to her birthday party". Then there's a scene in Emily In Wonderland where Emily is upset after seeing the potting shed. Lorelai says to Emily that " I was very young, I was very unhappy, and I needed to be somewhere that wasn't here". I think this is just the truth, and we can see in the first example why. I think Lorelai genuinely didn't feel understood or accepted by her parents, and probably often felt punished just for being herself. While comparatively this may seem minor, that can be some rough stuff for a young person to deal with. So I think, while Richard and Emily by no means deserve to be villainized, Lorelai has legitimate reasons for reacting to them the way she does. As far as Jess... while I used to find it frustrating that she didn't accept him, on rewatching I tend to give Lorelai a pass, just because she's not viewing him through the lens of " another human being who I can connect with and relate to", but " kid who's trying to date my daughter, and might hurt her", and so I think it's ( relatively) understandable that she would have the reservations that she did.

This is true! I also love when Luke teases Jess. When he finds out that Jess works at Walmart.. "Look at you...eating apple pie"! When he goes to the ceremony when Jess is named employee of the month.. "The forklift is going 'where's the extension of me?'"! When Jess finds out that his car has been "devil-egged".. "Well, that is paprika...man, they must hate you a lot!" I just love the way Scott delivers this stuff, with such a sense of joy. There is so much sarcasm in their relationship, but there's also an underlying sweetness that just makes it really delightful.

15, 7

Yeah, I agree, and I guess my UO is that season 7 is generally underrated. I'm actually of the opinion that the worst stretch of the show is the second half of season 6 through the first half of season 7. Yes, the beginning of season 7 is hard to watch for me because: 1) It is jarring to adjust to the slower pace of DR's writing, and the pop culture references are particularly clunky in the first couple of episodes. I feel like you can also see the cast sort of struggling to adjust to this as well, as some of the acting seems a bit wooden and things just feel "off". 2) The mess leftover from the season 6 storylines. We're still effectively 'in' the same storylines that made season 6 so painful. The Lorelai/Luke stuff and the Christopher fallout is the worst, but there's also the Luke/Anna/April drama, and season 7 is certainly not at fault for pairing Rory with Logan (which I actually don't mind, but I know many do). However, once the season 6 mess is "cleaned up" to the best of DR's ability, I think he was able to relax and find his footing, and the show drastically improves for me as a result. It's pretty clear cut for me, too, because the first episode I feel this way about is "I am Kayak..", which is the episode immediately following the end of the Lorelai/ Chris marriage. The cold open of this episode, (where Lorelai shows up at Rory's dorm early in the a.m. and springs "going for a drive" on her so she can tell her about the split, then the car breaks down and the girls walk down the road arm in arm), feels in tone more like 'classic' GG then anything the show had done in season 6, or maybe even season 5. I feel similarly about all the episodes from "Kayak" through probably "It's just like riding a bike". I actually particularly love the two episodes you referenced. I love Hay Bale Maze and I love Lane's baby shower. While it's true that DR was never really able to capture the ASP magic, I do feel that the show regained that cozy, early season GG feel in these episodes. I am less warm and fuzzy about the last 2-3 episodes of the season, but I think that has more to do with the seemingly abrupt end then anything else. And they did give us this beautiful moment: "Mom, you've already given me everything I need."

I feel the same way. I wonder if it could in part be attributed to Lauren Graham? She's so naturally charismatic, and she infuses Lorelai with such warmth and zest. I also think it's fair to say that if all I knew of Lorelai were things she's said in 'interviews' within the show..here I'm thinking of the interview she gave about the Dragonfly that turned into comparing Emily to Stalin, and the deposition she gave to Emily's lawyers when her maid was suing her..I probably wouldn't think very well of her. So maybe there are similarities to ASP there as well. I am all for a cozy, low drama, focused mostly on the three generations of Gilmore women revival!