A Messenger, Nothing More
Rory is in Rome with Emily. Lorelai becomes a workaholic to forget about her fight with Rory. Lane is falling in love with Zach.
Tropes
- Affair Letters: Rory's break-up letter to Dean is the thing that cues Lindsay in that they had an affair.
- Blatant Lies: Lorelai has stopped believing Luke when he says he's coming home.
- Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: To comfort Rory, Lorelai offers to buy whatever she wants from Luke's: pie, cake, pancake, pan pie, cake pan, and panacockin.
- Call-Back:
- Rory visits the same places she and Lorelai visited on their Europe trip between seasons three and four.
- Luke and Lorelai sneak out with the same sort of I Have to Go Iron My Dog excuses Rory and Jess used in season three.
- Captain Obvious: Rory thinks the Italian ruins are where they have been for the last two thousand year.
- Child Hater: It backfires on Michel, as the Krumholtz kids think he's funny. Lorelai claims to hate children, but probably only means ones that aren't hers.
- Conspiracy Theory: The one against Mary Magdalene. Brian tells Zach about it, Zach tells his groupies about it. Trine finds it's confusing that everyone's named Mary.
- Crapsack Only by Comparison: Subverted. Luke tells Lane the Renessaince fair is like the Vietnam war, but without all the fun shooting.
- "Dear John" Letter: Rory writes Dean a letter to let him know she can't be with him while he's married. The letter itself solves the conundrum by being discovered by Dean's wife.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Lorelai has been nicknamed The Blur.
- Fee Fi Faux Pas: Invoked by Rory, who says Lorelai would have been shot in Italy for eating pizza with steak sauce.
- Foil: Zach and Brian come up with the idea to only play crappy cover songs to make their originals stand out.
- Gratuitous Foreign Language: Subverted since they're speaking Italian in Italy, though the subtitles apparently can't understand what Emily is saying.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Lane is annoyed with Zach's groupies, but has yet to realize it's because she is in love with him.
Cheryl: God, I just wanna spend like three years doing nothing but reading.
Lane: What book?
- Hollywood Board Games: Neither Lorelai nor Michel are fans of kids. Unfortunately for them, the Krumholtz family is staying in the Dragonfly Inn's most expensive room. The parents want to go out for a tour but the children want to stay. Lorelai convinces Michel, who is Only in It for the Money, to be friendly to the kids. His reluctance shows when he offers the kids to "play some insipid boardgames with [him]". Obliviously, they enthusiastically agree and ask for Chinese Checkers.
- I Need to Go Iron My Dog: Luke and Lorelai.
Luke: I have an errand at the pharmacy.
Lorelai: (20 seconds later) I have to get something at Doose's.
- Like Father, Like Son: Sookie observes that Lorelai is the kind of boss Emily is when being frozen out of her daughter's life.
- Metaphorgotten: Sookie claims business is going through the roof, but not the restaurant's roof, that's solid as rock.
- Never My Fault: Rory seems to think it's Lorelai's fault that she feels bad about having an affair with a married man.
- Product Placement: Cider Mill.
- Purple Is the New Black: Luke thinks Rory looks a bit pale, and Lorelai comments that pale is the new tan.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lindsay's mother gives Rory one.
- Running Gag: Michel grudgingly doing stuff with the Krumholtz kids. They even show up at the parade.
- Secret Relationship: Lindsay discovers Dean's affair when she finds Rory's "Dear John" Letter to him.
- Service Sector Stereotypes: Unless Rory mispronounced "panna" as "fromaggio", that waiter was putting her in her place by giving her cheese when she asked for cream.
- Shout-Out:
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Rory refuses to be a stereotypical American tourist in Europe, so when the waiter gets her order wrong she doesn't say anything, she just eats it.
- Sure, Let's Go with That: Sookie and Lorelai witness the fight between Lindsay and Dean after she finds the letter from Rory. Lorelai knows why they're fighting, but Sookie guesses it's due to getting married young, and Lorelai is quick to agree.
- Talk About the Weather: Emily demands that Rory speak to her mother on the phone from Italy, which Rory is rather reluctant to do. So Lorelai asks about the weather, and Rory gives her the non-answer of "it's hot in the day, cooler at night". Lorelai replies that that's similar to what they have in Connecticut.
- Workaholic: Sookie calls Lorelai on her doing everyone else's job, like changing sheets (the maid's job) and brushing the horses (stable boy's job). She even rearranged Sookie's fridge.
