Season 7, episode 17
Gilmore Girls Only
Mia, the owner of the Independence Inn, is getting married in North Carolina. Rory can't go because she has to go to job interviews. Logan is avoiding his father. Zach invites Luke to dinner at his and Lane's. Richard only wants to think about golf, not tax forms.
Rory changes her mind about going to Mia's wedding. Emily overhears and demands to come along on the roadtrip to go to a spa. Zach and Lane want Luke to be godfather to their twins. Mia invites Emily to the wedding.
Lane gives birth.
Tropes
- Artistic License – Geography: Averted with the I-85, which goes from Virginia through North Carolina to Georgia.
- Call-Back:
- In season 6, Sookie asked Rory and Lorelai to be godmothers to her two kids. This episode, Lane and Zach ask Luke to be godfather to their two sons.
- When Sookie got married, she extended a last-minute invitarion to Emily and Richard, which they felt obligated to accept. Now Mia is getting married, and when she learns on the night before the wedding that Emily is travelling with Rory and Lorelai, she extends the most last-minute invitation you possibly can, and Emily feels obligated to accept.
- Circumcision Angst: Zach has this on behalf of his unborn sons.
- Continuity Nod: Mia tells Lorelai about the time in season one when Emily visited the inn and asked for baby pictures of Rory.
- Continuity Snarl: At the wedding reception, Lorelai makes it sound like she ran away while still pregnant, although it was established several seasons ago that she lived at home for at least a year after the birth.
- Disappeared Dad: Zach's father left when he was little.
- Innocently Insensitive: Subverted with Lorelai and Rory discussing Mia-related memories in front of Emily. They are aware of being insensitive, but at the same time they are headed to Mia's wedding. Rory thinks they should dial it back.
- Wedding guests who point out that Mia was a second mother to Lorelai play this straight.
- Literal-Minded:
- Emily does not appreciate being accused of hovering when her feet are firmly on the ground.
- Zach argues that the pie he bought at Luke's is technically homemade since Luke lives at his diner.
- Mirror Character:
- This episode highlights how different Emily and Mia are as mother-figures for Lorelai.
- Mia has nothing but good things to tell her husband about her and Rory. Emily famously has nothing but bad things to say.
- Mia and Lorelai share memories of Rory's early childhood that Emily missed out on.
- Emily even comments on how "dry" Mia keeps her house. Whenever Lorelai and Rory visit Emily, she serves them drinks.
- Luke gets appointed a father-figure to not only Lane's kids, but unofficially to Lane's husband, who keeps freaking out. Meanwhile, people at Mia's wedding won't stop talking about how Mia is practically a mother to Lorelai.
- This episode highlights how different Emily and Mia are as mother-figures for Lorelai.
- Motor Mouth: Zach.
- Neologism: Lorelai's first attempt at making a skirt was repurposed into a skerf, which apparently goes on your head.
- Passive Aggressive Combat: When she agrees to talk to Logan while at the wedding, Rory brings cake outside, but only so she can eat it in front of him.
- Plot Parallel: It's all about parenthood: Mia is Lorelai's surrogate mother and practically Rory's grandmother, while parents-to-be Lane and Zach ask Luke to be their kids' godfather – and Zach asks him for fatherhood advice.
- Product Placement:
- Lorelai thinks Waffle Ranch is a good thing about North Carolina.
- Winky's is a fine eatery just off the I-85, Lorelai explains to her mother when they stop to eat.
- Rory gets Emily a Little Debbie.
- Shout-Out:
- Rory doesn't want to dress like Lois Lane or Brenda Starr for her job interview.
- Logan asks if Rory wants a pound of flesh.
- Lorelai gives Emily tax form lessons, but it's no Tuesdays with Morrie.
- Rory thinks Lorelai's poem for Mia is too Yeats.
- Lorelai asks if Emily considers herself Willie Nelson.
- Lorelai thinks they should sing Motown into their hairbrushes.
- Zach's latest tune would be like Neil Young reborn if he had died. It also has elements of Led Zeppelin.
- Emily likes The Pursuit of Happyness with Will Smith.
- Luke thinks he might be into Wolfmother.
- Stealth Insult:
- Emily has a few for Mia.
- Played straight by Lorelai to the guy who chats her up at the wedding, but in fairness he does it to her too, just less subtly.Guy: (complaining about the cold) ...I think it's a matter of not having the extra fat layer you women have.
Lorelai: Oh, but if you did you couldn't wear such an amazing sweater! - Emily subverts it as well. When shown a picture of Lane's newborns, she graciously says that she's sure the camera distorts their faces, not wanting to outright call them ugly.
- Take That!: Emily says she would have found it difficult to be married to a man named Howard, since you could never have a legendary King Howard Lionheart.
- Too Much Information:
- Lane and Zach talk a lot about things that can induce labor. Getting off bedrest, a glass of wine, sex...
- Zach won't shut up about the stuff he's nervous about when it comes to impending fatherhood.
- Vague Age: Inverted, as for the first time Lorelai says explicitly that she was seventeen when she ran away and got a job at the inn.
