Season 8, episode 1
Winter
Rory flies in from London to visit Lorelai, who thinks she looks obnoxiously good for just getting off a plane. Kirk announces his new business Ooober.
Lorelai can't sleep because she's afraid of a recurring dream of Cronenberg-inspired grossness. Rory tap-dances to relieve stress. Lorelai feels old because she wanted to go on a cruise.
Taylor wants the town to have an open sewer system. Luke gives people different passwords to his wi-fi every time someone ask.
Emily, now widowed, has finally found a maid she likes in Berta, who brought her entire family. In a flashback to Richard's funeral, we see that Lorelai talked to Jason and that Luke deals with nervousness by fixing things. Lorelai also "drank her weight in single malt scotch" after not being able to eat for several days, and she told some embarrassing stories about her father.
Lorelai and Emily make up and Emily invites Kirk to dinner after his Ooober car breaks down. Luke comes by to pick them up and is prevented from fixing something by Lorelai.
Lorelai and Luke go to a fertility clinic after Emily accused her of not caring whether Luke wanted kids. Luke doesn't quite understand the concept of in-vitro fertilization. Rory talks to nutty Brit Naomi Shropshire about writing her biography.
Luke signs Taylor's petition to have a sewer system with perpetually unclogged toilets. Rory and Paris go to Lane's to find the Lucky Dress, just as Lane's band is there to practice.
Lorelai finds her mother throwing out all her stuff and convinces her to go to a psychologist instead. Lorelai and Luke decide not to use a surrogate as Paul Anka is all the child they need.
Tropes:
- Ask a Stupid Question...: Paris replies to an unheard question on the phone that she has no return policy. She runs a fertility clinic, so her "product" is babies.
- As You Know: Lorelai retells her dream to Luke, for the viewer's benefit.
- Babies Make Everything Better: Michel's husband suddenly wants kids after five years of marriage.
- Big Eater: Emily refuses to believe that Lorelai stopped eating while grieving for her father.
- Call-Back:
- A plot point in late season seven was about Lorelai's car singing on the last verse until it got an engine transplant. Now, about eight years later, it is in the same kind of trouble.
- While trying to put off having to tell a story about her father, Lorelai uses the "there's a draft" excuse from season four to get a guy to switch places with her, despite the whole thing taking place outside.
- Emily suggests Lorelai tell a story about her father giving her a doll, but Lorelai once said Richard never gave her a Barbie, probably meaning he never gave her a doll at all.
- The situation with Paul's forgettability is reminiscent of how Lorelai had trouble remembering Debbie and other Stars Hollow moms after Rory transfers to Chilton
- The Cameo: Jason "Digger" Styles shows up for a chat with Lorelai, never to be seen again.
- Captain Obvious:
- When Paris comments that a small town boy like Luke gets his milk from a cow, Luke points out that everyone gets their milk from a cow.
- Lorelai points out that Emily's Marie Kondo project won't work because nothing will bring her joy now that she's in mourning.
- Character Shilling: Luke can't get over how incredibly awesomely masterfully written Rory's New Yorker piece was.
- Child Hater: Michel, and formerly his husband Frederick.
- Cloud Cuckoolander: Naomi Shropshire steals restaurant food from waiters and walks around in London like she has shoes on when she doesn't.
- Comically Missing the Point: Michel figures the whole point of boarding schools is that you don't have to live in a good school district.
- Continuity Nod:
- Rory talks fast for the first time in a while, since she speaks at a normal pace in London and New York. She gets winded.
- At Richard's funeral, Lorelai and Jason call each other "Umlauts" and "Digger".
- Lorelai mentions that she and Luke haven't discussed having kids since the Twickham house. Luke says that's wrong because five or six years ago he said of a little league right-fielder "that's the kid".
- Lorelai asks Luke if he wants to raise a kid and see it graduate. He points out that he went to Rory's graduation.
- It was practically a plot point in a season five episode that Paris is freaked out by sick people. She is not using her medical degree to deal with sick people.
- Paris mentions her nanny Soledad.
- Continuity Snarl: There was a bit of discussion in previous seasons about the Gilmore mausoleum, but Richard's grave is in a regular graveyard.
- Disproportionate Retribution: Kirk punishes four-star Yelp reviews with delayed future service.
- Explain, Explain... Oh, Crap!: Lorelai agrees to meet Emily's new therapist while Luke is there, and he thinks she's insane for agreeing to go to therapy with her mother. Lorelai tries to explain that wasn't agreeing to go to therapy with her mother, and suddenly realizes that's exactly what she agreed to.
- Feeling Their Age: Lorelai when she found herself thinking it would be nice to go on a cruise.
- Flashback: We experience Richard's funeral this way.
- Foreshadowing: Rory ghost writing someone else's memoir foreshadows events in episode three and four.
- Green-Eyed Monster: Averted by Logan, who says he wouldn't leave another girl's stuff around for Rory to find.
- Hypocritical Humor:
- Lorelai accuses Luke of body shaming her for her Big Eater tendencies, practically foreshadowing a lot of the humor in the rest of this season.
- Rory relates how she once lunged at Gail Collins, which Gail misread as someone she didn't know lunging at her.
- In Memoriam: Of Edward Hermann.
- Ironic Echo: When Kirk tells Lorelai about his Ooober service, she asks him to stop making that noise. When she asks how the Ooober service is going after he has received a cease-and-desist from Uber's lawyers, he asks her to stop making that noise.
- Irony: Lorelai can't remember Paul's name despite her dog being named Paul Anka. Paul remarks that Anka is similar to his own last name. Lorelai successfully hides that she still can't remember his last name.
- Lost in Translation: Berta and her family seem to be speaking some dialect of Spanish. Emily's pool boy denies it, but she has to get someone to translate his Spanish so she really isn't sure what anyone is saying.
- Mind Screw: Emily is convinced that Lorelai's embarrassing toast to Richard's memory was premeditated, even though even Emily only thought to ask people to tell an anecdote about Richard immediately before she asked.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Downplayed. Lorelai is briefly worried that Luke and Taylor high-five each other. Luke assures her she doesn't want to know.
- Product Placement: Lorelai accuses Rory of keeping herself pretty on transatlantic flights with Goop.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Richard is dead because his actor is.
- Running Gag:
- Rory's boyfriend being so forgettable she barely remembers his name is Paul, same as her dog.
- Subverted from the original series, in Emily keeping a maid who speaks a language she can't understand and brings her whole family to live with her.
- Lorelai, on the other hand, has a similar problem keeping chefs as Emily used to have keeping a maid.
- Luke giving out fake wi-fi passwords to his customers.
- Petal running loose.
- Gypsy saying something derogatory about Lorelai's car.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Luke needs to read books explaining advanced philosophy to decipher the letters April sends him.
- Shout-Out:
- Lorelai claims Rory lets her imaginary comfort dog watch Zoolander 2 on its watch.
- Rory wonders how Superman is going to change after Taylor removed all the telephone boxes.
- Lane finds telling Zach looks like a young Leonard Cohen tiring.
- Lorelai wonders if guessing how many nights Rory spent in her Brooklyn apartment is like The Price is Right.
- Rory isn't renewing the lease on her apartment, so it's Bye Bye Brooklyn.
- Paul is as forgettable to Lorelai as every Marvel movie ever.
- True to form, as soon as Lorelai got a DVR she crammed it with Lifetime movie classics such as Restless Virgin, Deadly Honeymoon, Killers Crush, Mini's First Time (with Alec Baldwin before he got into yoga), Accidental Obsession, Murder in a College Town, Crimes of the Mind, Fatal Acquittal, Not With My Daughter, Baby Sellers, Unfinished Betrayal, The Girl He Met Online, The Boy He Met Online, Deadly Vows, Lying Eyes, Lies He Told, and My Nanny's Secret.
- Lorelai's recurring dream is the steam room scene in Eastern Promises, except the blood is… not blood.
- Michel asserts that Johnny Depp's famous tattoo change from "Winona forever" to "Wino forever" was cleverer than "Kogi".
- Gypsy is waiting for a car part from a Delorean from 1983 for Lorelai's car.
- Kirk's Ooober service comes with any Carpenters song of your choice, sung by himself. He sings Top Of The World.
- Lorelai doesn't think Dean Martin would go on without Jerry Lewis. Rory thinks Jerry would go on without Dean.
- Lorelai points out, in her usual blunt way, that the painting of Richard was taken up to eleven.Lorelai: You spinal tapped it!
- Lorelai claims the painting of Richard is so big, Peter Jackson could hang it at the Argonath. That's the river pass with the humongous statues in The Fellowship of the Ring.
- They play Tom Waits at Richard's funeral.
- Lorelai calls Rory Jack Kerouac.
- Emily compares Rory's living situation to Inside Llewyn Davis.
- Luke bought Isaac Newton's Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica to help him understand April's letters.
- Lorelai claims Rory learned all her language skills via The Breakfast Club.
- Paris comments on one of her employees studying Buffy the Vampire Slayer's influence on feminism.
- Paris bets Lorelai is going to "Gone Girl" Luke.
- Paris impregnated a surrogate for Neil Patrick Harris.
- She codenames him "Doogie Howser" to preserve Neil's anonymity.
- She implies in a phone call that she provides surrogates for Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie.
- Rory claims to be no John McPhee.
- Paris wants to clean windows with Doyle's Def Leppard t-shirt.
- And does not suspect him of having an affair with the nanny since she looks like Benicio del Toro.
- Hep Alien play I'm the Man by Joe Jackson.
- Emily read Marie Kondo's "The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up" and decided to get rid of all her stuff.
- Emily ended up wearing Lorelai's old jeans with a Billy Squier patch on the butt.
- Lorelai learned from The Sopranos to send her mother to therapy.
- Woody Allen is totally normal after therapy according to Lorelai.
- The town troubadour sings "Winter Valley".
- Stage Mom: Discussed. Paris asks prospective parents if they'll be okay with it if their IVF children are not photogenic and have zero acting talent.
- Take That!:
- Lorelai finds Marvel movies forgettable.
- Emily doesn't want to die in Vermont because it sucks as a vacation spot.
- The Unhug: Luke gives Emily one at the funeral, and one when he sees her again months later at Friday night dinner.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: It was thoroughly established in the first seven seasons that Rory was born in October 1984, and it says on Richard's tombstone that he died in the fall of 2015, yet four months after the funeral Emily insists Rory is 32.
