Season 6, episode 16
Bridesmaids Revisisted
Paris is still upset and passive-aggressive to the new editor, Rory. Rory is on a panel with other young journalists, attended by Lorelai and Christopher, who complains about being trapped at home with a three-year-old, prompting Lorelai to offer to babysit. What's left of Hep Alien plays at a Bat Mitzvah, and Zach wants to reunite them. Honor is getting married, but her bridesmaids are too drunk to help dress her, so Rory has to. Gigi turns out to be a spoilt brat. Instead of simply getting back with Lane, Zach asks her to marry him. Rory and Paris make up.
Tropes
- Accidental Adultery: Rory is mad that Logan slept with other women while they were on a break, but he thought they were broken up. She has a point that they didn't officially break up.
- Big Eater: Paris ordered food for ten to comfort eat after she broke up with Doyle.
- Blatant Lies:
- Kirk claims he's totally fine on his juice fast. No problem at all.
- Lorelai tells Rory that if she doesn't do well on the debate, her parents will stop loving her.
- Calvin Ball: Lorelai wants to use leftover pieces from old Board Games such as Uno, Checkers, Battleship, and Candy Land to create Candy Ship Battle Land. She even has its subtitle pinned: "War has never tasted so good".
- Continuity Nod:
- Lorelai mentions that Rory played a lot of Battleship when she was young, something Rory mentioned to her game theory professor.
- Paris has a crafts table at her new place too.
- Curse Cut Short: How Hep Alien does the Sound-Effect Bleep: they replace the line "this my shit" in "Hollaback Girl" with "this my shh".
- Freudian Excuse Is No Excuse: Lorelai doesn't think Gigi's mom leaving her is any reason for her to act like a spoilt brat.
- Hollywood Board Games:
- April and Lane have built a friendly rapport despite April's Brutal Honesty since both frequent Luke's diner. April has Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, so it makes sense she'd kick everyone's butt at Scrabble, even when she plays against other smart people who are older than her, such as Lane. On the other hand, April is still a kid, so she doesn't quite grasp the necessary Economy concepts to play Monopoly well.
- Rory and Lorelai used to play Battleship a lot when the former was younger. Their Wacky Parent, Serious Child dynamic also shines there — Lorelai sees nothing wrong with cheating, while Rory gets very upset when she realizes what her mother is doing. Furthermore, that Lorelai needs to bend the rules to beat her daughter highlights said daughter's intelligence and cunning. Both are The Ace, but Rory's maturity gives her an edge — that, and the fact Rory is competitive as hell. When she recounts this to Lane, she answers that April reads the game's manual out loud before starting a game, making it impossible to cheat. Later in the episode, Lorelai gets the idea to create a wacky, hybrid board game, which also goes to show how she's more childish than her own daughter.
- Hypocritical Humor:
- Honor gets people to do stuff for her on her wedding day by telling them it's bad luck to refuse, but when the wedding planner tells her not to be seen in her dress by the groom before the ceremony she tells her she doesn't believe in that stuff.
- GG turns on a show that sounds like Full House. Lorelai proceeds to discuss the actors and, when told to shush, informs the girl that she doesn't like it when people talk to her while she watches tv either.
- Innocently Insensitive: Subverted. While it can be hard to tell with Honor, her bridesmaids claim they forgot who Rory is after they start blabbing about how all of them have slept with Logan. Zigzagged with Logan, who isn't surprised that they told her, but still let her walk into a room full of them.
- Insistent Terminology:
- Honor calls her a lousy drunk, but Walker is confident that she is a terrific drunk.
- Kirk doesn't cheat on his juice fast, he just expanded his definition of juice to include leftovers on other people's plates.
- Isn't It Ironic?: Quentin Walsh from Princeton laughs at his own joke about not naming the journalists who gave up their sources to the government.
- Karma: Christopher can't believe anyone would leave their kid and leave the other parent to raise it.
- Literal-Minded: When Lorelai says Gigi has apparently never heard the word "no" in her life, Chris scoffs that she has heard the word "no".
- Meaningful Name: Subverted with Honor. Her bridesmaids mock her for not having any honor, but they're referring to her virginity, not her sneakiness in saying hurtful things.
- Metaphorgotten: Played with. Zach tells Lane he tried to write a song about his feelings, but decided to just say it instead. Then he starts to recite what sounds like lyrics.Zach: I wake up and I don't feel good. I go to work and I don't feel good. I come home and I don't feel good. I go to bed and I don't feel good. Then I wake up and…
Babette: We get it, you don't feel good! - Never My Fault: It is clear to Christopher that everyone else is wrong about child rearing and that GG is just a normal three-year-old.
- Plot Parallel:
- Rory dumps Logan just as Paris dumps Doyle.
- On a smaller scale, when Rory learns about Logan cheating on her is the same time as Kirk starts cheating on his juice fast.
- Product Placement:
- Zach and Brian rebond over memories of Soulcalibur III.
- Kirk thinks he can smell that Lorelai has eaten a Three Musketeers because he's on a juice fast.
- Pun:
- Lorelai says to Rory she wiped the floor with that Princeton guy. Rory comments that the floor was looking a little dirty.
- Lorelai claims Gigi screams in response to the word "no", including when she tried to discuss Japanese noh theatre with her.
- Really Gets Around: Walker swears she would sleep with anyone, so Rory shouldn't take it personally that she slept with Logan fairly recently.Walker: I have no standards. Ask anyone.
The other bridesmaids:' *nod in agreement* - Shout-Out:
- The title is a pun on Brideshead Revisited.
- Lorelai thinks Ming-Na photographs just as Asian as Lane.
- Rory doesn't want to publish a paper the size of a David Foster Wallace novel.
- Paris wanted to see Saw II with Doyle early in the morning.
- Lorelai says Rory is Anthony Michael Hall in The Breakfast Club smart.
- Lorelai claims to like Teletubbies.
- What's left of Hep Alien after Lane and Zach left plays Gwen Stefani's Hollaback Girl at a bat mitzvah.
- Brian and Gil want to add Cher's Turn Back Time to their set-list.
- Gil doesn't want anything to go Brokeback Mountain as he is happy with his wife.
- Lorelai guesses that Gigi put on Schindler's List, but it's Full House.
- Lorelai thinks Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen weighed more on Full House than they do today.
- Rory gets warned about a recurring wedding guest who pretends to be gay and quotes the The Bhagavad Gita.
- Walker is over the whole Mia Farrow and Woody Allen thing.
- Gigi does her impression of Donald Sutherland in Invasion of the Body Snatchers.
- Chris calls Lorelai Mary Poppins.
- A waitress makes the mistake of trying to take Rory's used napkins. Rory gets mad and the waitress's reply of "ugh, whatever" makes Rory ask if Dorothy Parker has heard of her.
- Spoiled Brat: Gigi is a horribly behaved child.
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Lane complains that she photographs "so Asian".
