Good Girls

I don't know how tonight's episode will be but it's worth noting that last week's episode of Gilmore Girls, written and directed by series mastermind Amy Sherman-Palladino, was the best of the season so far. Like several other of my TV favorites *cough*Lost&DesperateHousewives*cough*, Gilmore has been having a rather erratic season. But episodes like last week's prove the show is still far from overused jump-the-shark territory.

The great divide that opened up between Rory and Lorelai was always more interesting in theory than execution so it was a relief to finally see them reconcile, but the bonus was that this was an almost perfect episode start to finish. There were actually several scenes, most notably Luke and Lorelai's dinner table argument and Emily and Lorelai's jet-set discussion, that rank with the series' best. And the episode was even entirely free of loathsome Logan!

I have a few quibbles (I'm not sure what to make of the idea of Luke's daughter, but I immediately disliked the actress playing her, and Rory's sudden determination after an editor gives her a compliment only made her look even more foolish than she did by dropping out of Yale—is she really that influenced by what other people think?) but overall I thought it was one of the best hours of broadcast TV so far this season.

Given the state of the current season you could read that as faint praise, but in this case it isn't.