#because micromanaging her 18yo daughter's love life is super weird

[sarabethsilver]

The real moral of Face-Off (the hockey game episode) is that Lorelai Gilmore has zero boundaries and used this benign situation as an opportunity to manipulate her daughter's love life. My unsolicited dissertation follows:

What the episode SHOULD be about: two teenagers have different expectations for their relationship, leading to a minor misunderstanding that could be easily solved with one conversation.

What we got instead: Lorelai playing all sides of this totally normal teen conflict until it blew up into a catastrophe that would come to define Jess and Rory's entire relationship.

The episode starts with Rory waiting around for Jess to call, because apparently "call you later" meant he was supposed to call by 9:00pm that night. Lorelai initially teases Rory about it - a quip about the Bay of Pigs, implying that BOTH Jess and Rory are bad at planning ahead. Fair! The next morning, Lorelai asks why Rory didn't just call Jess herself - great question! Rory makes a weird excuse, then shifts to comparing Jess to Dean. After telling Rory not to compare them, Lorelai goes on to compare them by calling Dean the perfect first boyfriend who spoiled Rory by calling so much. It's a fascinating distortion of the events, which was that Dean called so much that Rory felt completely suffocated. She actually hated that, remember?!

Then Lorelai starts setting imaginary rules. Jess is supposed to (1) immediately sense that Rory is upset, (2) automatically know WHY Rory is upset, and (3) apologize the SECOND she walks into the diner. Jess doesn't do that, because he's not clairvoyant and he's literally in the middle of working a shift, so Rory is apparently justified in storming out of there without a word. Lorelai then sneaks in a side convo with Jess (another thing Rory hates, by the way!). Mocking Jess for not calling and getting annoyed when he doesn't stick around to hear her lengthy diatribe about how much he sucks.

Rory sits around waiting for Jess to call, which is even stranger because they had no plans that day. And she also knows how to use a phone, so theoretically she could call herself. But Lorelai sets MORE imaginary rules. Rory is home at 6:00pm on a Saturday - something that seems totally normal for a homebody like her - but Lorelai catastrophizes it. It's SHOCKING that Rory is home, she should go out immediately! How dare Jess leave her unescorted on a Saturday evening! This, of course, gives Lorelai the opportunity to give Jess her second sarcastic lecture of the day. Because calling at 5:30pm that day would have been fine, but showing up at the house two hours later is an unforgivable crime (who is making these rules?!).

Jess then waits for Rory at the hockey game, completely unbothered by the fact she went out without him (because he actually allows her independence) and not remotely blaming her for the angry silent treatment she gave him earlier. Instead, he's trying to make amends with concert tickets - which seems like a pretty nice gesture! It's interesting that the episode distorts that into something bad. Rory keeps it a secret like they've done something wrong, and the episode ends with her all sad. While Jess is presumably thinking he's fixed the problem. Because that's a reasonable conclusion.

So in the span of 24 hours, Lorelai took this tiny misunderstanding and blamed Rory, used Dean as the standard for 'perfect' behavior, set a bunch of imaginary rules for Jess to 'break,' then switched to blaming Jess for the entire thing. It's a masterclass in manipulation. Emily Gilmore couldn't have done it any better!

I look forward to @saltygilmores take on this later! Maybe we can scream into the void together.