Gilmore Girls displayed some clever trickery in the season's chronology, jumping ahead six weeks from the last episode. Rory is on her way back to Yale and Lorelai has now been dating Chris for over a month. The Lorelai/Chris relationship caught me a little off-guard, considering the end of last week's episode, in which Lorelai seemed poised to nip that newly flowering relationship in the bud.
As I've stated repeatedly, departed creator Amy Sherman-Palladino wrote Gilmore Girls into somewhat of a corner, leaving the new writers a number of difficult, inherited story lines. The Lorelai/Luke story may have been the toughest and I applaud the writers this season for not giving that relationship a quick fix, which is what a large percentage of the fan base badly wanted. I've never gotten a real good read on the Chris character and maybe that's because he seems to act differently in every situation he pops up in. When he used to make rare, intermittent appearances during previous seasons, he was always borderline unlikable, at least to me. No matter. Gilmore Girls is pursuing new and interesting story avenues this season and, regardless of my gut reaction to them, I applaud the show for its ability to stay fresh after seven years. -Oscar Dahl