The show returns just in time for Luke to respond to Lorelai’s marriage proposal, and for Rory, who has dropped out of Yale, to find out whether she faces jail time for joyriding on someone else’s boat. Devoted as I am to fast-talking Lauren Graham, whose Lorelai had a child instead of going to college and invented mothering from scratch, and worried as I am about Alexis Bledel, whose Rory deserves better than the Whiffenpoofs, and intrigued as I am by Stars Hollow, a community almost as well read as Cicely, Alaska—Dylan Thomas is mentioned tonight—be warned that these 60 minutes are angry and sad. When Rory moves in with her grandparents, Lorelai thinks they will use her as a do-over, making a young woman more to their specifications, “a new and improved Lorelai.” If only she knew it is impossible to improve on Lorelai.

Tuesdays, starting September 13
8 p.m.; The WB

Related:

• Archive: “Television”
• Articles by John Leonard
• Table of Contents: September 19, 2005 issue of New York | Subscribe!