After Kirk spills the beans that her daughter is dating Luke, Emily demands that Lorelai bring him to dinner so that they can get reacquainted; although Lorelai tries to warn him away, Luke goes anyway and is subjected to an evening of oblique insults from a passive-aggressive Emily; after Zach announces that he’s ready to start going out with Lane, they spend a cozy first date at home after banishing Brian to Lane’s bedroom; having not learned his lesson with Emily, Luke agrees to accept Richard’s invitation to go golfing, and both men turn a deaf ear to Lorelai’s pleas to cancel; Rory gets her story on the “”Life and Death Brigade”” by being blindfolded and whisked away by Logan and his friends to observe the elaborately staged weekend in the woods, and finally, after Logan encourages her to take a risk, to participate in the event’s breathtaking finale.

Danny is jealous when Glenn’s article gets picked up by the New York Times; Rory discovers that Logan, the son of a newspaper magnate, is also on the staff of the paper; Paris wages a fierce campaign to get the religion beat, and takes an ecumenical approach to alienating the local clergy; desperate for a story idea for her features assignment after several concepts fail to pan out, Rory uncovers a secret Yale society which counts Logan as a member, and enlists his cooperation in getting a story on the group; Sookie becomes upset when the Inn’s accountant suggests dropping lunch temporarily to save money and Norman Mailer stakes out a table in the dining room to work and give interviews, and refuses to order anything from the menu except iced tea; Lorelai and Rory show up for Friday night dinner, and when they discover that neither Emily nor Richard are home, decide to order pizza and eat on the living room floor; Christopher calls Lorelai in a panic when Sherry suddenly decides to mo

The demands of the electorate are beginning to get to Jackson; Lorelai and Rory delicately nudge Richard and Emily closer together; Lorelai decides that a double date with Rory and Dean is the way to smooth over the bumps in her relationship with Dean, but the evening goes awry when Luke can’t get over feeling that Dean isn’t good enough for Rory; Richard takes up a new hobby, and Emily buys a panic room; failing to get a response from Zack about the declaration of her feelings, Lane rescinds them, which finally gets Zack talking; Lorelai introduces Luke to “”Pippi Longstocking”” as Kirk gets much better acquainted with Lulu during movie night at the Black & White & Read Bookstore.

Lorelai confesses that part of the charm of breakfast by Luke is breakfast at Luke’s; Rory is less than thrilled to discover that the common room in her suite has been overtaken by a huge antique printing press Paris inherited from Asher; Lorelai and Sookie head up Jackson’s campaign committee when he decides to run against Taylor for town selectman to put an end to the grocer’s petty tyranny over Stars Hollow, but Lorelai has second thoughts when she sees how Jackson’s projected landslide victory is affecting Taylor; Rory and Dean have difficulty finding a comfortable place to be alone, compounded by Dean’s having to share a car with Lindsay and his reluctance to make his relationship with Rory public; Lane confesses her true feelings to Zack; after all the votes have been counted, Jackson isn’t quite certain he wants the job, and Taylor vows not to go away quietly.

Luke and Lorelai go on their official first date at a restaurant owned by old friends of Luke’s parents. Luke reminds Lorelai of how they met, shows her a horoscope she gave him for good luck that he’s kept in his wallet, and assures her that he intends to go the distance with her. Lorelai spends the night at Luke’s place; in the morning, she goes down to the diner to get coffee, and the breakfast crowd sees her wearing only Luke’s shirt. There’s suprisingly little gossip about Luke and Lorelai until the next town meeting, where Taylor uses charts to show how disasterous a breakup between them would be for Stars Hollow. Meanwhile: Rory meets a rich Yale student named Logan and chews him out for being rude to her friend Marty; Paris holds a wake for Asher that all the guests assume is a keg party with a weird theme; and Emily freaks out when she discovers that Richard has a social life she doesn’t know about, so she invades Rory’s dorm during the wake.

T.J. is milking his injuries for all he’s worth, but Luke decides that it’s time to go home after seven weeks on the Ren Faire circuit; Rory calls to apologize and to ask her mother to deliver a letter to Dean; Sookie accurately diagnoses Lorelai with a bad case of management burnout, and the two friends decide to decompress with a girls-day-out; Emily and Rory come home exhausted from fending off the attentions of randy European men; Michel is wildly unenthusiastic when he’s pressed into babysitting for guests whose children take an inexplicable shine to him; after Lindsay finds Rory’s letter, she throws Dean and all his possessions out of the house, and her mother has an angry confrontation with Lorelai in the town square; Lane realizes that she’s falling for Zack; Rory is saddened when Dean expresses regret for the shift in their relationship and the harm it caused to his wife and their families.

Things are still testy between Lorelai and Rory, and Rory’s refusal to discuss the Dean situation causes Lorelai anguish; Emily announces that she and Richard have separated; Sookie is ecstatic when Kirk tells her that Luke and Lorelai kissed; Rory’s attempt to meet Dean and discuss what happened leads to a lot of action, but no talk; Dean provokes an argument with Lindsay after leaving Rory’s house; Emily decides to go to Europe and invites Rory to accompany her; Lorelai and Luke are very tentative with each other the day after until they are able to reassure each other that they’re on the right path; Luke heads off to Maine for a week to help Liz and T.J. with their Ren Faire booth; Rory decides that she needs a break from both Dean and her mother, and decides to take her grandmother up on her invitation to go to Europe.

Momentous changes are in the air as: the Dragonfly Inn approaches opening day by having a shakedown weekend; Rory and Dean take a major step forward in their relationship, to Lorelai’s dismay; Emily and Richard admit that they’re separated; Kirk decides to let Lulu in on the deep, dark secret of his night terrors; Jason appears at the Inn to plead his case with Lorelai, to no avail; Luke answers Lorelai’s question about the status of their relationship when he makes it passionately clear to Lorelai that they’re dating, to which she enthusiastically agrees.

As Stars Hollow prepares for the Renaissance-themed wedding of Liz and T.J., Kirk feels slighted when Miss Patty chooses someone else as the maypole dance captain; Lorelai discovers an equine visitor in the Dragonfly Inn’s lobby; Rory’s suite mates depart for summer vacation; Lorelai urges Mrs. Kim to call Lane; Lorelai unsuccessfully attempts to get Emily to admit to the separation during Friday night dinner; T.J. revels in the wonders of tights, but discovers their main drawback during the ceremony; Mrs. Kim gets some good advice from Lorelai after initially fleeing in horror at the sight of Zach and Brian and Lane’s shabby apartment, and eventually returns for tea armed with a game plan; Rory calls Dean to rescue her from the disastrous date Emily has arranged for her with the son of a friend; Luke and Lorelai share significant glances during a slow dance at the wedding, which prompts Luke to ask Lorelai out on a date; Jess expresses his gratitude to Luke before saying goodbye; Ro

Jackson’s devotion to his wife and her famous zucchini soup set the stage for the perfect antidote to the stress surrounding the opening of the Inn; Luke unwittingly comes to the rescue when Sookie tries to set Lorelai up with the poultry supplier; Liz returns to Stars Hollow to announce that she’s getting married in the town square in a week; Paris and Asher decide to travel to England together during the summer; T.J. has a tumultuous bachelor party; at Luke’s request, Jess changes his mind about attending his mother’s wedding and returns to Stars Hollow for the festivities; Rory tries to hide her discomfort when Lorelai tells her about overhearing a fight between Dean and Lindsay; a self-help tape helps Luke clarify his thinking, and a talk with Jess gets him started on the path to having the relationship he’s been looking for all along.

Luke finalizes his divorce; the band’s latest gig is a big hit, but leaves Lane feeling lonely; as the Dragonfly Inn nears its opening date, Michel gives travel agents the grand tour and Sookie is back in the kitchen, if not on her feet; Doyle clues Rory in on Asher’s reputation as a serial student dater; Lorelai and Richard have it out over his treatment of Jason; Lane is upset to discover that her mother has taken in a Korean exchange student who could be her double, and confronts the girl when she sees her wearing her old clothes; when Jason decides to sue Richard after discovering his treachery, Lorelai breaks up with him; afraid that Richard’s actions will put a rift in their relationship with Lorelai and Rory, Emily asks her husband to reconsider, but he brushes her off; Asher is displeased when Rory questions whether the “”A”” he gave her for a paper she thought she did poorly on has any connection to her friendship with Paris; after Richard and Emily act very strangely during Fri

Luke makes a bigger fuss than Davey when Sookie and Jackson bring their son into the diner; all of Stars Hollow is amused when Taylor returns from his Caribbean cruise with a drastic change in his appearance; Richard and Emily are stunned when Floyd informs them that Lorelai and Jason have been dating for months; Luke comes to the rescue when Kirk’s failure to make a map of the Easter eggs he hid in the town square gets Taylor’s nose out of joint; Richard and Jason discover that Floyd’s peacemaking overtures are a disguise for his plan to ruin Richard financially by suing them for stealing his clients; while shopping with Lane in Doose’s, Rory has harsh words about Lindsay as she relates her quarrel with Dean over his plans to drop out of college to earn more money to buy a house, unaware that his wife is listening in the next aisle; Richard resolves his problems with Floyd at Jason’s expense; Dean and Rory agree to continue their friendship despite Lindsay’s demand that they stop spea

Rory, Paris, Janet and Glenn escape a Dickensianly cold winter in Connecticut and head to Florida, where they run into Madeline and Louise, who show them the spring break ropes; Jason gives Lorelai the key to his apartment as a symbol of his commitment to their relationship; Lorelai bails Luke out of jail after he’s arrested for beating up the car belonging to the man he suspects is having an affair with Nicole; Lorelai and Rory get the dubious honor of the first ride in Kirk’s latest venture, the Stars Hollow pedi-cab.

The rift between Emily and Richard widens when he goes on a golf date with clients instead of accompanying his wife to the funeral of her best friend; Doyle goes on a theft and plagiarism rant; Trix dies suddenly; Michel offers Lorelai a hug in consolation, which weirds them out so much that they agree not to share any more warm and fuzzy moments; stricken with grief and guilt, Richard is inconsolable; Emily calls it quits on arranging Trix’s funeral and drops everything in her daughter’s lap after finding a letter in which her mother-in-law pleads with her son on the eve of his wedding to Emily to marry Pennilyn instead; Luke and Nicole have all of Stars Hollow listening in and reading lips as they quarrel; worried about her parents and frantic over fulfilling Trix’s exacting requirements for her funeral, Lorelai has a meltdown while shopping for Trix’s funereal undies; after the service, cousin Marilyn (who bears an uncanny resemblance to Trix) regales family and friends with ta

Kirk branches out from dog sitting for Lulu into a new canine-centered career; Paris goes into germ-phobic overdrive when Rory gets a cold; Lane gets an apartment with Zach and Brian and faces a frigid reception from her aunt and mother, and an overly-eager, non-stop-talking cousin when she packs up her things and moves out; when they realize that their relationship is increasingly being conducted over email and the phone, Lorelai and Rory decide to play hooky and go window shopping in the mall, where they run into Emily in the middle of a shopping binge meltdown; Luke lends Lorelai the thirty thousand dollars she needs to finish construction on the Inn; after Emily confesses that the shopping binge and bickering with Richard stems from her anger at being ignored, neglected, and made to feel useless by her husband, Lorelai reassures her of how much she’s accomplished and urges her to talk to Richard, but Emily can’t seem to make the connection with her husband she so desperately desire

When Trix returns to town and berates Lorelai and Richard for being financial failures, Richard angrily sets his mother straight, to Emily’s delight; Lorelai and Sookie explore ways to ease their financial crunch and raise money to pay their construction crew, one of whom is now Dean; Janet and Paris go head-to-head over the constant presence of Janet’s boyfriend in the suite; Lorelai and Rory play an increasingly frustrating game of telephone tag; after Paris, Tanna, and Janet complain about close quarters in the suite, Lane moves out of the dorm and in with Lorelai, and gets her job back at Luke’s; Lorelai and Sookie have a heated discussion about sharing the responsibilities of opening their inn; Rory is distraught when one of her professors tells her to drop a class because she can’t handle her course load; Lane runs into her mother and receives a frosty reception; at the end of a very long, hard day, Lorelai and Rory still can’t manage to connect, and end up taking solace in the

Jess’s attempts to keep a low profile until Gypsy completes the repairs on his car are put to the test as he keeps bumping into Rory all over town; Taylor puts Kirk in charge of the annual Firelight Festival, and his managerial skills, or lack thereof, place a strain on the preparations; Lane follows Rory back to Stars Hollow and a place on the Gilmore couch for the weekend, but isn’t quite ready to face her mother; Emily is in a dither about filling a table at a benefit and enlists the help of Lorelai and Jason, whom she encourages to pretend that they’re a couple; Luke is less than impressed by Liz’s latest business venture and newly-arrived boyfriend, which prompts Jess to give his uncle an earful about minding his own business; after Lorelai and Liz finally meet, Lorelai gets a renewed perspective on Luke; Liz’s high school classmates descend upon her brother and reveal long-held crushes on him; Richard is suspicious when Jason’s father greets his son at the benefit and doesn’t inq

Luke has his hands full as family members return to Stars Hollow: Liz for her high school reunion, and Jess for his car; Lane busies herself at Yale by being the suite’s Helpful Hannah; Lorelai agrees to accompany Jason on an office furniture shopping trip on his morning off, but the press of international business calls keeps getting in the way; Jamie’s in town, and Paris keeps avoiding him; Lorelai and Jason agree that Emily and Richard need to be told about their relationship, but Lorelai just can’t bring herself to do it after Emily mocks both Jason and the idea that he would ever hit it off with her daughter; Rory’s finally speaking her mind on Paris’s romantic entanglements backfires when Paris decides she has a future with Asher and breaks up with Jamie; Rory becomes concerned that her mother is having financial problems; when Lorelai and Rory discover Jess sleeping in his car in the freezing cold after an argument with his uncle, Lorelai intercedes on his behalf with Luke, who

Lane sneaks out of the house when Gil gets the band a 1:00 a.m. gig at CBGB’s; Luke and Lorelai take matters into their own hands when newly restored church bells turn out to be less welcome than originally anticipated; Rory gets personal with William during a political discussion when she suspects that he’s been spreading embarassing stories about her; Lorelai is initially distressed when she learns that Luke has moved to Litchfield to live with Nicole, but a visit to his apartment over the diner dispells her worries; Lane and her mother have a long-overdue talk with life-changing consequences after Mrs. Kim discovers her daughter’s secret life.

Luke becomes overwhelmed by Lane’s work ethic when he hires her to work at the diner; Michel exhibits a profound jealousy of Tobin; Emily and Richard find the treats they brought home from Switzerland are widely panned; Rory is less than thrilled with the new man in Paris’s life, especially when she learns that he’s teaching her contemporary political fiction class; as Lorelai and Jason grow closer, she begs him to keep their relationship a secret from her parents; Rory’s talent for millinery combines with her talent for writing to win her a position on the “”Daily Yale””; inexplicably, Sookie and Jackson allow Michel to babysit for Davey, forcing Lorelai to come to the rescue when Michel, not being one to fail to disappoint, needs to get himself and Davey out from under a problem; Richard becomes intensely irritated when the Chez Gilmore walking tour benefitting the Historical Society overstays its welcome.

Rory and Paris have lunch at Yale with Richard, who introduces them to his friend, Professor Asher Fleming; during Friday night dinner at the Gilmore residence, Lorelai asks for an invitation to the Yale-Harvard game even though Rory clearly gives her an out; Emily is irritated when Lorelai shows up for the game wearing Harvard colors; the Gilmores tailgate in style with flasks, an RV, a BBQ, and servants to wait on their guests; Emily is upset when Pennilyn Lott, Richard’s first girlfriend, shows up and asks about the Inn, and Richard is forced to confess that he has continued to have a semi-annual dinner with Pennilyn the entire time that he and Emily have been married; Lorelai takes Jason up on his earlier offer of a dinner date, but they end up leaving the stuffy restaurant and having a great time dining al fresco at a local grocery store; Rory walks back to the dorm after the game and discovers Paris kissing Asher Fleming.

(Thanks go to Bambi Bell for this summary. )

Richard and Emily hold widely differing points of view on the success of their business trip to Atlantic City; spurred on by her editor, Rory writes a strongly opinionated dance review that leads to a dining hall confrontation with the ballerina; even though she continues to resist his interest in her, Lorelai can’t help but be impressed by Jason’s smooth moves as he manipulates a frosty Emily into inviting him for Friday night dinner so that he can woo Lorelai; Lane and Dave have a long distance argument over pottery; Michel is back on the staff of the still-under-reconstruction Dragonfly Inn, but his one sneeze has Bruce erecting barriers to his attending a staff meeting which includes an overly-protective new mother Sookie and baby Davey; when she learns that Nicole and Luke have put their divorce on hold and have resumed dating, Lorelai becomes so flustered that she has an argument with Luke; Richard estatically roams throughout the house with his laptop after he goes wireless with

Sookie and Jackson decide to have a home birth and enlist the services of a formidable midwife; when Stars Hollow mounts a festival of living pictures, Kirk goes way overboard in getting into character for his role as Jesus in “”The Last Supper””, while Lorelai has a bad case of stage fright; Lane, Zach, and Brian finally find an awesome guitarist to replace Dave, but wonder if he isn’t too old to join the band; Nicole asks Luke if they can postpone the divorce and start dating again; Jackson’s brother Beau, who’s come to provide moral support during the delivery, is less than enchanted with Stars Hollow, and is right behind Sookie in expressing extreme frustration with the tardiness of the baby’s arrival; as he escorts Lulu through town, Kirk proudly and repeatedly reminds everyone in Stars Hollow that he has a girlfriend.

Emily offers Lorelai and Sookie the job of catering the party to launch Richard’s new business venture, then runs them ragged with demands. Meanwhile, at school, Rory finds that her roommates’ activities are preventing her from studying.

Rory accepts a classmate’s invitation to go out on her first date since breaking up with Jess, while her roomates engage in a war of wills. Meanwhile, Lorelai invites Luke over to share the traditional Gilmore movie night she used to have with Rory, although she is somewhat disturbed after discovering that the designer she just hired to decorate the inn used to work for Emily.

Back home for the weekend, Rory has an uncomfortable encounter with Dean, her ex, and ends up getting invited to his wedding the next day. Meanwhile, Lorelai and Sookie visit Michel at his trendy new workplace, but run into problems getting the permit they need to begin construction on the inn.

To help meet the expenses of opening the inn, Lorelai and Sookie decide to become caterers on the side, with their first assignment being a “”Lord of the Rings”” theme party. At Yale, Rory returns from class to find that Emily has redecorated their rooms. Meanwhile, Richard ponders a proposal to take on a new business partner.

While Luke is willing to lend Lorelai his truck to help Rory move into her dorm, he’s not too thrilled when the project turns out to take all day to accommodate Lorelai’s last minute shopping trips to keep Rory’s room on a par with the rest of the dorm, to say nothing of Lorelai’s seeming inability to drive a stick, losing his spare tire, and saddling him with the old mattress from Rory’s dorm room; Rory’s roommates turn out to be a jock, a 15 year old prodigy sorely lacking in socialization skills, and none other than Miss People Person herself, Paris Geller, who arrives with a life coach in tow; Nicole’s partners descend on the diner and threaten to ensnare Luke in a morass of paperwork and legal complications when he refuses to hire a lawyer or even discuss accepting a settlement; responding to Rory’s attack of homesickness after just four hours, Lorelai returns to Yale and sets up a dorm-wide takeout food test to judge the quality of the local restaurants, their delivery speed, and

Lorelai and Rory return from their whirlwind tour of Europe; Taylor and Luke have it out over the new soda shop; a very pregnant Sookie updates Lorelai on the latest baby news; Taylor doesn’t take it well when Rory declines the privilege of being the Stars Hollow Ice Cream Queen; mother and daughter get caught up in a flurry of activity after Rory realizes that she wrote down the wrong date for freshman orientation, and she only has two days to get ready for Yale, instead of the week she was planning on; Emily is upset when Lorelai misses Friday night dinner and retailates by turning it into a four hour extravaganza, complete with ballroom dancing videos before the souffle course; Lorelai is shocked when Luke finally tells her what happened on his cruise with Nicole.

Rory finally learns her mother can’t afford to buy the Dragonfly Inn since financial aid for Yale didn’t come through. She decides to take matters into her own hands with a quick visit to her grandparents’ right before graduation. Luke has second thoughts about a trip with Nicole after something Lorelai tells him. Jess makes silent contact with Rory after she gives her speech at Chilton.

Jess heads out to Venice California only to learn that his father’s community is just as quirky as Stars Hollow; the rift widens between Lorelai and Emily; Luke tells Lorelai that Jess took off for good; Lorelai waits for the right moment to break the news to Rory, who is stressing over finals and graduation.

Fran Weston dies and Lorelei and Sookie try to buy the Dragonfly Inn; Rory and Jess try approaching each other but fail to talk; Dean tells Rory that he’s engaged to Lindsay; Mrs. Kim agrees to let Lane go to the prom with Dave; Jess’s father comes to Stars Hollow.

On their first free Friday night, Lorelai and Rory are at a loss over how to spend the evening, while Emily and Richard cavort at the party they’re hosting; Lorelai is appointed Grad Night Treasurer and runs into a playing-it-cool Max at her first Chilton Booster Club meeting; Lane’s band gets their first gig at a party and rocks the house, but Dave rocks Lane’s world when he flips out after discovering that Young Chui is in love with her; a despondent Lane indulges in a little too much beer, and then drunkenly calls her mother and confesses all; when staff cutbacks at the Inn force Lorelai to do turn-down service, she becomes very unsettled at seeing a cozy Luke and Nicole in the room she’s offered as thanks for Luke’s help with repairs after the fire; Jess’s inability to tell Rory that his frequent absences have caused him to flunk out of school and miss graduation and the prom prompts an argument between Jess and Rory, and then a full-blown brawl with Dean after Dean comes upon a te

Emily and Richard rejoice when Rory announces her decision to attend Yale; Kirk sustains baking-related injuries when Rory secretly enlists the help of her fellow Stars Hollows citizens to bake the world’s largest pizza for her mother’s birthday party; Michel and Tobin compete over giving Lorelai the best present, but Richard wins the contest hands-down with a check for $75,000 that’s actually the proceeds from an investment he made in Lorelai’s name at her birth; Luke confronts Jess about skipping school to work at Wal-Mart, but is blown off as usual; when Lorelai decides to use the money to pay back her parents for Rory’s Chilton tuition, Emily becomes furious with Richard for giving Lorelai the money, fearing that the repayment of their loan is a sign that she’ll never see either Lorelai or Rory again; Luke makes a bad impression on Nicole’s parents, scaring them off with a rant on the horrors of parenting Jess.

A fire at the Independence Inn forces Lorelai to relocate its guests to her own house and those of her friends, and leaves her spending the night at Luke’s, where she reveals her dream of being married to him and pregnant with their twins; Sookie invades Luke’s with staff in tow to prepare breakfast for the Inn’s guests, and gets into a culinary groove with Luke after a rocky start; questions arise about Jess’s attendance at school when he receives the Employee of the Month award from WalMart and Luke discovers that he’s working there more than full time; Lorelai and Rory start picking up on weird and somewhat unfriendly vibes coming from Nicole and Lindsay; Rory visits Paris, who’s missed five days of school to take to her bed and hide from the world, and prompts her to stop watching soaps, call Jamie, tell her parents about Harvard, get a life plan, and rejoin the land of the living; after making extensive pro-con lists in an effort to decide whether to attend Harvard, Yale, or Princ

Rory and Paris compete for the honor of speaking at Chilton’s Bicentennial; Sookie and Jackson get some very good life (and diaper) changing news; Paris and Rory reconcile; Lorelai runs into Max and it’s apparent that they’re not quite over each other yet; Paris has a meltdown on national television when she fails to get into Harvard; Rory’s college acceptance letters finally arrive; Paris isn’t sure what to think about the latest development in her relationship with Jamie.

The Doose clan invades the Inn for their family reunion; Trix comes for a short visit and drives Emily crazy until Emily finally finds something scandalous to hold over Trix’s head; Lane and Dave cook up a fake-date scheme with Young Chui to get Mrs. Kim to allow Lane to date Dave, but neither Young Chui’s real girlfriend or Dave is immune to a little jealousy; the Stars Hollow High hockey team reaches the regional semifinals for the first time in 40 years and everyone not attending the monster truck rally turns out to cheer the team on and endure Kirk’s hopelessly inept play-by-play; after Jess’s too laid-back attitude about going out leaves Rory sitting home alone for most of the weekend, she takes Lorelai’s advice and heads for the hockey game, where she discovers that Dean has a new girlfriend.

Emily guilts Rory into bringing Jess to a Friday night dinner which turns out to be an unqualified disaster; Lorelai, Alex, Sookie and Jackson go to New York for the weekend; Jess gets a black eye in an altercation with an opponent he is too embarassed to reveal to anyone but Luke; Zach and Brian realize that Lane and Dave are hiding something from them, but miss the mark on the true nature of the secret; Rory and Jess have their first argument, and Luke helps patch things up.

Luke and Nicole have a successful first date; Jess and Dean trade verbal blows; Sherry goes into labor with only Lorelai and Rory for company; Lorelai reminisces about her pregnancy and Rory’s birth; Lorelai introduces Emily to modern entertainment technology; Richard and Emily decry Lorelai’s and Rory’s plans to backpack through Europe; the war between Paris and Rory continues when Paris picks a photo of the “”Franklin”” staff for the yearbook that has the worst possible shot of Rory.

Luke is opposed to having Taylor’s attorney Nicole oversee the paperwork for the construction of the new soda shop until he meets the attractive redhead, who takes as immediate a shine to Luke as he does to her; Lane’s clever scheme to get her mother’s permission to attend the prom horribly backfires; Luke offers to teach Lorelai the fine art of angling after Alex invites her to go fishing; Rory and Lorelai clear out their garage for Lane’s band and Lorelai gains a new admirer from the band; Lane and Rory have some hearts-to-hearts about the men in their lives; Paris’s ratcheting up the conflict between her and Rory when she calls for Rory’s impeachment by the student council is brought to a swift end by Headmaster Charleston, who threatens to revoke the glowing letters he wrote to Harvard for each of them.