‘Gilmore Girls’ Rewind: Season 3, Episodes 1-7

The opening seven episodes of the third season contain a lot of goodness. We’re introduced to Lane’s band, which means Dave Rygalski (Adam Brody) has officially come into our lives. We get a guest appearance by John Hamm. We get the resolution of the Dean-Rory-Jess love triangle. For now.

This season kicks off with a shocker: Lorelai wakes up to a million alarm clocks and comes down to yell at the practical joker. However, it’s not Rory. It’s Luke. They’re together and she’s pregnant. Just kidding! It was all just a dream, but it had every Gilmore Girls fans in shock and awe right off the bat.

A major arc is Rory’s vice presidency to Paris’ school president position, which offers another batch of subplots that don’t have any romantic undertones. Rory’s education was such a vital part of the show to begin with, but diminished as the show went on. Now that she is a senior in high school and is getting ready to apply to Harvard the show is bringing back this part of her world.

Jess has a girlfriend now and Rory seems to be ticked off after she returns from a summer away in DC with Paris for a leadership development program. That makes it seem like the drama between Rory and Jess is over, but it continues to boil to the surface.

It does so during a 24-hour dance marathon when Dean just decides to end things because all Rory can talk about is complaining about Jess. It wasn’t as dramatic as I felt it could have been, but Rory’s reaction is stellar. She quietly leaves the marathon and walks to where she and Jess had the basket lunch date. The episode ends with Jess making sure Rory and Dean are officially done and then goes to take care of something, a.k.a. break up with his girl.

It feels like now that this situation is sort of resolved that the show can begin to explore other plotlines. Particularly Lane’s band, Sookie’s marraige, and hell, even Emily and Richard a bit more.

Last time I said that third seasons are usually when a series gets its stride. Looking back on when I first watched the show I totally remember how much this season truly does produce a lot of great moments.