Every episode of Gilmore Girls has a grace note. Every episode, even the very worst, has some weird, quirky jewel of a moment that makes the whole thing worth watching — even something as small as Rory casually roasting a marshmallow over her stove burner when she gets home from school, or Taylor showing off his horrible toupee.
Gilmore Girls premiered on the WB in the fall of 2000, and slowly grew into a sleeper hit. It’s a low-concept show: Lorelai Gilmore (Lauren Graham, who had better finally get an Emmy nod out of the upcoming Netflix revival) used to be a daughter of wealth and privilege. Then she got pregnant at 16. Now she’s raising her precocious teenage daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel) in a whimsical small New England town and tentatively working toward reconciliation with her WASPy estranged parents, Emily (Kelly Bishop, also entitled to an Emmy nod) and Richard (the late Edward Herrmann).
Gilmore Girls is coming back to Netflix on November 25, which means we’re about to get some closure on one of the best family dramedies of TV’s golden age. It also means now is the time to rank the episodes we already have, before the revival comes to skew the ratings.
Ranking a TV show episode by episode reveals its bones. It tells us what the show is good at and, by extension, what matters to it. Gilmore Girls is a family drama, and it shines brightest when it’s delving into the fundamental trauma and dysfunction — and the warmth and the joy — of the Gilmore family.
Ranking Gilmore Girls was not an easy task. It’s a stunningly consistent show that rarely hits a false note, so how do you differentiate between two really good episodes of a really good show? Sure, there are outliers, like the almost universally reviled “Vineyard Valentine” and the almost universally beloved “Bracebridge Dinner”; but how do you decide if a “There’s the Rub” is better or worse than a “The Nanny and the Professor”? Do you lean more toward the aesthetic beauty of the early seasons, with their gorgeous tonal blend of warmth and melancholy, or toward the psychological complexity of the darker later seasons? And what do you do with the anomaly that is season seven, the only season of the show not produced by showrunner Amy Sherman-Palladino and her husband and writing partner, Daniel Palladino? (Both Palladinos have returned for the Netflix revival.)
We have a lot to wrestle with here. Let’s dive straight in and do it.
Update: We’ve now added the four episodes from Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, so these rankings are full and comprehensive. The new rankings are marked with an asterisk.
The very worst
157. "That's What You Get, Folks, for Makin' Whoopee" (season 7, episode 2)
There are some rough episodes of Gilmore Girls, but only this one casually destroys a beloved character’s life for no reason. Lane, back from her honeymoon with Zach, announces that their first time together was so terrible that she has no plans to ever have sex again. Then she finds out she’s pregnant, meaning that she’ll have to put aside all the rock ’n’ roll dreams she’s strived toward over the past seven seasons.
It’s a heartbreaking ending to Lane’s arc, and what’s worse is that the show treats it as light comedy. Add to that the fact that the episode comes at the rocky beginning of the Palladino-less seventh season — and the fact that Lane’s fate falls into the show’s unpleasant track record of punishing women when they lose their virginity — and you have all the makings of Gilmore Girls’ worst episode.
156. "The Long Morrow" (season 7, episode 1)
This is the first episode of Gilmore Girls written without Amy Sherman-Palladino at the helm, and boy does it show. The show struggles to find its signature screwball pacing, and it can’t figure out how to circle around emotions without addressing them face on, as the earlier seasons did at their best. And the townie hijinks — Kirk crashing Taylor’s car into Luke’s diner — are trying too hard to be whimsical; there’s so much effort onscreen that the show feels tense where it wants to be comforting.
155. "A Vineyard Valentine" (season 6, episode 15)
“A Vineyard Valentine” is easily the weakest of the Palladino episodes. Everyone operates as the worst and most harshly exaggerated versions of themselves: Luke, grumpy and passive aggressive, is at his most unsympathetic. Rory is off-puttingly domestic in a manner that recalls her stint as Dean’s Donna Reed in season one. Lorelai spends most of her time compensating for the distance she feels from Luke and Rory with a stream of unfunny gay jokes. It’s not pleasant to watch.
154. "Lorelai's First Cotillion" (season 7, episode 3)
Gilmore Girls is stylistically off for most of season seven, and it’s at its worst at the beginning. At Sherman-Palladino’s best, she wrote around emotions: What was most important was what remained unsaid in the slew of fast-talking. But in this episode, when Lorelai begins to wonder if she’s set up her life just to annoy her mother, she tells us exactly what she’s thinking and how she feels about it, with no indication that there’s anything lurking under the surface. The show has been flattened.
153. "The Great Stink" (season 7, episode 5)
Season seven had a bad habit of retreading earlier seasons’ plots that weren’t that great to begin with. In this case, it’s the egg plot from season four’s “Tick, Tick, Tick, Boom!” only now there are pickles stinking up Stars Hollow instead of rotten eggs. It was only a little funny in season four; it’s not at all funny in season seven.
152. "Merry Fisticuffs" (season 7, episode 10)
As season seven goes, most of this episode isn’t that bad — the show had started to figure out how the characters fight again — but “Merry Fisticuffs” is the one where Christopher turns to Lorelai in bed and says, “Let’s make a baby,” and we all cringe for 10,000 years. That’s enough to knock it down to the bottom of the list. Plus, it’s the culmination of that weird plot where Marty turns into a horrible person for no reason.
151. "That Damn Donna Reed" (season 1, episode 14)
Gilmore Girls took a while to find its voice, and a lot of the first season is just a little too saccharine. “That Damn Donna Reed” is a particular offender, worsened by the fact that it’s also thematically muddled. It starts off with Rory rejecting the idea of enforced femininity; it ends with her strapping on a frilly apron to please her boyfriend. In terms of both this episode and Rory’s character as a whole, it just doesn’t make sense.
150. "Here Comes the Son" (season 3, episode 21)
“Here Comes the Son” is the backdoor pilot for what would have been Jess’s spinoff series, the hilariously titled Windward Circle. The WB shot six episodes, but stopped production before any of them came close to airing. Ostensibly that’s because the cost of shooting on Venice Beach was prohibitive, but based on this episode and the 30 seconds of the show you can find on YouTube, the more likely reason is that it was a terrible show. Nothing against Jess — he’s a good supporting character who drives story for our Gilmore girls well — but he’s not designed to be a main character who can carry his own show, and it shows.
Pretty Bad
149. "You've Been Gilmored" (season 6, episode 14)
Rory’s season six arc gets pretty dark, but it’s usually worth it for the character exploration. She spends most of the early seasons in a charmed state, getting everything she wants with minimal effort. Then when her internship with Mitchum Huntzberger goes south, she has to face real, consequential failure for the first time in her life, and she doesn’t do well at all. It’s hard to watch, but fascinating.
This episode undercuts everything that came before that made Rory’s season six journey interesting. Just as Rory is finally starting to get her life together, Paris has a meltdown and is ousted as the editor of the Yale Daily News — and the board votes unanimously to replace her with Rory. Against Rory’s shock and protestations. Meaning that Rory is once again living a life in which her accomplishments are handed to her while she makes a Taylor Swift surprised face, and the idea of working hard and campaigning for a goal, the way that Paris regularly does, is unthinkable. It makes all of Rory’s character growth up to this point highly questionable.
148. "Women of Questionable Morals" (season 5, episode 11)
Lorelai’s mile-a-minute whimsical rants often walk the fine line between “endearing” and “annoying,” but this episode tips over into “downright irritating” territory. Lorelai shouts about how she no longer loves snow and how she and snow are breaking up, kicking at it in her cutesy rage, and not even Preternaturally Charming Person Lauren Graham can save the moment.
147. "Tippecanoe and Taylor, Too" (season 5, episode 4)
This is the episode where Jackson ousts Taylor as town selectman, after which he spends one episode doing selectman duties and then Taylor takes over again as if nothing ever happened. Expecting continuity from Gilmore Girls is a fool’s game, but come on.
146. "He's Slippin' 'Em Bread ... Dig?" (season 6, episode 10)
I will always resent Zach for this episode. He sabotages Hep Alien’s gig in a fit of jealousy, setting Lane and her dreams back months and even making her cry. And he still gets to marry her and live out her rock ’n’ roll dreams by going on tour while she’s stuck at home with the kids? Whatever.
145. "Application Anxiety" (season 3, episode 3)
One of the unfortunate things about the Rory-applies-to-Harvard arc is that Gilmore Girls neither knows nor cares much about what it’s actually like to apply to an elite college, so it has to reach to find compelling story points. This is the episode where Rory meets the dull cliché of a Harvard family, and while its biggest offense is that it’s boring, well, that’s a pretty big offense on Gilmore Girls.
144. "To Whom It May Concern" (season 7, episode 12)
Season seven showrunner David Rosenthal can’t really be blamed for the fact that Melissa McCarthy got pregnant and he had to work it into the story somehow. He can be blamed for his solution: Make Jackson lie to his wife about the vasectomy he supposedly got. Suddenly this generally sweet supporting romance took on a weirdly toxic dynamic.
143. "Go, Bulldogs!" (season 7, episode 6)
Lorelai and Christopher go to Parents’ Weekend at Yale; Luke reveals that he cannot swim (which … doesn’t he go fishing all the time? Isn’t that a safety risk? When he threw Jess into that lake, was he actually trying to kill him?) and dates April’s swim instructor. This show is never high-concept nonstop thrills, but what makes it work is the flair and charm of the writing and the character insights it produces. Season seven hasn’t worked that out yet, so when it tries to do a classic low-concept Gilmore plot, the result is deadly dull. Snooooooooze.
142. "Bridesmaids Revisited" (season 6, episode 16)
This is the period of season six where Lorelai and Rory spend all their time walking around with little frown lines permanently etched into their faces because their boyfriends are being so awful to them. It’s wearing, and not in particularly interesting ways. Plus, Lane seals her doom by agreeing to marry Zach, and Christopher’s fantastically annoying other daughter Gigi has tons of screentime. But look on the bright side: There’s a pre-Hamilton Leslie Odom Jr. there.
141. "I'm OK, You're OK" (season 6, episode 17)
The episode opens with a fantastic, classic scene of Paris and Rory eating Chinese food and swearing off men together; if that was all there were to this episode it would be in the top 10 easily. But then Logan manipulates Rory into saying she forgives him for cheating on her, and the rest of the episode is back to Lorelai and Rory’s faces slowly melting in sorrow.
140. "Concert Interruptus" (season 1, episode 13)
This is a lovely early moment in the slow development of Rory and Paris’s friendship. It also doubles as a mini Bangles concert DVD.
Still pretty rough
139. "Knit, People, Knit!" (season 7, episode 9)
At a certain point season seven gets a pretty solid handle on the show’s character dynamics, but it takes a lot longer to figure out the Gilmore Girls style. That balancing act is evident here: The Stars Hollow Knit-a-thon is an attempt at vintage Stars Hollow quirk that really doesn’t land, but there’s a lot of good character and thematic work in this episode. We get to see Christopher and Lorelai as partners in crime as they fend off Emily’s terrifying wedding present — and then we get to see just how much Christopher doesn’t fit into Lorelai’s Stars Hollow life. Plus, Paris and Doyle “hip-hop dance.”
138. "French Twist" (season 7, episode 7)
Watching season seven, it’s clear that Christopher and Lorelai are never going to last: Luke and Lorelai are obviously going to end the show together, and the Lorelai/Christopher storyline is just an obstacle that has to be hurdled. But this episode attempts to justify the fantasy of Lorelai and Christopher, trying to convince us their history is meaningful enough that Lorelai actually would throw caution to the wind and get married in Paris. It doesn’t quite pull it off, but the softness in Graham’s face and voice as she says, “Even then, you were so … sweet,” almost sells it.
137. "I Am Kayak, Hear Me Roar" (season 7, episode 15)
You can’t really go wrong with an episode that features Lorelai and Emily locked in a room together for a long stretch of time. Lauren Graham and Kelly Bishop are extraordinarily gifted actresses who play beautifully against each other, and the mingled love and resentment of Lorelai and Emily’s relationship forms one of the show’s richest emotional wells. That said, the season seven writers never quite figured out how to hit the oblique angles in their relationship the way Sherman-Palladino did — the insults inside the compliments, the declarations of love inside the insults. It works, just barely, but that’s because Graham and Bishop make it work.
136. "I'd Rather Be in Philadelphia" (season 7, episode 13)
In keeping with season seven’s habit of redoing plots from earlier seasons, but not as well, “I’d Rather Be in Philadelphia” revisits the Richard-in-the-hospital plot from season one’s “Forgiveness and Stuff.” Only this time, Emily gets a super on-the-nose tear-ridden speech that ends with, “He’s all I have, Lorelai! He’s all I have!” Stylistically, it’s jarring. But the rest of the family dynamics play out beautifully, with Emily sublimating, Rory overachieving, and Lorelai trying to keep them all together. Plus, the slow disintegration of Lorelai and Christopher’s relationship becomes inevitable here.
135. "Run Away, Little Boy" (season 2, episode 9)
Bonus points for being the episode that definitively sends Chad Michael Murray on his way for good. Minus points for featuring so much of Chad Michael Murray on his way out.
134. "Love, Daisies and Troubadours" (episode 1, episode 21)
The first season finale is by far the show’s worst season finale. It leans into all of season one’s worst impulses: It’s just a little too twee and whimsical, and a little too focused on romantic relationships at the expense of the core familial relationships. But that final shot of Lorelai and Rory — running toward each other across Stars Hollow, through buckets and buckets of yellow daisies — is lovely and joyous.
133. "Paris Is Burning" (season 1, episode 11)
This episode is the first one that gestures at humanizing Paris — and if it does so just a little ham-fistedly, that’s season one for you. It’s still the beginning of one of the show’s best character arcs. On the other hand, any episode that devotes this much screen time to the question of whether Lorelai and Max Medina should date (they should! then they shouldn’t!) is at least a little bit of a waste.
132. "P.S. I Lo..." (season 1, episode 20)
Season one’s weakest element is its love stories, and this episode leans into them hard. (Apologies to the 12 people who are solidly Team Dean and Team Max.) But it also features the first time Rory chooses Emily and Richard over Lorelai, running away to stay at their house after she gets into a fight with Lorelai over Dean. That’s a pattern that will develop into one of the show’s most revealing and compelling character dynamics.
131. "Pulp Friction" (season 5, episode 17)
If you remember this episode solely for the Quentin Tarantino party — a stone-cold classic set piece, if only for the background actors doing the Pulp Fiction dance — you will have no idea why I placed it so low. Allow me to jog your memory: This is the episode where Michel wins an RV on The Price Is Right and tries to sell it out of the Dragonfly’s driveway. You’re with me now, right?
130. "Come Home" (season 5, episode 12)
Sherman-Palladino has a weakness for violent jealousy in her male love interests. It’s never all that charming to begin with, and rarely is it less charming than when Richard forcefully rear-ends Emily’s car after he sees her talking to another man. Still, isn’t it a relief to have the elder Gilmores finally reunite after their separation?
Just okay
129. "Take the Deviled Eggs..." (season 3, episode 6)
Sure, Rory and Lorelai are self-centered — that’s a basic part of their characterization. But usually when they’re self-centered to the point of wanton destruction of innocent people’s property, the show recognizes that they’re in a bad place. But this episode plays Lorelai trashing Sherry’s bathroom and Rory trashing Jess’s car for light laughs. It doesn’t quite work, sounding a note that’s more sour and slapstick-y than the show usually is. But the town loner subplot is enormous fun, and Jess and Luke’s confrontation over Jess’s new job at Walmart is note-perfect. (“Jess, are you a gigolo?”)
128. "Double Date" (season 1, episode 12)
Jackson’s cousin Rune is a very season one character: just a little too quirky and a little too broad. But this episode demonstrates that the show had figured out how to balance and mirror its Lorelai and Rory storylines with its matching double date plots. It’s also the first episode to suggest a little bit of depth to Mrs. Kim, who searches frantically for Lane after she sneaks off to her terrible date.
127. "I Solemnly Swear" (season 3, episode 11)
Season three of Gilmore Girls is close to tonally perfect; at this point in its run, the show knew exactly how to balance quirk with melancholy. As such, there aren’t many bad points to the season, but it does have two major weaknesses: the Francie student government plot and Billy Burke as Alex, Lorelai’s dullest love interest. This episode features both of them — but its tone is still right in that season three sweet spot.
126. "Die, Jerk" (season 4, episode 8)
Bruce, Sookie’s midwife/doula, is not funny, and she takes up way too much of this episode. But Rory’s plot — in which she calls a ballerina a hippo in a published review — is a nice milestone in the slow destruction of her angelic Stars Hollow image.
125. "Norman Mailer, I'm Pregnant!" (season 5, episode 6)
Why is it that the women on this show always lose their minds when they’re pregnant? Is it problematic to treat Norman Mailer as a harmless old iced tea–loving coot when we all know he stabbed his wife? Is the scene where Rory confronts her deadbeat dad and tells him to stop breaking her mom’s heart whenever it’s convenient to him one of the most satisfying moments of the series? This episode is a real brain teaser.
124. "The Lorelais' First Day at Chilton" (season 1, episode 2)
This is a heavy-lifting episode. The pilot gave us Stars Hollow and Rory and Lorelai; the second episode gives us Chilton and Paris and assorted townies. (Plus Kirk with his original name, Mick. I have a theory that Kirk is actually 12 identical brothers, 11 of whom are named Kirk and one of whom is named Mick, and I dare you to disprove it.)
This episode works a little too hard to establish Rory and Lorelai as fish out of water at Chilton — Lorelai’s cowgirl outfit is over-the-top ridiculous, and early Paris doesn’t have the complexity she’ll later develop — but it gives the show a solid foundation on which to build.
123. “Christopher Returns" (season 1, episode 15)
This episode has to establish Rory and Lorelai’s relationship with Christopher, and it does so beautifully. He’s an erratic, inconstant presence in their lives — he’s never even been to Stars Hollow before this episode — but when he’s there, he charms them both into almost forgetting all about his absences. Season one only hints at the emotional damage this dynamic has and will wrought, but it will get clearer and clearer over the course of the show.
122. "We Got Us a Pippi Virgin" (season 5, episode 5)
Early season five struggles with how to handle the show’s second go-round on the Dean romance. Rory’s choice to rekindle their relationship is clearly a desperate attempt to return to her secure childhood self after struggling in her first year at college, but they’ve just as clearly outgrown each other — they can’t even fit into her car when they try to go parking — and it’s awkward to watch. This episode handles it better than most, through the simple expedient of looping Lorelai into the plot and letting Lauren Graham’s face express exactly how uncomfortable the whole thing feels.
121. "Jews and Chinese Food" (season 5, episode 15)
So Luke sneaks onto Lorelai’s property to take away the boat that she bought with her own money, and I am so exasperated that I cannot fully appreciate Kirk playing Tevye in the Stars Hollow Elementary School production of Fiddler on the Roof. But nothing can tarnish the scene where Luke and Lorelai watch Kirk and that tiny little girl with the enormous voice singing “Do You Love Me?” — it’s a perfect mixture of weird and unsettling and tragic and lovely.
120. "'S Wonderful, 'S Marvelous" (season 7, episode 4)
Fan consensus is that Krysten Ritter and her less-famous sidekick, introduced here, are Rory’s most annoying friends. Fan consensus is incorrect; Rory needed more than her grand total of three friends (one of whom is her mother), and Krysten Ritter is always a good thing. Watching Rory and her two new friends delightedly raid Logan’s extensive popcorn collection after a student art show is an enormous relief after the dourness of season six.
Now we’re warming up
119. "Introducing Lorelai Planetarium" (season 7, episode 8)
Watching Lorelai and Rory fight is always hard, but Gilmore Girls always seemed to find interesting and in-character ways for them to do it. When Rory tears into Lorelai for getting married without her there, season seven proves it still has the ability to make those fights work.
118. "Santa's Secret Stuff" (season 7, episode 11)
The Palladinos never wrote a Christmas-centric episode (Sherman-Palladino has said that at a certain point she just decided that the Gilmores were Jews in WASP bodies), so this entry established an entire secret history of Christmas traditions for Lorelai and Rory. Seven seasons in, that’s not an easy chore, but everything this episode invents — red and green M&Ms in the cereal for breakfast, candy cane coffee at Weston’s because Luke would never make his coffee so froufrou — fits perfectly into the Gilmore universe.
117. "Hay Bale Maze" (season 7, episode 18)
Amy Sherman-Palladino has said that the biggest thing she’d change about season seven would be Rory’s arc, so it’ll be interesting to see where she takes the character in the Netflix revival. Season seven’s Rory arc feels less like a continuous piece of the story Sherman-Palladino was telling and more like an attempt to course-correct in the face of fan criticism that Rory was getting increasingly entitled and self-centered. I have faith that Sherman-Palladino was pointing Rory in an interesting direction — but the course correction was fun to watch in its own right.
Season seven Rory spends a lot of time learning that it would be good for her to have friends, that she is privileged, and that sometimes she will try her hardest at things and fail anyway — and while it doesn’t feel of a piece with the earlier seasons, it’s still awfully satisfying to watch. In “Hay Bale Maze,” overachieving and overthinking Rory finally decides to risk everything to reach a goal. Strategically it’s not a great choice (PSA: don’t turn down a full-time job offer because you also applied to a prestigious six-week fellowship in the same field), but on a character level, it was an important decision for her to make.
116. "Sadie, Sadie" (season 2, episode 1)
Most of this episode is taken up with Max Medina and Dean silliness. But there’s a perfect moment where Emily finds out that Lorelai got engaged and didn’t tell her, which almost makes the rest of the episode worthwhile.
115. "Hammers and Veils" (season 2, episode 2)
Also known as the episode where Dean finally develops a personality, and it sucks. Dean’s controlling streak steadily emerges throughout season two, first revealing itself when he gets angry that Rory needs to put in work to get into Harvard instead of spending all her time with him. It’s a weird look on a character that the show continues to insist is a perfect first boyfriend. But most of this episode is about Emily cold-shouldering Lorelai after finding out about her engagement to Max, and Lorelai’s resulting bewildered anger — and that will carry you anywhere.
114. “Lorelai Out of Water" (season 3, episode 12)
This episode has a forgettable Billy Burke–centric A-plot, but the MVP here is Lane. She finally works up the courage to tell her mother that she’s in love with Dave Rygalski (and who could blame her?), only for Mrs. Kim to stare blankly at her and say, “He’s not Korean.” Oh, Lane.
113. "Keg! Max!" (season 3, episode 19)
It’s rare for Gilmore Girls to spend much time on a fistfight — it’s such a talky show that most of its physical fights are comedic little slapfests. But season three gives Dean and Jess’s inevitable showdown the kind of loving buildup the show normally reserves for a first kiss. Every time they see each other they glare violently, and all the other characters keep gossiping about whether they’ve fought yet. When they finally do, the result is incredibly cathartic.
112. "The Nanny and the Professor" (season 4, episode 10)
Paris’s fling with 60-year-old Asher Fleming is mined for laughs, but it’s also a little uncomfortable to watch 19-year-old Paris throw herself into a relationship with a much older authority figure. But it’s all worth it for the scene where Lorelai is trying to guess his age and Rory keeps gesturing upward.
111. "The Deer Hunters" (season 1, episode 4)
The show is still finding its voice here — Lorelai showing up late to a Chilton parents’ night in a band T-shirt is the kind of over-the-top “look how quirky and different!” hijinks the show will later mature away from — but Rory’s horrified, “I got hit by a deer!” is immortal.
110. "Will You Be My Lorelai Gilmore?" (season 7, episode 16)
In the utter tragedy that is Lane’s season seven arc, at least she gets one moment of happiness — even if it is just a baby shower where she’s bedridden. Her conversation with Rory is a sweet grace note in their friendship, and the look of glee on her face as Zach and Rory push her bed through the town square is incredibly joyful.
Getting warmer
109. "Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers" (season 1, episode 16)
Rory and Dean’s three-month anniversary date is adorably teenaged — check that visual of them sipping their Cokes at the fancy restaurant — and their breakup is a great, revealing character moment. Dean’s freakout when Rory tells him she isn’t ready to say “I love you” presages what a weirdo control freak he’ll turn out to be. More importantly, Rory’s refusal to tell Dean that loves him is our first glimpse at just how much her parents’ saga has affected the way she thinks about relationships.
108. "The Ins and Outs of Inns" (season 2, episode 8)
Independence Inn owner Mia is a weird background character, one who’s theoretically enormously important to both Rory and Lorelai — we learn here that she more or less raised them both — but who’s only rarely mentioned. But the easy warmth of Elizabeth Franz in the role makes it easy to buy Mia’s importance while she’s here, and her final confrontation with Emily is just gorgeous.
107. "Dear Emily and Richard" (season 3, episode 13)
Let’s get this out of the way: The actress playing young Lorelai here is a terrible match for Lauren Graham. It’s a big ask for any young actor to produce the enormous amount of warmth and charm Graham exudes in every episode, but this actress doesn’t even match Graham’s speaking patterns. (Plus, her eyes are a different color.) But this episode is the closest we get to seeing the primordial family wounds that power the rest of the show. Even without a great young Lorelai, the look on Emily’s face as she reads her daughter’s goodbye letter speaks volumes.
106. "Ballrooms and Biscotti" (season 4, episode 1)
Mostly the season four premiere is just Lorelai and Rory being charming and quippy. Not much happens, but it’s the calm before the storm. Over the rest of the season they’ll have more and more trouble connecting, until everything ends with Rory screaming at Lorelai that she hates her. But here, in the episode that bookends “Raincoats and Recipes” (note the matching alliteration), they’re at their closest and in perfect sync.
105. "Secrets and Loans" (season 2, episode 11)
It’s always a treat when a theater vet like Kelly Bishop gets something to sink her teeth into. Watch her face during the scene with Lorelai in the banker’s office: When the banker explains to Lorelai that she’ll need her mother to co-sign her loan, Emily demurely sips her coffee with an air of utter innocence, pointedly refusing to make eye contact with Lorelai. It’s a perfect blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment.
104. "One's Got Class and the Other One Dyes" (season 3, episode 4)
It took Gilmore Girls two seasons to give Lane an arc, but it finally happens at the beginning of season three, where we first meet her band. The band that will come to be known as Hep Alien gives Lane’s heretofore vague rock ’n’ roll dreams shape and substance, and giving her people to interact with besides Rory and Mrs. Kim adds shading and nuance to her character. (Side note: Keiko Agena should really consider giving that purple hair a try again; she rocked it.)
103. "Back in the Saddle Again" (season 2, episode 18)
Any time Richard and Paris interact is a good time, and this episode — in which Richard is the adviser for Rory and Paris’s economics class project — is the beginning of their beautiful friendship. Also always fun: Brad, the boy who cannot see Paris without shaking in fear, admitting that of course he has tried to build a robot.
102. "Always a Godmother, Never a God" (season 6, episode 4)
Season six is the season where Rory and Lorelai start off not speaking to each other. While that’s exciting from a character standpoint, it also messes with the chemistry of the show, which is built off Rory and Lorelai spouting nonstop quips at each other. This episode sees what happens if you put them in a room and all they do is passive-aggressively bicker about cellphones, and it’s weird and unsettling in that quietly fascinating way that is season six’s specialty.
101. "A Messenger, Nothing More" (season 5, episode 2)
Part of Lorelai’s charm is her whimsical arrested development, so it’s always kind of a kick to see her change into uber-competent professional mode. That’s what she’s doing here as she works to get the Dragonfly Inn into gear, charging around town so fast that Lane nicknames her the Blur. It’s not just because the Dragonfly is a new business, though: It’s because she’s estranged from Rory, and her budding relationship with Luke is on hiatus while he helps Liz at her Renaissance Faire. This is solo Lorelai in pressure-cooker mode, and it’s fascinating to watch.
100. "Welcome to the Doll House" (season 6, episode 6)
At the beginning of the Rory-Logan coupling, Gilmore Girls consistently links Logan’s appeal to his wealth: Most of the episodes early in their relationship feature Rory talking about how broke she is as Logan is lavishes her with extravagant presents and dates. It’s not that she’s a gold digger, but part of Logan’s allure at this point is that he belongs to a world of wealth, glamour, and privilege at a time when Rory is growing increasingly tired of the world she grew up in.
What makes this episode interesting is that it’s where that allure begins to wear off. Logan spends thousands of dollars buying Rory a Birkin bag, and she has no idea what it is or why it’s such a status symbol — nor does she have any interest in it. It’s an early suggestion that Rory isn’t fitting into Logan’s world as well as she’d hoped.
Getting into some pretty solid TV here, folks
99. "Lost and Found" (season 2, episode 15)
Lorelai and Jess have more or less identical personalities — give or take 16 years’ worth of maturity — so of course they hate each other. “Lost and Found” is the one episode where they try to make nice, and while their efforts are short-lived, it’s fun to watch them bounce Euell Gibbons references off each other while it lasts.
98. "Chicken or Beef?" (season 4, episode 4)
Rory’s been at college for a few episodes now, but here’s where it finally becomes clear that her childhood in Stars Hollow is over: Dean gets married, and Rory starts rocking her chin-length college-girl bob. This is the episode where Rory first starts to realize that she can’t go home again; by the end of the season, she’ll want to go home so desperately that she’ll help Dean blow up his marriage to do it.
97. “Dead Uncles and Vegetables" (season 2, episode 17)
Imagine: an entire alternate universe series where Rory and Lorelai are old-timey diner waitresses, constantly shouting, "Burn one and pass me a pink stick and throw some mud on it!" Alas, in this universe we must settle for just one episode — but this one also features Freaks and Geeks’ Dave Allen as Taylor’s nemesis, so it’s all good.
96. "So ... Good Talk" (season 5, episode 16)
Okay, remember that thing a few entries up about how early Logan/Rory is all about Logan lavishing Rory with gifts when she’s broke? This is what I’m talking about. Rory’s at the coffee stand downsizing her order because she can’t afford the large caramel macchiato she wanted, and Logan shows up and bails her out — and it’s not a bad thing! In fact, it’s a super-interesting thing.
Logan represents the life that Rory would have had if Lorelai hadn’t turned her back on the Gilmores. And given all the similarities between Logan and Christopher, you can read this stage in their relationship as Rory’s attempt to do Lorelai’s adolescence over — only this time, Lorelai won’t get pregnant and won’t dump the nice, feckless rich boy Emily and Richard love. Keep that in mind when we get to “The New and Improved Lorelai.”
95. "Face-Off" (season 3, episode 15)
One of the most compelling things about Rory and Jess at this point of the show is how incredibly, tragically teenaged and doomed they feel. This episode more or less writes the couple’s death sentence: You know they’re not going to last past the season after a full episode of Jess consistently standing Rory up and Rory being too insecure and passive to call him on it. The episode’s final shot, of Rory curled up somberly on her bed, feels like an elegy for something that’s not quite over yet.
94. "Say Goodnight, Gracie" (season 3, episode 20)
And here is where Rory and Jess’s relationship gets definitively blown up. (For the time being — I’d be seriously shocked if the revival didn’t revisit their relationship in some capacity or other.) That last scene of them sitting in silence at the back of the bus, completely unable to talk to each other, is a gut punch — but not quite as much of a gut punch as Jess’s big confrontation with Luke, and the heartbroken disappointment that settles over both their faces as Luke says, “Then you gotta go.”
Thank goodness Lane and Dave are there to lighten the mood. Let’s be real, Dave reading the entire Bible in one night in an attempt to win Mrs. Kim’s permission to date Lane is the most romantic thing anyone ever did on this show.
93. "Just Like Gwen and Gavin" (season 6, episode 12)
This episode jump-starts the infamous “Lorelai spends season six with her face slowly melting from sorrow because Luke is being so awful” plot, which knocks it down a few notches, but here it’s still fresh and interesting. The look of shock and horror on her face when she realizes Luke has been keeping his daughter from her, and the way it later morphs into resignation when he leaps at her offer to postpone the wedding, is a killer. But for levity, there’s Paul Anka the dog dressed up as a swami!
92. "To Live and Let Diorama" (season 5, episode 18)
The dioramic history of Stars Hollow is one of the weirdest and creepiest set pieces Gilmore Girls ever gave us, like the Mormon history section of Angels in America on acid. (The divining rod! The mute son!) Plus, Paris gets a chance to get her Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown on, and Paris in breakdown mode is always fun.
91. "A Family Matter" (season 4, episode 12)
Season four starts clicking hard right around here. Lane’s long-simmering war of wills with Mrs. Kim is coming to a head. Lorelai and Digger are at their bantering best. (No one wants to see Lorelai and Digger together forever, but Chris Eigeman was born to deliver Amy Sherman-Palladino dialogue.) Lorelai and Luke’s unresolved tension is steadily rocketing up as the season heads toward the finale. And it’s beginning to become clear to Rory that she’ll eventually have to face all the problems she intended to leave behind in Stars Hollow — particularly her unresolved issues with Jess, who returns for the first time since season three in this episode.
90. "The UnGraduate" (season 6, episode 3)
Here’s where Rory decides to devote all of her overachieving, people-pleasing tendencies to her new life. Everyone at all her community service gigs loves her. She’s crushing it at the DAR. She’s completely won Emily over by volunteering to act as her socialite spy. And over in Stars Hollow, Lorelai’s devoting all her mothering energies to Paul Anka and the construction crew remodeling her house — she even babies T.J., even though she, like all right-thinking people, must find him incredibly annoying. But Rory and Lorelai still both clearly despise their new lives. As a character study, this episode shows off what season six does best.
Real talk, these are all above-average episodes of TV
89. "Say Goodbye to Daisy Miller" (season 5, episode 1)
Season five begins and ends with Rory and Lorelai at loggerheads, but this fight is just a dress rehearsal for the one that ends the season. It’s nothing they can’t fix with an episode or two apart and a heartfelt apology, but it’s the first time we ever see Rory sulking like an angry teenager and Lorelai going sarcastic and cutting. They’re replicating Lorelai and Emily’s dynamic, and it’s heartbreaking.
Plus, this episode gives us one of the all-time great Richard and Emily moments: “Only prostitutes have two glasses of wine at lunch!” “Well, then, buy me a boa and send me to Reno, because I am open for business!”
88. "The Lorelais' First Day at Yale" (season 4, episode 2)
“Ballrooms and Biscotti” was just a prologue. Now we get the real thematic setup for season four: Rory wants to go home really badly, so badly that she’ll violate all sorts of boundaries to get there. Here she’s just asking her mom to stay over for her first night of college — no matter how cool Lorelai is, that’s a major violation of the college freshman social rulebook — but by the end of the season, her discomfort with her new life will manifest itself more self-destructively with Dean. Lorelai, in the meantime, is really concerned with the purity and pristine-ness of Rory’s bed. Here, it’s her mattress and it’s funny; later it’ll be her virginity, and it’ll be heartbreaking.
87. "Kill Me Now" (season 1, episode 3)
This is the first episode that gives Richard much of anything to do, and it’s fitting that most of what he does is take Rory golfing and fall madly in love with her. It’s also the first episode to make explicit the conflict that will drive the rest of the show: Lorelai is terrified that her parents will steal Rory from her, not just because it means she’ll lose her daughter and her best friend but also because it means her parents can use Rory to replace Lorelai, so she’ll lose them all over again, too.
86. "An Affair to Remember" (season 4, episode 6)
The slow-burning feud between Emily and Digger is one of the show’s most underrated, and this is the episode that kicks it all off, as Richard and Digger prepare to launch their new partnership. It’s a joy to watch Richard’s wife and business partner make polite social smiles at each other and trade quips at top speed while they hate each other behind their eyes. No one else can goad Emily into condescending baby voices like Digger can.
85. "Eight O'Clock at the Oasis" (season 3, episode 5)
Fans remember this episode for two reasons. First of all, it’s the one featuring a young Jon Hamm at his most dapper and dashing, playing the world’s most boring man. (He’s so boring Lorelai won’t even consider a second date when baited with David Bowie tickets, and you know Lorelai loves her some Thin White Duke.) Second, it’s the one where the WB demanded the show play to the network’s target demographic and give them some scantily clad teens, so Rory and Jess run through some sprinklers, get soaking wet, and stare at each other awhile. Less discussed is the subplot with Emily and Richard’s charity auction, but it’s extremely fun: Richard forcefully explaining that Emily will be served the first cup of tea if she wants the first cup of tea is one of his sweetest and most romantic moments.
84. "Farewell, My Pet" (season 7, episode 14)
And the death knell of Chris and Lorelai comes at last. Even the most hardened Christopher hater has to hurt a little when Lauren Graham says, “You are the man I want to want,” with a sob in her voice.
83. "Gilmore Girls Only" (season 7, episode 17)
As the show winds to a close, season seven turns its attention to its richest and most complex relationship: the ever-shifting dynamic between Emily, Lorelai, and Rory as they go on a road trip. You can’t really lose with that sort of material. David Rosenthal’s take on the core relationships is both less textured and less toxic than Amy Sherman-Palladino’s, but with the end so near, the show can afford to err on the side of warmth. Plus, Lorelai gently ribbing Emily over her Will Smith crush is just fun.
82. "The Road Trip to Harvard" (season 2, episode 4)
The show’s other road trip episode is firmly in the Sherman-Palladino mold: It’s incredibly sweet until you think about it, and then it all turns melancholy. Lorelai and Rory taking their buddy-comedy-duo shtick on the road is charming, and Rory finally getting a chance to see the school she’s been dreaming about is lovely. But this is an early instance of Lorelai reacting to a problem by running away from it, a pattern both she and Rory will repeat again and again. Seeing Lorelai look wistfully at photos of what would have been her graduating class, it’s hard not to wonder how much Rory wants to go to Harvard for herself and how much she wants to go so that she can live out Lorelai’s dreams for her.
81. "A Tale of Poes and Fire" (season 3, episode 17)
As season three approaches its end, it has to shut the door on a few arcs. This episode gets them ready to go: Rory, at long last, abandons her dream of going to Harvard in favor of Yale, signaling that she’s about to stop living out Lorelai’s dreams. (Of course, after she spends season four trying to live out her own dreams, she gets sucked into Emily and Richard’s in five and six. Maybe in the revival she’ll start living out her own? We’re rooting for you, Rory Gilmore!) And more dramatically, the Independence Inn burns down, spurring Lorelai and Sookie to move forward with their plans for the Dragonfly.
80. "It's Just Like Riding a Bike" (season 7, episode 19)
This is basically the only time on the show that Rory fails to meet a major professional goal that she worked hard for, and where it’s also clear that the entity telling her she failed isn’t being vindictive or personal. She tried for a competitive fellowship at the New York Times, and she just didn’t get it, and that’s it. This is where we get to see if Rory learned anything from the whole Mitchum Huntzberger affair, or whether she’ll be terrible at dealing with failure forever.
Pretty good
79. "It Should've Been Lorelai" (season 2, episode 14)
Reasons to remember this episode: Paris beautifully traumatizes poor Brad in a debate on assisted suicide. Twin Peaks’ Madchen Amick makes her debut as Sherry, Christopher’s annoyingly perfect girlfriend, and only Emily is able to give voice to the resentment that Lorelai won’t allow herself to feel: It should have been Lorelai, they both think, that Christopher settled down with. And when Lorelai tells Christopher that she’s given up on that dream at the end of the episode, he screams at her, because Christopher can’t handle the idea that he has an emotional responsibility toward the mother of his child. Christopher is charming, but he can be hard to like.
78. "The Hobbit, the Sofa, and Digger Stiles" (season 4, episode 3)
Digger is one of Lorelai’s most-hated boyfriends, mostly because he appears in season four, right when the Luke/Lorelai subplot is clearly building toward some kind of resolution. But Digger does his job perfectly: He’s charming enough to be a compelling obstacle for Luke and Lorelai, but neurotic and weird enough that you know he’s not going to be a permanent obstacle. As a bonus, he’s the only one of Lorelai’s temporary boyfriends who is also interesting to watch (sorry, Max Medina, Billy Burke), and he knows exactly how to deliver Sherman-Palladino’s breakneck screwball banter.
77. "Pilot" (season 1, episode 1)
The pilot isn’t perfect: the rhythms of the dialogue aren’t quite in place yet; the emotional dynamics are sketched out rather than lived in. But it lays a solid, beautiful foundation for everything that is to come.
76. "The Third Lorelai" (season 1, episode 18)
It’s always great to watch Emily’s slow, panic-induced meltdowns over Trix, Richard’s disapproving mother. Trix is introduced here for the first time, and watching Emily frantically search for all of her mother-in-law’s old gifts so that she can display them properly is so much fun that it makes sense Trix would become a favorite recurring guest. Plus, this episode matches Emily’s slow, panicked Trix-induced meltdown with Paris’s slow, panic-induced meltdown over her date with Tristan. (Although ugh, Tristan.)
75. "Help Wanted" (season 2, episode 20)
The tension between Richard and Lorelai is a lot more muted than the tension between Emily and Lorelai. Richard is rarely as vicious as Emily can be — he’s more prone to silent lack of interest — but when he decides to talk, he can shut Lorelai up in a way Emily can never manage to do. So it’s nice to see them get a chance to bond here, as Lorelai fills in for Richard’s secretary while he sets up his new office, and Richard finally realizes just how smart and capable his daughter really is.
74. "Presenting Lorelai Gilmore" (season 2, episode 6)
Speaking of Richard, after spending most of the first season behind his newspaper, he finally gets a plot to himself in season two: He’s getting phased out at work, and it’s making him miserable. He keeps blowing off Emily’s biggest social events, and he even makes a scene at the debutante ball Rory only agreed to do as a favor to cheer him up. Meanwhile, Lorelai and the newly stable Christopher get a chance to show off their smoking chemistry — Lorelai lights up more with him than anyone else — right before Christopher informs Lorelai that he’s seeing someone else.
73. "Nick & Nora/Sid & Nancy" (season 2, episode 5)
Of all Rory’s love interests, Jess is probably the most controversial among fans. Depending on whom you talk to, he’s either Rory’s soul mate or the worst person ever to appear in Stars Hollow. In his first episode, he’s mostly just a hilariously nonthreatening bad boy, posing with his cigarettes and deck of cards like he thinks he’s a 1950s greaser. But his presence catalyzes one of the tonal shifts that elevates season two above season one. Gilmore Girls can get sweet to the point of saccharinity without someone around to undercut its aw-shucks quirkiness, and Jess’s city-kid bewilderment at Stars Hollow’s bucolic charms helps balance things beautifully.
72. "But Not as Cute as Pushkin" (season 5, episode 10)
Rory is at her most endearingly nerdy in this episode. She’s 100 percent convinced that her high school prospective student will want to hear all about the history of the Eli Yale bench, and that of course she’ll want to sniff an old copy of Pushkin — who wouldn’t? Oh, Rory.
71. "Happy Birthday, Baby" (season 3, episode 18)
And here’s Rory at her most endearingly manic, running around town like a nut as she tries to coordinate Lorelai’s enormous surprise birthday party. Alexis Bledel gets a lot of flak from fans for her acting abilities, but she’s surprisingly capable when it comes to physical comedy: Just watch her ineffectively fling her tiny self at a giant trolley full of sodas.
70. "The Perfect Dress" (season 6, episode 11)
The second we see in Lorelai in her (not perfect, in fact actively ugly) wedding dress, we know this wedding is never going to happen. It’s gutting to watch her beaming up at Luke at the end of the episode, knowing he’s keeping something huge from her. Season six is big on the sense of foreboding doom, and it doesn’t always do it well — but here it’s still fresh enough to be unsettling and effective.
Even better
69. "But I'm a Gilmore!" (season 5, episode 19)
After a season spent watching Rory become steadily more enamored of the glamour and privilege of Logan’s world, here’s where it becomes clear that she’s completely lost in it. Faced with the Huntzbergers’ snobbery, she reacts with some of her own: “But I’m a Gilmore! My ancestors came over on the Mayflower!” It’s not exactly pleasant to watch, but it’s a key moment for her arc. Insecure, people-pleasing Rory has decided to start pleasing the rich people instead of her mother, and that’s going to have catastrophic — and fascinating — repercussions.
68. "Red Light on the Wedding Night" (season 2, episode 3)
Certain Gilmore Girls moments are so perfectly pitched that they ring in your ears long after you’ve seen the episodes in which they live. Most of this episode is pleasantly forgettable — Lorelai has the bachelorette party for her wedding with Max Medina, Michel dances with drag queens, it’s fun and light and quirky — but the ending is different. Lorelai at the end of this episode, panicked, near tears, and running on adrenaline, saying, “Because I don’t want to try on my wedding dress every night,” is one of those ring-in-your-ear moments.
67. "Afterboom" (season 4, episode 19)
Season four sees Richard being increasingly dismissive of Emily and Emily being increasingly resentful in turn, but it’s still shocking when they separate. They’re the grandparents! They’re supposed to live in WASPy dysfunction together forever! But thematically, it’s perfect: Lorelai is about to achieve the biggest goal of her adult life and open her own inn, so of course her parents — her biggest connection to her childhood — have to implode.
66. "Those Lazy-Hazy-Crazy Days" (season 3, episode 1)
Season three is the most tonally beautiful season of Gilmore Girls. The banter is sharp as a knife, Stars Hollow exudes warmth, and everything is gently touched with just the right amount of melancholy. This premiere is a perfect encapsulation of that tone: There’s Rory and Lorelai frolicking through the town square and then bickering while “Those Lazy Crazy Hazy Days” drones in the background; and there’s the turn from that warm, sun-drenched festival to Lorelai crying quietly in Luke’s diner.
65. "Tick, Tick, Tick, Boom!" (season 4, episode 18)
By Gilmore Girls standards, there’s a surprising amount of plot in this episode — Digger’s dad announces he’s going