Gilmore Girls Season 1, Episode 4
"The Deer Hunters"
Original airdate: October 26, 2000
Writer: Jeff Seidel
Director: Alan Myerson
Cast: Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Melissa McCarthy, Keiko Agena, Yanic Truesdale, Scott Patterson, Kelly Bishop, Edward Herrmann
The world is unfair; so is Chilton.
“The Deer Hunters” is the second episode set at Rory’s new school. But where “The Lorelais’ First Day at Chilton” explored this through a social angle—her conflicts with Tristan and especially Paris providing most of the drama—“The Deer Hunters” puts the academic pressures front and center. All schools have interpersonal drama (up to and including bullying), so that was expected. But the idea that Rory—brilliant, ambitious straight-A student with dreams of Harvard and traveling the world—might not be cut out for the expectations of this institution is something else. It provides a genuine threat, to both Rory’s ambitions and her conception of herself. Failing isn’t something Rory Gilmore does. Except, she does, multiple times throughout the duration of “The Deer Hunters,” and it truly hurts to watch.
The show gets us to that point by first showing just how hard Rory works herself when not under pressure. She and Lorelai shop for supplies, with Rory wanting three highlighters, her reason being, “One dries up, one gets lost, I have one left.” She carries several book bags to school, which inevitably reminds me of Stanley Specter in Magnolia (a near-perfect film, for the record). She’s not someone who coasts; if anything, she’s too thorough, too dedicated.
But not thorough or dedicated enough for Chilton, perhaps. Her English teacher Max Medina (in his first appearance) gives her a D, a lower grade than she’s ever received. “To err is human,” he says. “Here at Chilton, we try to beat that humanity right out of you.” This is a blow to her both academically and socially, as Paris and her lackeys Madeline and Louise rub Rory’s poor grade in her face. Suddenly, the pressure that Headmaster Charleston was talking about is showing itself. Maybe she’s not cut out for this. Or, maybe she started the school year late and is experiencing growing pains with the new, more challenging environment. Either way, she needs to push herself more, which she starts doing, to the point where it worries her mother—whom Rory hasn’t told about her bad grade.
Later, Lorelai attends a parent-teacher meeting, meeting Max in the screwball comedy meetcute way you’d expect from her. He tells her about Rory’s D, contextualizing her obsessive studying and extra high-strung attitude. Lorelai begins helping Rory study, the two doing their damnedest to bring her up to Chilton standards, ignoring the normal human standards of sleeping. And sadly, contrary to the school’s expectations, to err is human, and in the human world, studying all night equals sleeping late. Rory wakes up, checks the clock, and panics. She’s going to miss the test. She rushes out the door, speeds away in the jeep, realizes she’s lost some of her notes, and then while she’s at a stop sign, a deer runs into the jeep. (For the record, I grew up in the Upper Peninsula, deer capitol of the world; in my time living there, I never hit a deer, but I was hit by deer two different times. So, funny as it seems, it does happen.)
This is all the epitome of Murphy’s Law, a barrage of stressful events that would make the Safdie Brothers proud. And for her trouble, she still doesn’t make it in time, and Max tells her she can’t take the test. All that studying, that pushing herself to her absolute limits, was for nothing, and Rory finally snaps. She screams at Paris, asking why she treats her so horribly, sees her as a threat, when she has everything—the grades, the status, and a future that (for now) looks a lot brighter than Rory’s. Then, she throws one out at Tristan too: “The name is Rory!” It’s all satisfying, her clapping back at her tormenters. But it’s also another sign that Rory maybe isn’t cut out for this school. Rory is a kind person, a bright person, someone who hasn’t had her heart and/or soul ripped out of her yet. Paris succeeds because she’s been primed to be an Ivy Leaguer, molded into the bitter ball of stress from birth. Here, Rory is pushed into that mode for the first time, and it’s ugly. Maybe she isn’t cut out for Chilton, not because she isn’t smart or committed enough, but because living up to impossible standards often means losing something in the process.
After Rory ends up in the headmaster’s office following her outburst, Lorelai arrives, and her attempts at explaining Rory’s situation are met with deaf ears from Headmaster Charleston. The circumstances don’t matter; students need to be on time, no exceptions. And—like mother like daughter—Lorelai snaps, screaming at the headmaster and Max for turning teenagers into overly competitive monsters, draining the life from them, and failing the students who struggle to conform. Charleston concedes that she’s correct, but that’s the status quo of the school, and it won’t be changed for one girl.
In the end, things turn out okay. Lorelai tells Rory that she shouldn’t be pushing herself so hard and that she can go back to her old school if she wants to. Rory says no to this, insisting that she’s only struggling because she started late and needs to catch up. Max informs Lorelai that he convinced Charleston to give Rory extra credit work to make up for the missed test. Fair or not, Chilton is what it is, and Rory is a driven enough student to succeed there. That doesn’t mean all the unfairness is justified; it just means that, no matter what life throws at her, she’s gonna do everything she can to make it through. She is Rory Gilmore, after all, and Chilton is lucky to have her, even if nobody can see it yet.
Sookie also gets a fun-but-flawed subplot, in which she’s dismayed that an otherwise glowing review from a food critic is lukewarm on her risotto. This culminates in her discovering that the critic had the wrong wine with the risotto, then going to his house and having him retry it with the correct wine. Still, I must mention that this subplot would later become the A-plot in an all-timer Bob’s Burgers episode, “Moody Foodie.” And I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t improved there, where it’s pushed to its chaotic limit. The utter derangement of showing up to the home of a critic after being unsatisfied with a review doesn’t exactly fit the quirkily neurotic way it’s framed here.
Still, the way this episode balances the lighthearted tone of Sookie’s plot with the utter chaos and anxiety of the main story reveals a show that is becoming more confident, more ambitious, and all around better. It’s the best episode so far. It’ll be topped soon enough.
Grade: A-
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