Rory and Lorelei Gilmore sit across from each other at their usual spot in their favorite restaurant in the whole wide world, Luke's Diner. Doe-eyed eighteen-year-old Rory quietly reads Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women as being a genius she is naturally a bookworm as well. Rory looks every bit the plain Jane Connecticut college student and is a "good girl" with a calm, responsible, mature disposition. She reads for intellectual stimulation as much as for any of her classes at Yale.
Lorelei, Rory's doting thirty-something mother, meanwhile stares off into the distance, coffee mug in hand, lost in thought. In contrast to homey Rory, Lorelei is a certified MILF who would normally only pass for a "mother" on TV or in an adult film. Despite being tighter than a pair of medieval thumbscrews and sharing a last name, the mother-daughter duo could not be more different. Lorelei is brash, perpetually sarcastic, and relentlessly making a joke of everyone and everything, causing her to seem much younger than her three-and-a-half decades. A TV and movie buff where Rory is a bibliophile, a street-smart business owner where Rory is an Ivy League intellectual, and a woman who likes to "date around" where Rory is uncharacteristically chaste for a girl of her age, the twosome appear to be a classic case of role reversal.
"Do you think Che Guevara would think I'm hot?" Lorelei asks Rory as she is lost in her mental fog, breaking the unusually lengthy silence between them.
Rory puts down her book, pausing to consider it for a moment.
"Nah, he'd think you're a capitalist pig, yanno, you being a business owner and all," Rory answers, shaking her head.
Lorelei sags a little, frowning.
"Even if I was wearing his t-shirt?" Lorelei protests, a slight whine to her voice.
Rory ponders this new factor for a second before remembering that all those Che t-shirts are manufactured with slave labor.
"Yes," Rory affirms with a deliberate nod.
Silence reclaims the Gilmore table, Rory continues to read Bitch, Lorelei is again swallowed by her thoughts.
"Do you think Andreas Baader would think I'm hot?" Lorelei questions Rory, grinning and again breaking the silence that has fallen over them.
Rory, ever respectful of mom/best friend, thinks the matter over again and gives her honest assessment.
"Maybe, he had a thing for women your age and his mom was a single mom too," Rory shrugs hopefully.
Lorelei merely smiles in reply and goes back to her pre-workday wistful dreams.
However, she is soon distracted, catching a flicker of movement at her periphery. She glances over out of curiosity just in time to see a man at a neighboring table slip a powdery substance into a drink and replace it back across the table from himself. Lorelei scans the restaurant and spies a young, vulnerable girl (who is otherwise "strong" and "can take care of herself") heading for the restrooms. Alarmed, Lorelei alerts an adult.
"Psst, Rory! Don't look now, but I just saw a guy at the table next to ours put something in his date's drink," Lorelei whispers to her harshly.
"Was it a cherry?" Rory inquires, not looking up from her book, thinking her mom is playing yet another joke, whilst also not believing anything bad could e-v-e-r ever happen in Stars Hollow.
"No, I'm serious, it was something bad!" Lorelei seethes, trying to control herself.
Contrary to the advice of don't look now, Rory immediately puts her book down and "looks now." As if on cue, the man in question grins evilly as he reaches across the table again and shakes the spiked drink vigorously for a few seconds.
"Oh my Gawd, mom! We should do something!" Rory yelps, a decibel or two too loudly.
"We should, that guy might do something to her!" Lorelei replies, cringing. Since this is a "family show," the r-word cannot be said aloud, but both Lorelei and Rory understand the implication.
They both sit perfectly still for several seconds, making eye contact with each other, but not moving a hair's breadth, both expecting the other to do something or the situation to simply resolve itself.
The girl from the next table over returns from the bathroom, sits back down across from the man, and takes a sip of her drink.
"Mom, do something!" Rory scolds her, breaking their stare-down.
"Oh…I don't know! Hey Luke! Lukeeee!" Lorelei stammers before she calls over Luke, the diner's owner, Rory's surrogate father, Lorelei's stand-in husband, and all-around-good-dude-who-always-does-the-right-thing.
Luke, a man of Lorelei's age group with a perpetual case of five o'clock shadow, adjusts his signature non-descript blue baseball cap and struts over.
"What's wrong? Is the coffee cold?" Luke inquires, thinking it can only be that one of their delicate sensibilities has been upset.
"No, no, the coffee is great. Now…don't look now, but the guy at the table next to ours just put something in that girl's drink. We think he may be trying to do something," Lorelei explains in a hushed tone.
Ignoring Lorelei's advice as Rory did, Luke "looks now" and sees nothing amiss, just two average Stars Hollow residents enjoying a morning Joe.
"What? Did he put extra sugar in it or something?" Luke asks innocently.
"No!" Lorelei and Rory rebuke him in unison.
"He's gonna do something Luke!" Lorelei asserts.
"Something bad," Rory adds.
Fortunately, one can still think the r-word in the Stars Hollow universe and now the gravity of the situation has dawned on good, old Luke.
"Why that little….!" Luke rages through gritted teeth.
"Just do something, Luke, you're the business owner," Lorelei, a business owner herself, reminds him. Rory merely offers a pleading look with her baby blue eyes.
Containing himself for the moment, Luke about-faces and goes behind the front counter, using the sole phone on the premises to call….who? Stars Hollow has no police force as there is no crime (or poverty) here. Calling the National Guard seems a bit excessive and they're all currently stationed in Iraq anyway. Luke thinks it over for just a moment longer before he starts dialing. After a subsequent brief conversation, he hangs the phone up, smirking. Confident he's handled the situation he goes back over to Lorelei and Rory's table.
"Alright, no need to worry, I've done something," Luke assures them.
A minute later, the door to Luke's Diner swings open, revealing none other than the white-bearded town selectman, candy store owner, and resident busybody Taylor Doose (pronounced dough-see) with the ever ubiquitous, multi-talented mama's boy, Kirk, in tow.
"You called Taylor and Kirk?" Rory questions Luke in utter disbelief.
"Our town has no police force! What was I supposed to do?" Luke replies, throwing his hands up in a surrender gesture.
Taylor and Kirk march right over to the potential suspect and confront him posthaste.
"Young man, did you put something in this young lady's drink?" Taylor demands, sounding like a father scolding a child.
"Yes, yes I did," the man answers calmly.
"Aha! A confession!" Taylor cries, turning to Kirk.
Kirk pulls a pair of plastic toy-store handcuffs out of his shirt pocket, waiting on Taylor's inevitable command.
"Cuff 'em, Kirk!" Taylor orders, relishing the moment.
"It's not a confession you dolts!" the girl/potential victim at the table screeches.
"Young lady, this man what about to do something to you! You should be grateful we showed up in time." Taylor chides her.
"Well, some girls have those types of fantasies you know…the majority, in fact. And you just ruined mine!" the girl enlightens them, wagging an accusatory finger.
"What?" Taylor gasps in disbelief.
"It's true…mother has them," Kirk confesses, his head hung in shame.
"Luke, why did you call this in?" Taylor asks, trying to deflect the embarrassment.
"Well, uh, Lorelei turned me onto it and…" Luke begins, trailing off.
Lorelei, Taylor, and Luke all start talking at once, rambling over one another other, each of them trying to punt the metaphorical ball of embarrassment away from themselves. Kirk watches the fray impassively as the couple at the table goes back to their breakfast. Rory's cell phone vibrates in her pocket, providing her with an escape from the madness as per Luke's Diner's policy of no cell phone usage.
Moving quickly, Rory steps outside to another idyllic morning in the picturesque town of Stars Hollow, CT. On the way to the town commons, she passes the town troubadour, a bespectacled young man in a weathered brown corduroy suit. Today he sings a rather appropriate tune for the occasion while strumming out a melody on his beat-up, sticker cover acoustic guitar.
"Then I took the chance to walk you home/oh my mind was blown/that's when I dragged you down, onto the cold, cold ground," the troubadour croons enthusiastically.
Rory reaches the green plain that serves as the town commons and finally answers her phone.
"Rory, its Paris," Paris, Rory's extremely studious and career oriented Alpha Bitch roommate, greets her, sounding urgent as usual.
"Hey, Paris, what's up?" Rory replies in her customarily sweet manner of speaking.
"Have you heard about the College Teas our dorm is holding? Apparently, it's gonna be somebody big, huge, in fact. Someone who could definitely have an effect on whatever future career, I, I mean we have. Are you going? It's a pretty big deal, I'd hate to miss this one, or worse make a bad impression on whoever it is, you know?" Paris hurriedly explains in her typical hyperfast fashion.
Thankfully, Rory can speak Paris-ese due to her dealing with Lorelei's manic pop culture rants for eighteen years.
"Yeah, sure, I think I'll show up," Rory casually responds, knowing it will drive Paris crazy.
"Good, I look forward to it. Remember, big, huge. Later, Gilmore," Paris concludes smugly before hanging up.
Rory hangs up, shakes her head at Paris's antics and returns the phone to her pocket.
"Hey Rory!" a male voice calls to her from off in the distance.
Rory turns to see her former flame Dean strutting up to her. Dean has a chic Dylan Klebold haircut, stands over six feet tall, and is a good guy-nice guy. Overbearingly good/nice actually, too much so for Rory's tastes.
As he gets closer, Rory notices his normally brown hair is dyed a rust colored orange.
"Hey Dean!" Rory chirps gleefully, always happy to see him.
Dean smiles a big goofy grin.
"You're wondering about the hair, right?" Dean asks, pointing to an orange lock.
Rory nods, studying its rusty color.
"Well, thanks to my haircut, I got cast as Leon Kennedy for the Resident Evil 2 TV mini-series they're making. The director is a really cool guy; he's giving me some creative control, letting me adlib some lines, though he didn't approve of my idea for a Leon-Claire relationship," Dean elaborates excitedly.
"Wow, that's great Dean, everybody loves a good zombie thriller, I'm sure it will be a big hit," Rory encourages him.
"Thanks Rory, if lightning strikes, you can tell everybody, you knew me way back when I first played Dylan Klebold on Zero Hour," Dean jokes; chuckling heartily.
From just behind Dean, Rory spies Lorelei exiting Luke's Diner, bound in plastic toy handcuffs with Taylor and Kirk on either side of her, escorting her away.
"Oh, looks like I've gotta go, see ya around Dean," Rory quickly bids him farewell before running off after her apparently arrested mother.