During the double date of Lorelai and Max, and Rory and Dean, Max complains about all the food he has eaten – Lorelai and Rory’s response is to rush off and buy ice creams. Dean takes this opportunity to rather patronisingly fill Max in on life with a Gilmore girl. (Dean and Max wear matching stripy shirts to show they are fulfilling the same character functions).

In the nine months since he began dating Rory, Dean has already discovered:

• Lorelai and Rory don’t take kindly to someone else using the last of the Parmesan cheese (Rory told Emily and Richard in Love and War and Snow that she and her mother put Parmesan cheese on almost everything to make it taste better; perhaps a quick fix for the bland processed food they tend to eat)
• They get cranky late at night, and don’t enjoy heavy discussions then
• You have to go with their “bits”, such as when Lorelai decides that the pepperoni on the pizza is angry and the mushrooms have an attitude
• They want to take every puppy they see home (even though in Paris is Burning, it was only Lorelai who wanted a dog, and Rory prevented her from getting one)
• They seem crazy, but then you figure out their logic; unfortunately by then they have done two other completely crazy things, and you can never catch up with them (this doesn’t seem accurate, as Rory is hardly a crazy character, and Lorelai seems a little quirky at most)
• They will eat and eat, force you to do the same thing, and then blame you when they feel sick and over-full

The interesting part about this is that it shows (apart from Dean lacking respect for Lorelai’s husband-to-be) is that Dean is not a patsy or an idiot: he knows what being with Rory entails, and apparently accepts what he has signed up for, including the knowledge that Rory’s thinking is quicker than his.

Dean isn’t a victim, although it’s still hard to see what he’s getting out of his relationship with Rory – seemingly just the thrill of being permitted to love a Gilmore girl on her own terms. It’s almost like those medieval tales of courtly love, where the man worships his lady and devotedly performs acts of service for her, while her main role is simply to allow him to love her.

Max is perfectly clueless about all this, and somewhat dismayed to hear about it. Unlike Dean, he hasn’t spent a lot of time with Lorelai and Rory together, and isn’t aware of their relationship dynamics. As a grown man, he’s far less likely to passively accept whatever treatment Lorelai and Rory feel like dishing out to him.

When Max joins Lorelai and Rory in the diner for breakfast, they immediately demand blueberry pancakes, while Max needs more time to think. The Gilmore girls delay their orders as well, and Luke takes this opportunity to unnecessarily make the whole exercise as stressful as possible, by threatening to “run out of pancakes”, and be “unable to make any more”, even though there is still an hour before breakfast is no longer served.

When Max orders poached eggs, Lorelai and Rory quickly ask if they can still have pancakes, to which Luke smugly says he already put their orders aside – something he earlier claimed was impossible as it was first come, first served.

It’s clear that Luke is going to act like a massive jerk if Lorelai remains with Max, and as this jeopardises her access to food and coffee (since obviously she can’t make her own food and drinks like any ordinary person), this will be a major problem if they get married, and live in Stars Hollow.

Lorelai and Rory treat Max abominably while he is a guest in their house. He cooks dinner for them, they force him to watch a movie of their choice, talk all the way through it, and don’t allow him to participate, and he has to answer the phone, even though it’s their home, and they are sitting closer to it (Lorelai explains the coffee table is blocking her path, and Rory that her foot has gone to sleep).

You can see that Lorelai and Rory sit next to each other on the floor, leaving Max alone on the sofa – not exactly a great omen for their future marriage. Also note that they have once again left most of a meal uneaten on their plates, even though they are supposed to be big eaters. Maybe it’s all the vegetables Max put in the dish?

If this weekend is a trial run for their future lives together, Max must surely be having some misgivings about that. It does show that Rory has learned how to treat her boyfriend (horribly) by her mother’s (terrible) example.