The pilot episode originally aired October 5, 2000, was written by Amy Sherman-Palladino and was directed by Lesli Linka Glatter.

In this episode, Rory gets accepted into Chilton, an elite prep school in Hartford.  Her mother Lorelei has to make amends with her parents in order to borrow the money for Rory’s tuition.  But it comes with strings attached- in the form of a weekly Friday night dinner.

Seeing this episode was such a trip.  It’s not as fresh in my mind as some of the other episodes, and seeing how different a lot of the characters looked (in comparison to the series finale) was a little startling.  It was also strange to see how different some of the sets looked, especially Luke’s Diner, Emily and Richard’s house and Lorelei and Rory’s house.

So much is set up in this episode- we see a lot of the places and meet a lot of characters that will stick around for the rest of the series.  I’ve already mentioned Luke’s, Lorelei’s house and Emily’s house, but Chilton will be a pretty important location over the next few seasons.  Same thing with the Independence Inn and Miss Patty’s.  Plus a few other locations that we’ll see over the course of the series.

As for other characters (besides the Gilmore’s anyway), we meet Sookie and Lane, who are Lorelei and Rory’s best friends, respectively.  We also meet Luke, Miss Patty, Mrs. Kim (Lane’s mom), Michel and Dean.

One thing I really love about this series is the different relationships between Rory, Lorelei and Emily.  And really, that’s what the series is about: mother-daughter relationships.  You get a pretty good sense of the kind of relationship between the three of them…but I’m a big fan of the series, so that might be coloring my perspective a little.

I love the humor and pop culture references.  It’ll be fun to try to figure them out.  In this episode, references include West Side Story, Rosemary’s Baby, Moby Dick, Flo Jo and RuPaul.  One interesting thing to keep in mind for this show is the fact that their scripts were double the length of your standard hour-long drama.  Most are around 4o to 45, I think, but Gilmore Girls was usually somewhere in the 80-page range.

Funny lines and scenes: “RuPaul doesn’t need this much make-up.”

Lorelei persuading Luke to give her more coffee at the beginning of the episode…complete with her very own mug.

There’s a scene were Lorelei goes to her parents house, and they’re trying to figure out what holiday it is.  It kind of implies that she only sees them during the holidays.

Final thoughts: For a pilot episode, it’s pretty good.  I have the feeling that if it were to air today, it probably would be cancelled way too early.  There aren’t as many good one-liners as I remembered, but it was fun to watch.

Let’s see…rating time!  Given how much Lorelei and Rory love coffee (as do I), I think I’m going to rate things on a scale of 1 to 5 coffee mugs.  And this episode gets 3.5 mugs.