Keg! Max! originally aired April 29, 2003.  This episode was written by Daniel Palladino and was directed by Chris Long.

This episode opens with Rory and Lorelei not knowing what to do on a Friday night now that they’re not going to Friday night dinner.  They’re having trouble remembering what they did on Friday nights, because they’ve gone to Richard and Emily’s for so long.

Lorelei gets a letter from Chilton, saying that Rory’s time there is coming to an end, and so is Lorelei’s.  Lorelei decides to help out the Booster Club one more time.  Jess agrees to go to the Stars Hollow High Prom with Rory, and Lane and her band are practicing for a gig at a party.  Lorelei has to keep laying people off at the inn, until it’s all repaired, and Lorelei offers to have Nicole stay in one of the few open rooms since he can’t meet them for breakfast over the weekend.

The booster club organized grad night on a yacht, and Lorelei was voted in as treasurer.  Max comes in as the faculty advisor for that meeting, and acts like everything is fine between him and Lorelei.  In a conversation with Sookie, Lorelei says that he treated her like the other parents, and even though she’s still seeing Alex, she’s not sure where Max stands, which seems to imply that she might want to get together with Max.

Jess tries to get prom tickets, but finds out he can’t, since he’s missed so much school he’s not able to graduate- meaning Jess will have to repeat his senior year.

At the party, we find out Young-Chu is still pretending to be Lane’s boyfriend, and that he’s at the party because he has nowhere else to go.  Dave wants to know when Lane is going to end things with Young-Chu, and isn’t happy that Young-Chu has feelings for Lane.  She’ll make prom happen for them somehow.  Jess wants to leave after the band plays a set, but Rory wants to stay, and ends up promising that they’ll go after the band is done playing for the night.

Jess and Rory run into Dean and Lindsay, and Lindsay recognizes him as the kid who used to go to their school.  Lane sees that Young-Chu is still at the party, and starts drinking some beer that someone’s cousin brought over.

Rory looks for Jess at the party, and finds him in one of the bedrooms upstairs.  They start making out, and Jess wants to go further but Rory doesn’t, and he ends up getting mad because he didn’t invite her up there.  Rory leaves the room upset and crying, not sure of what she did wrong, but Jess seems to realize that he did something wrong and goes after.  Rory goes by Dean, who notices that she’s upset, and Jess notices Dean asking Rory if she’s okay.  Dean and Jess (not surprisingly) end up getting into a fight.

Meanwhile, Lane calls her mom (drunk) and starts telling her mom that she likes Dave and wants to go to prom with him, amongst other things.  Dave overhears part of Lane’s call and hangs up the phone for her.

While the party is going on, Lorelei is at another Booster club meeting, where Max is not there as the faculty advisor.  She ends up finding him in his classroom, and he doesn’t want to see Lorelei again, because he can’t trust himself around her. And if he weren’t back at Chilton, he’d be seeing someone he met in California, so things are officially, officially over between them.

The episode ends with the cops showing up at the party, and Jess leaving.

What I Thought:

Honestly?  This is one of the episodes where I don’t understand why people love Jess and Rory together so much.  I know that Jess is a smart guy who’s into music and reading the way Rory is into music and reading, but Jess can be such an ass sometimes.

I know that we know he’s acting like a complete jerk because he can’t get prom tickets because he ditched so much school, and that Rory doesn’t know that Jess couldn’t get prom tickets, but still, I was really angry with Jess!  It’s totally not fair that he took it out on Rory.  At least he seemed to realize that he did something wrong…until he saw Dean trying to figure out what was going on with an upset Rory, and got into a fight with Dean about it.

I get why Rory wants to go to the Stars Hollow High prom, but it still seems a little weird to me.  Maybe because I was not the least bit interested in going to my own prom.

As for Lorelei and Max, it seemed like Lorelei was maybe interested in getting back together with Max. Maybe she wasn’t ready to get married before, but I honestly don’t get this story line at all, because her interest in him seems a little too random.  And I completely forgot about Alex- he was never mentioned after whatever episode he was last in, so it was quite the surprise that Lorelei was still kind of seeing him.  Maybe I assumed they broke up, because Lorelei doesn’t have the best of luck with guys.

Favorite Line:

 Nothing for this episode

Pop Culture:

Prince, Milli Vanilli, Lord Of The Rings

Let’s Rate It:

I thought this episode was okay- it does set up a couple things that will happen in the next few episodes, but overall, not a memorable episode.  Keg! Max! gets 2 mugs of coffee.