Gilmore Girls’ Bracebridge Dinner is the holiday episode gold standard
There’s no shortage of holiday TV episodes, but “The Bracebridge Dinner” installment of Gilmore Girls puts the rest to shame.
Most of Gilmore Girls seasons 1 through 3 have the elements we associate with holiday entertainment: warmth, humor, family, and emotional conflict (as opposed to physical conflict, political conflict, etc.). Before Rory goes off to Yale at the beginning of season 4, Gilmore Girls basically consists of her and her mother, Lorelai, hanging out, chatting, and heading over to the grandparents’ house for dinner every Friday night. It’s comforting, it’s fun, it’s basically the televisual equivalent of listening to early era Beatles.
“The Bracebridge Dinner” doubles down on Gilmore Girls’ charms, which is probably why it’s a fan favorite. (It’s probably in my top five.) In the season 2 episode, Lorelai and her business partner and best friend Sookie plan a huge dinner party for the Bracebridge Group at the inn where they work. When the Bracebridge party cancels, Lorelai, Sookie, and Rory decide to have the dinner anyway, only they’ll invite the town of Stars Hollow. And they do. To use Lorelai’s words, it’s basically an “out-of-control, over-the-top slumber party.”
It’s the best holiday episode ever. Here’s why:
All the characters come together
Essentially all the major and minor Gilmore Girls players attend the Bracebridge Dinner. Emily and Richard attend, initially to Lorelai’s chagrin. Miss Patty lusts after a waiter. Babette and Morey say grace after a stern look from Mrs. Kim and an apologetic one from Lane. Luke and Lorelai go on a sleigh ride together. Rory even convinces Paris to postpone re-reading The Iliad and join the party. Gilmore Girls is excellent at crafting interesting characters in all spheres of Lorelai and Rory’s life, but you very, very rarely see them all together. That’s a good thing. If the entire ensemble hung out all the time, “The Bracebridge Dinner” wouldn’t be special.
It’s not all sweetness and light
The stakes are very low in “The Bracebridge Dinner.” How could they not be? The entire point of the episode is for the Gilmore girls and company to have dinner together. However, there is some conflict, some tension that keeps the episode from morphing into a Hallmark Christmas movie.
For example, Emily discovers that Richard quit his job without telling her. Over dessert Richard — who is quite jolly after several episodes of work-induced grouchiness — lets slip that he’s no longer in the insurance business. Emily’s understandably upset, not because she begrudges Richard his happiness, but because he lied to her. The two eventually talk it out and make up by episode’s end.
Additionally, it finally begins to dawn on Lorelai that she and Rory can’t stay in their cocoon forever. Eventually Rory will go to college, break away from her mother, and live her own life. I have to believe this is why Lorelai acts like a five-year-old when Rory’s father suggests Rory visit him and his girlfriend over the holidays. Lorelai puts off mentioning it to Rory and, when she finally does, confesses that she’s jealous. “I have dibs on this time of year with you,” Lorelai rants. “The thing that I really hate about this is the idea of you not hanging out with me ’cause you’re hanging out there with your stupid stepmother.”
Like with Richard and Emily, the tension between Rory and Lorelai swiftly dissipates. Rory pokes fun at Lorelai, quipping that she’ll call her stepmother “Mommy Sherry.” The rat-a-tat manner in which “The Bracebridge Dinner” introduces discord and resolves it only makes it more ideal as a holiday episode. It’s extremely satisfying but never boring.
Christmas doesn’t dictate the story
Most important, “The Bracebridge Dinner” does not revolve around Christmas. Rather, the show handles the holidays with a light touch. Referring to the snow (which she loves) and copious twinkle lights, Lorelai declares that Stars Hollow is “always different this time of year. It’s magical.” Richard, meanwhile, admits he decided not to tell Emily about resigning because he didn’t want to ruin the holidays. “I couldn’t face telling you that I had spoiled [our] plan,” he says. “Not now, not at this time of year … I just wanted to keep being happy.”
Christmas is invoked during these exchanges, but it’s not the focal point. The sleigh rides and snowmen are there just for ambience. The characters are not transformed by tidings of comfort and joy. No, if anything they’re just in a slightly better mood because they’re getting some time off and are looking forward to hate-watching Godfather III. In “The Bracebridge Dinner,” the holidays set the scene but they don’t determine the story.
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Most of our favorite shows produce a Christmas episode at one point or another, but none of them work quite as well as Gilmore Girls‘ “Bracebridge Dinner.” It succeeds in organically bringing its regular and recurring characters under one roof, integrating conflict without becoming unpleasant, and making Christmas work for it instead of the other way around. I can’t recommend the episode highly enough. Give yourself a present between now and the 25th and experience it for yourself.
You can watch “The Bracebridge Dinner” and the rest of Gilmore Girls on Netflix.