Friday Night Dinners are a staple of Gilmore Girls. In the pilot, Lorelai shows up at her parents’ house to ask them to pay for Rory’s schooling, and agrees to Friday Night Dinners in return. Throughout the series, they are key scenes for relationships, arguments (‘Friday Night’s Alright For Fighting’ being one of the best episodes in the series), and brilliant writing, and they are even referenced in the final lines of the original show.
However, it’s not always just the titular Gilmore Girls and Richard at the traditional Friday nights. When guests show up, whether boyfriends, friends, or surprising additions, they can make the usual Friday night ritual all the more entertaining – even if some are far from the model guest.
Best: Logan (How Many Kropogs To Cape Cod)
When Rory brings Logan to dinner in this season 5 episode, her grandparents are thrilled! After the awkwardness of dinners with Dean and Jess, Logan seems perfect – he’s from a similar background, has good prospects, and seems to make Rory happy. However, these aren’t the only reasons that he makes one of the best guests at Friday Night Dinner. He is also the reason that Lorelai starts coming back to the dinners, as she wants to get to know him – and seeing Lorelai’s suspicions next to Emily’s excitement is phenomenal.
Worst: Dean (Sadie, Sadie)
The first time that Rory brings a boyfriend to Friday Night Dinner, it definitely does not go well. Dean is a lovely young man, and Rory loves him – but Richard is just not convinced that he’s a good choice for her. Richard is clearly worried about Rory’s future, but he’s incredibly rude to Dean, grilling him about future choices. In the end, this marks one of the first falling-outs between Rory and her grandfather, which takes some time to recover from.
Best: Jason (Die, Jerk)
When Digger reappears in the Gilmores’ life as Richard’s business partner, he doesn’t make the best impression on Emily. She’s furious about his new ideas for the business that leave her feeling obsolete, but in this episode, he proves that he is more than a match for Emily. Watching him manipulate his way into an invite for dinner, and then his careful flattery of her while simultaneously flirting with Lorelai is a masterclass. It shows off the brilliant writing of the series, and sets up Jason’s arc incredibly well.
Worst: Straub & Francine (Christopher Returns)
While Emily can definitely give any guest a dressing-down, she draws the line at physical violence… but Richard crosses it in this episode back in season one. Here, Christopher is back in town, so he and his parents show up to Friday Night Dinner, and everything that can go wrong, does.
The parents end up in a fight, with Straub and Francine kicked out, after they accuse Lorleai of ‘ruining’ Christopher’s life, and then just to top it off, Lorelai and Christopher have sex on her balcony, and then she turns down his proposal.
Best: Kirk (Winter)
The revival, A Year In The Life, includes probably the most unexpected guest possible for Friday Night Dinner – Kirk. Of course, he wasn’t actually invited, but as he was driving one of the Gilmore Girls, he ended up invited in. Surprisingly, though, he was an excellent guest. One or two awkward phrases may have popped out, but he was otherwise polite, and Emily can more than rise to the occasion of an awkward guest. Compared to flat-out fights, this was a pleasant, if unusual, evening.
Worst: Floyd (Tick Tick Boom)
Jason may have been one of the best dinner guests earlier in the series, but by this season 4 episode, his father becomes one of the worst. Floyd Stiles reveals at dinner that he’s suing Richard and Jason – and this is the moment that sets in motion a multi-episode arc that devastates everyone it touches. Richard and Jason’s business partnership ends, Jason attempts to sue Richard, Lorelai leaves Jason over it, and Emily realizes that Richard didn’t tell her the extent of the money he put into the venture. As far as dinner time reveals go, this one probably had the biggest impact of any in the series.
Best: Charlotte (Lorelai’s First Cotillion)
Charlotte is easily forgettable, but she’s also the perfect dinner guest – because she’s at Friday Night Dinner so that Emily can train her how to be! She’s doing it as part of the run-up to a Cotillion, which Lorelai and Michel end up attending together.
The dinner itself is unremarkable in terms of Charlotte’s appearance there, but Lorelai’s attendance at dinner, and later the Cotillion itself, all tie in to her realization that perhaps she spends too much energy rebelling against her parents – instead of thinking about what she really wants.
Worst: Christopher (Haunted Leg)
While Christopher is occasionally a great dinner guest at the Gilmore home, his more memorable times there have definitely been when he is causing trouble – like in this season 3 episode. Lorelai has stopped speaking to Christopher, because he left her to go back to Sherry (because Sherry is pregnant). The only way he can think of to speak to her is to crash Friday Night Dinner, and it’s unsurprisingly not a choice that goes well. While he may not be a great dinner guest, though, the episode is fantastic for the emotional drama, and for seeing Emily – despite her long-standing love of Christopher – take her daughter’s side and kick him out.
Best: Luke (You’ve Been Gilmored)
Luke doesn’t have a great history with Friday Night Dinner – while his earlier dinner seemed polite, Lorelai knew that all of Emily’s comments were actually quite vicious barbs aimed at him. This later dinner (season 6) has a very different effect, though. This time, Luke and Lorelai become model guests, joining in on conversations about insurance and future prospects with Emily giving them advice. What makes this a particularly great episode, though, is seeing how Lorelai and Luke pull together on the way out, and manage to shake off the Gilmore effect.
Worst: Jess (Swan Song)
While Jess is probably Rory’s most controversial boyfriend, there’s no doubt that everyone felt a bit sorry for Rory in this episode when Jess came to dinner. Emily was actually willing to give him a fair try, but he was late, miserable, barely spoke, and had a black eye. He was a terrible guest, barely responding to Emily and snapping at Rory, but this awful dinner had a few bright spots to it. For one thing, it was wonderful to see Emily try so hard for Rory’s sake – and of course, when fans learned that Jess was acting out because he was humiliated about getting his black eye from a swan, most started to feel a bit sorry for him, too.
