Morning at the Dragonfly, and Michel's face is even more twisted in disdain than usual. It might even be disgust. If not, dare I say it, revulsion. Again, even more so than usual. Lorelai comes in, and whatever's getting to Michel hits her hard as well. It's an odor, clearly. A smell. A miasma. Something is rotten in Stars Hollow. "It smells like rotting cabbage," Lorelai gags, shocked. Michel adds, "Or with dense but subtle undertones of olives and tar." Sookie arrives, holding a kitchen towel over her nose and mouth and asking what's going on. "It's not coming from the kitchen?" Lorelai asks, which surprisingly doesn't earn her a smack across the chops; Sookie's too busy worrying that it's an olfactory hallucination, which she thinks is a sign of an impending heart attack. Lorelai doesn't think that they're having a "communal, massive heart attack." I always thought olfactory hallucinations were a precursor to a psychotic episode, and I would totally buy a massive, communal one of those on this show. Another one, I mean. Michel tries to blame the stink on some guests that he suspects of "traveling with decaying animal flesh." Lorelai dismisses that theory and tries to open the window, but that just makes it worse, because the stench is coming from outside. She slams it shut again. "So glad we tried that," Michel says, watery-eyed. Lorelai says that she's going outside to investigate. Sookie's right behind her, but Michel wants to wait and see if Lorelai makes it to the end of the block first. Sookie shames him into following, which he does while holding a fruit from the bowl under his nose. I'm just going to pause for a moment while I imagine Michel as a regular on C.S.I..

Okay, I'm back. Outside, the streets are thronged with townies holding cloths over their mouths and noses. Lorelai and her little entourage catch up with Kirk, who's strolling along unaffected as he says that Taylor called an emergency town meeting. "I'm not sure why," Kirk adds, because he doesn't think the smell is that bad. Not nearly as bad as, say, the length of time Kirk has been waiting to deliver another decent joke. Sookie wants to head right on over to the town meeting to find out what's going on, but Lorelai's heading back to the inn: "I'd rather smell this smell for the rest of my life than see Luke at a town meeting." Wow, that bad, huh? Michel and Sookie go ahead without her.