Turns out, Emily's at the airport, looking at a plane to buy. Lorelai boards, calling out for her. "I'm in the cockpit," Emily says. Lorelai: "Add that to the list of things I never thought I'd hear my mother say." Emily explains that she and Richard might buy the plane on timeshare with a few other couples, and that she'd use it to travel with Richard for work. Lorelai says she can do that now, without buying a plane. ["Why in the world would you try to dissuade someone you knew from buying any part of a private plane? Not to have to sit at a gate anymore? Not to have to get to the airport three hours early to go through a hellacious line at Customs? Not to get that princely six cubic inches of leg room? Let the woman buy the plane, Lorelai, and then borrow the hell out of it! Damn!" -- Wing Chun] Well, Emily says, she could use it for other things, or Luke and Lorelai could use it, or whatever. She's obviously losing it, but Lorelai pushes, saying that Richard is very worried about Emily, and that she needs to go home. Instead, Emily starts going on about how all the fabric in the plane is horrible and will have to be changed. Lorelai reminds her that if it's a timeshare, she won't be able to change it, anyway, and Emily flips, and says that she'll buy the whole damn plane, herself. ["Yes! Now we're talking!" -- Wing Chun]

Lorelai catches on that uh, maybe none of this is about a plane. Emily goes off. She's tired of Lorelai's attitude, she says. "You look at me as a thing of amusement," she adds, Lorelai protesting all the way. "Something to be pitied, to feel sorry for." She self-mocks about all her parties and frivolous spending and how everyone makes fun of her for it, but Lorelai insists that no one thinks that. "It's my fault that Rory dropped out of Yale," Emily says, all sarcastic and martyrish. "It's my fault that she's with Logan, that she's unhappy. It's all my fault." Lorelai has a look of great pity when she says that it wasn't Emily's fault at all. "The way she talked to me," Emily says bitterly of Rory. "You would have been very proud." Lorelai is sad. "No," she says, but Emily goes on: "She looked at me just like you used to, with that defiant 'who are you to be telling me what to do' sort of look." She says that Rory packed and left with no thank-you or goodbye. She is crying, and Lorelai feels bad. "Mom..." she starts, but Emily stops her with a hysterical "Just let me buy my plane, Lorelai! Let me be frivolous and shallow, won't you please?!" Lorelai lets it go. "Okay," she says, with quiet kindness, and makes to leave. Turning, she adds, "It's not the same, Mom, what happened with Rory. It's not the same." Emily sighs, and damn, Kelly Bishop is outstanding here: "I lost her like I lost you. It feels remarkably similar to me." Lorelai shakes her head. "You didn't lose her like you lost me. She was never supposed to be there in the first place. She was always supposed to be at school. She just went back where she belonged." Leaving now as Emily starts crying again, Lorelai adds, "And you didn't lose me."