"They know you!" Lorelai marvels, thinking she's the only person in the world who met the man in the diner. Luke tells Lorelai he comes to this joint two or three times a week. I wonder what else is going on in Luke's secret life. Lorelai can't believe Luke has a Luke's. Mrs. LandingGod went to school with Luke's mom, so he's known them his entire life. Buddy helped him turn his dad's hardware store into a diner: "I couldn't have done it without him." I can see how important he is to you, since this is the first mention of him in almost a hundred episodes. Lorelai declares her love for this nameless place, even though she hasn't even been served water yet. Lorelai asks how long Maize and Buddy have owned this place. Luke tells Lorelai that the story is on the back of the menu. Everybody grab something to drink; we're going to be here for a mighty long time. Actually, the beauty of the recap is I can just quickly -- how should I put this? -- recap it. Beloved dog dies, restaurant is named. Ta da. And this place is called "Sniffy's Tavern," so maybe it's not as upscale as I keep trying to make it. I love how someone had to make a menu and laminate it, since it was going to be the star of an endless scene. What other menu in the history of television and film has been read from beginning to end in order to fill a scene? None, I say.

The champagne is served. Luke toasts to Lorelai. "I'll drink to that," she says. Luke: "Yup, I definitely hate champagne." Were two people more perfectly suited for each other, I ask you? He hates everything but Lorelai; she feels exactly the same way. Lorelai asks Luke if he remembers the first time they met. She can't, but he does. It was lunch. He was trying to work during a very busy rush. She burst through the door asking for coffee, interrupting him, bothering him constantly while he was trying to work. He told her to wait her turn. She followed him around, talking. He finally turned to her and told her she was being annoying. Lorelai says that the woman he's talking about sounds delightful. She hassled him for his birthday, finally got it, and ripped out his horoscope, on which she wrote something and then handed it to him. Lorelai: "God. Seriously. You wrote the menu, didn't you?" On the piece of paper she had written, "You will meet an annoying woman today. Give her coffee and she'll go away." Luke gave her coffee, but she didn't go away. She told him to hold onto the horoscope and to put it in his wallet. Luke pulls out his wallet and shows Lorelai that he still keeps that horoscope, through a marriage. Maybe if this show were even slightly campy, even a little more like The O.C., then they could get away with the way they treat wedding vows. Then we wouldn't feel icky about Lorelai's leaving Max at the altar, or Luke's elopement and divorce, or CuteDean's cheating on Lindsay, or Christopher's wanting to be with Lorelai when he's got another baby on the way. And this weird way they treat commitment makes it hard to care about any relationship once they do commit, because Lorelai and Rory don't truly want anybody but each other, and destroy anybody who comes close to either of them. Jess got hurt. CuteDean gets repeatedly hurt. Max got hurt. Rune got hurt. The dude from the business school? I can't even remember what happened to him. So now that Lorelai and Luke have "finally" gotten together, it's hard to feel excited for them, because it already seems doomed. It was doomed from their first kiss. This is the last season, surely, and it will end with Lorelai and Rory alone in their house, the inn gone, their boys moved far away, as they settle down to watch Grey Gardens again. (By the way, since that last recap, I've seen that movie. It's terrifying when you see yourself in it, but you will. Oh, but you will.)