Richard opens a new office and hires a secretary with Lorelai's help; Dean comes home; Lane falls in love with a drum set at Stars Hollow's new music shop and discovers that becoming a rock drummer is her new dream in life; Rory is dismayed to discover that everyone blames Jess for the accident despite her protestations; to the consternation of all in Stars Hollow, Luke closes the diner and goes fishing.

A fire at the Independence Inn forces Lorelai to relocate its guests to her own house and those of her friends, and leaves her spending the night at Luke's, where she reveals her dream of being married to him and pregnant with their twins; Sookie invades Luke's with staff in tow to prepare breakfast for the Inn's guests, and gets into a culinary groove with Luke after a rocky start; questions arise about Jess's attendance at school when he receives the Employee of the Month award from WalMart and Luke discovers that he's working there more than full time; Lorelai and Rory start picking up on weird and somewhat unfriendly vibes coming from Nicole and Lindsay; Rory visits Paris, who's missed five days of school to take to her bed and hide from the world, and prompts her to stop watching soaps, call Jamie, tell her parents about Harvard, get a life plan, and rejoin the land of the living; after making extensive pro-con lists in an effort to decide whether to attend Harvard, Yale, or Princ

Emily and Richard rejoice when Rory announces her decision to attend Yale; Kirk sustains baking-related injuries when Rory secretly enlists the help of her fellow Stars Hollows citizens to bake the world's largest pizza for her mother's birthday party; Michel and Tobin compete over giving Lorelai the best present, but Richard wins the contest hands-down with a check for $75,000 that's actually the proceeds from an investment he made in Lorelai's name at her birth; Luke confronts Jess about skipping school to work at Wal-Mart, but is blown off as usual; when Lorelai decides to use the money to pay back her parents for Rory's Chilton tuition, Emily becomes furious with Richard for giving Lorelai the money, fearing that the repayment of their loan is a sign that she'll never see either Lorelai or Rory again; Luke makes a bad impression on Nicole's parents, scaring them off with a rant on the horrors of parenting Jess.