The Doose clan invades the Inn for their family reunion; Trix comes for a short visit and drives Emily crazy until Emily finally finds something scandalous to hold over Trix's head; Lane and Dave cook up a fake-date scheme with Young Chui to get Mrs. Kim to allow Lane to date Dave, but neither Young Chui's real girlfriend or Dave is immune to a little jealousy; the Stars Hollow High hockey team reaches the regional semifinals for the first time in 40 years and everyone not attending the monster truck rally turns out to cheer the team on and endure Kirk's hopelessly inept play-by-play; after Jess's too laid-back attitude about going out leaves Rory sitting home alone for most of the weekend, she takes Lorelai's advice and heads for the hockey game, where she discovers that Dean has a new girlfriend.

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

On their first free Friday night, Lorelai and Rory are at a loss over how to spend the evening, while Emily and Richard cavort at the party they're hosting; Lorelai is appointed Grad Night Treasurer and runs into a playing-it-cool Max at her first Chilton Booster Club meeting; Lane's band gets their first gig at a party and rocks the house, but Dave rocks Lane's world when he flips out after discovering that Young Chui is in love with her; a despondent Lane indulges in a little too much beer, and then drunkenly calls her mother and confesses all; when staff cutbacks at the Inn force Lorelai to do turn-down service, she becomes very unsettled at seeing a cozy Luke and Nicole in the room she's offered as thanks for Luke's help with repairs after the fire; Jess's inability to tell Rory that his frequent absences have caused him to flunk out of school and miss graduation and the prom prompts an argument between Jess and Rory, and then a full-blown brawl with Dean after Dean comes upon a te

Back home for the weekend, Rory has an uncomfortable encounter with Dean, her ex, and ends up getting invited to his wedding the next day. Meanwhile, Lorelai and Sookie visit Michel at his trendy new workplace, but run into problems getting the permit they need to begin construction on the inn.

Kirk branches out from dog sitting for Lulu into a new canine-centered career; Paris goes into germ-phobic overdrive when Rory gets a cold; Lane gets an apartment with Zach and Brian and faces a frigid reception from her aunt and mother, and an overly-eager, non-stop-talking cousin when she packs up her things and moves out; when they realize that their relationship is increasingly being conducted over email and the phone, Lorelai and Rory decide to play hooky and go window shopping in the mall, where they run into Emily in the middle of a shopping binge meltdown; Luke lends Lorelai the thirty thousand dollars she needs to finish construction on the Inn; after Emily confesses that the shopping binge and bickering with Richard stems from her anger at being ignored, neglected, and made to feel useless by her husband, Lorelai reassures her of how much she's accomplished and urges her to talk to Richard, but Emily can't seem to make the connection with her husband she so desperately desire

Luke makes a bigger fuss than Davey when Sookie and Jackson bring their son into the diner; all of Stars Hollow is amused when Taylor returns from his Caribbean cruise with a drastic change in his appearance; Richard and Emily are stunned when Floyd informs them that Lorelai and Jason have been dating for months; Luke comes to the rescue when Kirk's failure to make a map of the Easter eggs he hid in the town square gets Taylor's nose out of joint; Richard and Jason discover that Floyd's peacemaking overtures are a disguise for his plan to ruin Richard financially by suing them for stealing his clients; while shopping with Lane in Doose's, Rory has harsh words about Lindsay as she relates her quarrel with Dean over his plans to drop out of college to earn more money to buy a house, unaware that his wife is listening in the next aisle; Richard resolves his problems with Floyd at Jason's expense; Dean and Rory agree to continue their friendship despite Lindsay's demand that they stop spea

Jackson's devotion to his wife and her famous zucchini soup set the stage for the perfect antidote to the stress surrounding the opening of the Inn; Luke unwittingly comes to the rescue when Sookie tries to set Lorelai up with the poultry supplier; Liz returns to Stars Hollow to announce that she's getting married in the town square in a week; Paris and Asher decide to travel to England together during the summer; T.J. has a tumultuous bachelor party; at Luke's request, Jess changes his mind about attending his mother's wedding and returns to Stars Hollow for the festivities; Rory tries to hide her discomfort when Lorelai tells her about overhearing a fight between Dean and Lindsay; a self-help tape helps Luke clarify his thinking, and a talk with Jess gets him started on the path to having the relationship he's been looking for all along.

Things are still testy between Lorelai and Rory, and Rory's refusal to discuss the Dean situation causes Lorelai anguish; Emily announces that she and Richard have separated; Sookie is ecstatic when Kirk tells her that Luke and Lorelai kissed; Rory's attempt to meet Dean and discuss what happened leads to a lot of action, but no talk; Dean provokes an argument with Lindsay after leaving Rory's house; Emily decides to go to Europe and invites Rory to accompany her; Lorelai and Luke are very tentative with each other the day after until they are able to reassure each other that they're on the right path; Luke heads off to Maine for a week to help Liz and T.J. with their Ren Faire booth; Rory decides that she needs a break from both Dean and her mother, and decides to take her grandmother up on her invitation to go to Europe.

T.J. is milking his injuries for all he's worth, but Luke decides that it's time to go home after seven weeks on the Ren Faire circuit; Rory calls to apologize and to ask her mother to deliver a letter to Dean; Sookie accurately diagnoses Lorelai with a bad case of management burnout, and the two friends decide to decompress with a girls-day-out; Emily and Rory come home exhausted from fending off the attentions of randy European men; Michel is wildly unenthusiastic when he's pressed into babysitting for guests whose children take an inexplicable shine to him; after Lindsay finds Rory's letter, she throws Dean and all his possessions out of the house, and her mother has an angry confrontation with Lorelai in the town square; Lane realizes that she's falling for Zack; Rory is saddened when Dean expresses regret for the shift in their relationship and the harm it caused to his wife and their families.