Rory stresses out about being too far behind on extracurriculars, which puts a strain on her relationship with Dean; Henry expresses an interest in dating Lane; Richard and Rory patch up their differences; hurt over being the last to know, Emily gives Lorelai a frigid reception when her daughter finally tells her the good news; all of Stars Hollow turns out for Lorelai's and Max's engagement party.

When Emily and Lorelai go to a spa for a weekend of relaxation, Emily lets her hair down, kicks up her heels and ends up bonding with Lorelai in a way that only her daughter could inspire.

Thrilled that she has the house all to herself, Rory hopes to spend a quiet night at home doing laundry and eating Indian food. Her plans are foiled -- first by Paris, then by Jess, and finally by Dean. In the process, she discovers that she has a surprising savior, a secret suitor, and a skeptical sweetheart.

Rory's application for Harvard arrives, plunging Rory, Lorelai and Emily into a frenzy; a Chilton seminar on college applications only adds to Rory's anxiety and sends Paris into a tizzy; Taylor steamrolls Luke into opening a soda shop next to the diner; Lane places an ad in the paper for a band and finds a musical soulmate; Lorelai and Rory have dinner with a Harvard alumni and his family which may assure her chances of acceptance; Dean has a talk with Rory about their future after she goes to Harvard.

Luke is opposed to having Taylor's attorney Nicole oversee the paperwork for the construction of the new soda shop until he meets the attractive redhead, who takes as immediate a shine to Luke as he does to her; Lane's clever scheme to get her mother's permission to attend the prom horribly backfires; Luke offers to teach Lorelai the fine art of angling after Alex invites her to go fishing; Rory and Lorelai clear out their garage for Lane's band and Lorelai gains a new admirer from the band; Lane and Rory have some hearts-to-hearts about the men in their lives; Paris's ratcheting up the conflict between her and Rory when she calls for Rory's impeachment by the student council is brought to a swift end by Headmaster Charleston, who threatens to revoke the glowing letters he wrote to Harvard for each of them.

Luke and Nicole have a successful first date; Jess and Dean trade verbal blows; Sherry goes into labor with only Lorelai and Rory for company; Lorelai reminisces about her pregnancy and Rory's birth; Lorelai introduces Emily to modern entertainment technology; Richard and Emily decry Lorelai's and Rory's plans to backpack through Europe; the war between Paris and Rory continues when Paris picks a photo of the ""Franklin"" staff for the yearbook that has the worst possible shot of Rory.

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.

Emily offers Lorelai and Sookie the job of catering the party to launch Richard's new business venture, then runs them ragged with demands. Meanwhile, at school, Rory finds that her roommates' activities are preventing her from studying.

When Trix returns to town and berates Lorelai and Richard for being financial failures, Richard angrily sets his mother straight, to Emily's delight; Lorelai and Sookie explore ways to ease their financial crunch and raise money to pay their construction crew, one of whom is now Dean; Janet and Paris go head-to-head over the constant presence of Janet's boyfriend in the suite; Lorelai and Rory play an increasingly frustrating game of telephone tag; after Paris, Tanna, and Janet complain about close quarters in the suite, Lane moves out of the dorm and in with Lorelai, and gets her job back at Luke's; Lorelai and Sookie have a heated discussion about sharing the responsibilities of opening their inn; Rory is distraught when one of her professors tells her to drop a class because she can't handle her course load; Lane runs into her mother and receives a frosty reception; at the end of a very long, hard day, Lorelai and Rory still can't manage to connect, and end up taking solace in the

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.

Momentous changes are in the air as: the Dragonfly Inn approaches opening day by having a shakedown weekend; Rory and Dean take a major step forward in their relationship, to Lorelai's dismay; Emily and Richard admit that they're separated; Kirk decides to let Lulu in on the deep, dark secret of his night terrors; Jason appears at the Inn to plead his case with Lorelai, to no avail; Luke answers Lorelai's question about the status of their relationship when he makes it passionately clear to Lorelai that they're dating, to which she enthusiastically agrees.

Sookie creates a S'mores wedding cake, so what more does Lorelai need to set a date? Logan comes home, Lane and the band come home and Paul Anka eats three pounds of chocolate while under Luke's care.