Or the one with Norman Mailer. For a show that I'd still (marginally) regard as one of television's most underrated, convincing a grumpy old – but monumentally celebrated – anti-establishment journo-novelist to stretch his suspenders and guest star on the latest episode of Gilmore Girls is a coup indeed. Mailer was last seen in any sort of line-learning role in Cremaster 2 as Harry Houdini; here, he plays himself in a series of interviews with one especially privileged journalist.

The fictional premise all takes place in Lorelai's new Inn – the Dragonfly – where Norman Mailer likes to bring Gore Vidal, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and the rest of the world's literati to hang, apparently. In real life, beyond the pop cultural, intellectually-savvy vacuum that is Star's Hollow (the town these crazy people live in), Lauren Graham (the leggy brunette who plays our Lorelai) probably knows little about Norman Mailer, let alone his physical appearance. Only in TV land, does she recognise him by way of her super-fly daughter, Rory (Alexis Bledel), who read The Naked and the Dead when she was still wearing footsie pajamas.

The problem with this episode – and on a more alarming note, the show on a whole – is that Rory never actually meets Big Norm. And if you know Rory, then you know she's the kind of girl who'd wave pompoms for Christian Amanpour; convince you to read The Fountainhead over of Hunter S. Thompson; petition for the release of Burmese political prisoners instead of frat-partying it at a wet t-shirt contest during Spring Break. What's more, Rory writes for the Yale Daily News (she's an Ivy League student, no shit), and is in charge of features this year. She's stumped on what to run with: either the unionisation of janitorial staff, a piece on Yale's "Liberal Activist Network", or the issue of illegal music downloads. Opting for the relative safety of the *yawn* music angle, we know she's bound to hit a dead end here, and the show's writers are sadistic in that way because all they really want is a context to punch out as many shrewd references as they can to Joy Division, Nick Cave and The Cure in the space of a single sentence.

So after learning the hard way that illegal downloads have been done to death, Rory finds herself again without a story. Cue Lorelai on the cellphone with the Norman Mailer scoop, right? Not quite. What's wrong with this picture is that, 1) Lorelai knows Rory would kill for an exclusive on Mailer for her feature, 2) mom crams so much content into her average word-to-inhale ratio that it's unlikely she would ever leave something out like that, and 3) Rory predictably stumbles upon something juicier – a secret Yale society, no less – thus making it the subject of her editorial, and establishing an all-too-rosy crossover subplot into next week's episode where she'll no doubt crack the story and encounter the murmurings of yet another boy-girl fatal attraction with the rich, white and privileged Logan Huntzberger: a sort of male Paris Hilton, and Rory's key lead into the Skull and Bones club.

Gilmore Girls is a Warner Bros. show, so it exists within its own insulated universe where everyone talks as if they need a prescription of Ritalin, and where issues of conflict, family and relationships – whether big, small or super-sized – are resolved with stunning ease. What makes – or should I say, made – the show interesting was that both Lorelai and Rory had their own parallel sub-universes in which they dated guys and pondered life, but also defied the space time continuum with by allowing them to regularly collide in a Big Bang of junk food and legendary bad movies. Part way through season five, their timelines aren't so much intertwined anymore, but untangled, which is unfortunately slowly clogging the arteries of a heart that has always belonged in the bosom of these two girls. The dialogue – the "reason" I give people when they want to know why I watch something so not of my demographic – is still mostly as brilliant as ever, so I'm praying that it doesn't diminish along with Lorelai and Rory's dangerously eroding pact. If it did, watching Gilmore Girls would be like saying I watch McLeod's Daughters (which I don't, for god's sake). As far as I see it, the Norman Mailer factor was a perfect opportunity for Rory to ditch the varnished New Haven Connecticut-chic of Yale, and return to Star's Hollow for some quality small town time with friends, family and an American literary icon – but alas, it wasn't to be. Instead, we get Sookie – the Dragonfly's bottle rocket chef – blurting to the poor man in hysterical-woman-speak the words: "NORMAN MAILER, I'M PREGNANT!" So much for that idea.—Tim Wong

» Amy Sherman-Palladino | USA | 2000-2005+