I’m aware that this isn’t the hottest possible take, given that Alexis Bledel already won an Emmy for her role in the first season of The Handmaid’s Tale—but her performance in Season 3 Episode 2, “Mary and Martha”, was incredibly acute and powerful. Too many (ok, yes, fine, not enough) rewatchings of Gilmore Girls have contributed to making this more surprising for me than it perhaps should be, but, wow:

The entire emotional arc of the episode is carried by the camera lingering on the tension and anticipated grief and implied, learned suffering that she carries in her face. One loooong shot after another, unrelieved by overbearing soundtrack or the other devices prestige TV uses when it can’t trust its actors to carry their weight, she builds up the self-doubt and uncertainty that stand in the way of an otherwise obvious denouement, one which probably seemed like a foregone conclusion at the end of the previous season.

Her performance lets do the show do what it does at its best, imbuing completely banal interactions with painfully expressive weight, letting an overhead shot of a car blocking traffic become a heart-breaking emblem of connection.

I cried, ok? The car made me cry.