Lawrence.com

As the season finale of "The Gilmore Girls" (7 p.m., WB) approaches its last scene, we see Lorelai in the lobby of her bed-and-breakfast surrounded by yellow daisies. Scenes like this pretty much sum up my feelings about this good-natured show.

You can either see it as the sweetest, most romantic family drama in years, or be put off by its overwritten dialogue, too-cute situations and overall atmosphere of trying too hard and saying too much.

In tonight's episode, Cupid takes some serious target practice in the Gilmore household. Lorelai finds Max (Scott Cohen) getting increasingly serious. This makes the local hash-slinger Luke sit up and notice that the pain in his shoulder is from the serious torch he's been carrying for Lorelai all season long. Then things get complicated by the arrival of his old girlfriend Rachel (Lisa Ann Hadley).

Rachel and Lorelai must have been separated at birth because they look and talk alike. They have the same way of sputtering in complete sentences, yammering in whole paragraphs and dithering through pages and pages of overly clever dialogue. Maybe I'm being too harsh here. Maybe we're supposed to love Lorelai like family. Where I come from, it's OK to tell your relatives to shut up every so often.

Edward Herrmann and Kelly Bishop, the two best actors on "The Gilmore Girls," don't appear tonight.

On occasional episodes, they play Lorelai's rich, stuffy parents. They almost make you root for the rich and the stuffy. At least the repressed appreciate the serenity of occasional silence.

l Where are they now? Just in case you forgot about it, "Survivor: Back from the Outback" (7 p.m., CBS) returns to visit the show's participants in their hometowns.

"Weakest Link" (7:30 p.m., NBC) features some of the first "Survivor" cast, including Richard Hatch, Susan Hawk, Dr. Sean Kenniff, Ramona Gray, Gretchen Corty and Joe Klug.

l Hugh Hefner appears on the season finale of "Just Shoot Me" (8:30 p.m., NBC). If you blink, you'll miss him. Most of the action involves Jack's ex-wife, the dim-bulb Allie (Kristin Bauer), who demands a column in the magazine. But what she really wants is her husband back.

Tonight's other highlights

� Mother's Day on "Rugrats" (6:30 p.m., Nickelodeon).

� A chance to see Chandler's gender-bending dad (Kathleen Turner) on "Friends" (7 p.m., NBC).

� Seven single women surprise their non-committed boyfriends on "Surprise Wedding 2" (7 p.m., Fox).

� TV preacher Jimmy Swaggart on "Biography" (7 p.m., A&E).

� On back-to-back episodes of "CSI" (CBS), a severed head does not match a nearby torso (8 p.m.), and a suburban massacre (9 p.m.). The second episode is a repeat.

� Abby looks for good news about her unbalanced mother (Sally Field) on "ER" (9 p.m., NBC).