It was pretty groundbreaking at the time for W. K. L. Dickson to attempt creating a narrative film in eight different episodes telling the story of Rip van Winkle. And since the multi-scene film hadn't been invented yet, it would be silly to blame the director for the disjointed look of each segment. The end result, while not exactly well-told, does a fairly good job with storytelling and works quite well for 1896.
"Rip's Toast", the first segment, (and also the most stand-alone film of the series) basically introduces the title character as a drunkard toasting with one of his comrades. Like I said before, looking at each segment individually you won't find much unless you put them together to create the narrative, so it's best to look at them compiled in sequence to fully understand what they were going for. This is probably one of the main reasons why the company decided to edit them together to make a 'full-length' film in 1903. Even then, the entire series wouldn't really be of much interest to anyone now except film buffs or historians, and is mostly entertaining from a historical perspective now.
