Month: March 2022

“It should’ve been you!”

EMILY: Christopher gets his life together with that woman.
LORELAI: So, that’s good.
EMILY: It should’ve been you!

Emily is extremely upset when Rory doesn’t come to Friday Night Dinner because she’s having a night out with Sherry. She immediately fears that Sherry will “take Rory away” from them, and is terrified that Christopher and Sherry will obtain weekend custody of Rory. She’s slightly on the old side to be a tug-of-love child at seventeen, and I’m pretty sure you have to pay child support to get even part-time custody of your child, which Christopher has never done.

Emily says she is heartbroken, because she always pictured Lorelai and Christopher being together, so that Rory could finally have two parents. Christopher was never ready to commit and was no kind of provider, but now it looks as if he was capable of settling down and working at a steady job, he just needed to find the right woman.

Completely and cruelly unfairly, Emily now blames Christopher’s general uselessness on Lorelai, saying that if she’d really tried, she could have influenced him to become a better man. Really? At the age of only sixteen, frightened, pregnant, and alone, she should have been responsible for Christopher’s life as well? Lorelai had a baby to care for and support, she didn’t need to take care of Christopher as well (and Rory would have suffered horribly if she did).

Emily is no better than Straub, laying all the responsibility for Christopher’s failure at Lorelai’s feet. It’s a horrible thing to say to her daughter.

Lorelai does admit that she has feelings for Christopher and isn’t happy about Sherry either, but she is trying to focus on doing what’s right, and being happy for Christopher. This unselfishness is roundly condemned by Emily, who goes upstairs to cry on her bed. (Later we find out she did eventually come down to dinner, but sulked all the way through it).

The episode’s title comes from Emily’s outburst to Lorelai, that, “It should’ve been you!”. Note that Emily’s outfit is mostly sad black, with touches of angry red. Lorelai is in grey, trying to remain neutral.

Teepee

CHRISTOPHER: Well, it’s actually gonna come down to whatever we can afford. It might just be a newly built place.
EMILY: With their shoddy craftsmanship? Oh, you don’t want that.
LORELAI: What does that leave them with, Mom – a teepee?

Spelled either tepee, teepee, or tipi. A conical tent, traditionally made from animal skins on wooden poles, with a smoke flap at the top. Historically used by some indigenous peoples of the Great Plains and Canadian Prairies of North America, as well as by some tribes in the Pacific North West. The word itself is from the Lakota language, and means “dwelling”. They are still used by such communities, although more often for ceremonial purposes.

In English, the word teepee was often translated as “lodge”. This is a reminder of the Black Lodge and White Lodge from Twin Peaks, set in the Pacific North West, giving yet another connection to the television show in this episode.

Home & Garden Channel

EMILY: You know historical homes are infested with mold, don’t you? … It gets inside the walls and grows out of sight and shoots off spores that slowly kill you and your family.
LORELAI: You should get a show on the Home & Garden Channel, Mom.

Home & Garden Channel, initialised to HGTV. A cable channel devoted to home and garden issues, with a primary focus on real estate reality shows where people buy, sell, or renovate homes. It was launched in 1994.

HGTV is a cheap and cheerful network which people watch to relax and be soothed. A show on the horrors of killer mould doesn’t sound like something they’d produce.

Historical Places

RICHARD: There are a lot of nice historical places up there [in Boston].
CHRISTOPHER: Something historical in our price range would be perfect.

Richard might be thinking of the historic Back Bay and Beacon Hill neighbourhoods in Boston, famous for their rows of Victorian brownstone terrace houses. Such brownstones can cost millions today, and no wonder Christopher is quick to qualify it as “in our price range”.

When we eventually see Christopher and Sherry’s apartment in Boston, it does look like it’s supposed to be a historic brownstone-ish sort of building, but in a retail/dining area, so presumably cheaper. (It’s just filmed on the Warner Bros lot, it’s not a real apartment).

“Cranking Metallica”

LORELAI: [The Volvo’s] also excellent for cranking Metallica.

RICHARD: Cranking Metallica? … If that’s some sort of drug reference, it isn’t funny.

Lorelai says that Christopher’s Volvo is excellent for “cranking” Metallica, meaning “listening to Metallica loudly on the stereo”. The car really does have a great stereo system, but Lorelai is teasing Christopher, because Metallica is her favourite band, not Christopher’s.

French Lick, Indiana

RICHARD: Everyone thinks that traveling on business is so glamorous but what they don’t realize is that the business traveler never gets to see the places he visits. My last trip to Rome, I spent the whole four days in a conference room by the airport. I might as well have been in French Lick, Indiana.

French Lick is a small town of less than 2000 people in Indiana. It was originally a French trading post built near a salt lick, hence its odd name. It was a spa town in the 19th century, and by the early twentieth century, was known for its casinos, which attracted celebrities. Although its glory days are behind it, it still has a historic hotel resort with a casino and excellent golf facilities.

L’Oreal

RICHARD: Uh, what does [Sherry] do? Does she work?
CHRISTOPHER: Uh, she’s the East Coast sales rep for L’Oreal Cosmetics.

L’Oreal is a French beauty product company headquartered in Clichy, France, with a registered office in Paris. It is the largest cosmetics company in the world. It was founded in 1919 by chemist Eugène Schueller.

The US headquarters of L’Oreal are in New York City, but they certainly employ sales reps in Boston. Christopher says Sherry is the sales rep for the East Coast, as if they have only one! I’m pretty sure Sherry is only a sales rep for L’Oreal. Christopher loves to talk everything about himself up.

This does bring into question whether this business trip is really for Christopher, or was it for Sherry’s work? It seems like it’s actually her job that would involve travel, not his. Bearing in mind his comment about eating at White Castle (which is in New York), it could be that they were in New York for Sherry’s business, then decided to spend the weekend in Connecticut to see Rory. In which case, they could be staying as close as Woodbury, making their travel time to Stars Hollow even more achievable.

Eight Months

EMILY: So how long have you been with this woman?
CHRISTOPHER: Eight months.

Christopher has supposedly been going out with Sherry since July 2001. Something he didn’t bother sharing with Lorelai and Rory until nearly three months later – and only then because they contacted him. Without Lorelai calling him, would Christopher have remained in contact with them at all, or disappeared to Boston to lead a new life with Sherry?

“Hooch is hooch”

RICHARD: Uh, you wanna narrow that [drink order] down for me?
LORELAI: Hooch is hooch, Dad.

Hooch is old-fashioned American slang for hard liquor, which became common during the 1920s and the Prohibition era. It originated in the 19th century, and comes from the Hoochino Indians of Alaska. One small tribe, who called themselves the Hutsnuwu, had a reputation of brewing their own illicit alcohol which was extremely potent (presumably the information on making spirits was taught to them by Europeans, but nobody knows for sure).