“He and I never met”

CHRISTOPHER: Well, [Max] and I never met. I didn’t even know he existed until late in the game. Hell, I didn’t even know you were engaged until you called me from your bachelorette party. And I wasn’t invited to the wedding – or did my invitation get lost in the mail?
LORELAI: Well, you’ve moved a lot this past year.

Lorelai and Max’s relationship moved extremely quickly and they had a significant break from it. When they got back together, they got engaged almost immediately. In fact, Lorelai only seems to call Christopher from her bachelorette party in hopes of getting talked out of it (in which case, mission accomplished).

It is interesting she never told Christopher though, considering that she was going right through her address book to tell distant relatives and the man who did her shower that she and Max were back together. Maybe she didn’t want to get talked out of it that soon. I suspect if she had sent him an invitation, it would have gone to the wrong address, and he would’ve been a no-show (again).

Christopher is getting awfully huffy about this neglect, but by the time Lorelai phones him to say she is getting married, we find out later he is already with Sherry – something which he hid from Lorelai. It looks very much as if Lorelai’s news pushed him into committing Sherry faster than he otherwise would have.

“Was Sherry with you?”

LORELAI: When I invited you to Rory’s debate, was Sherry with you?
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, of course. She’s been with me the whole trip. Why?
LORELAI: It’s just that you gave me no indication that she was with you.

Lorelai is quite reasonably suspicious of Christopher’s motives and behaviour. He came into their lives six months ago, only telling them he had a girlfriend just before he left. Once again, he has weaselled his way into their lives without mentioning that Sherry was going to be with him.

Would Lorelai have invited him to Rory’s debate if she knew Sherry was coming too? Probably not. Christopher would no doubt say that justifies his lies of omission, so he can see Rory – although he only seems to want to see her so he can impress Sherry with what a great father he is.

Handball

LANE: Bible class has been moved an hour later, all to accommodate the reverend’s handball schedule.

In America, handball is a sport where players use their hands to hit a small rubber ball against a wall; it is sometimes called wallball. The idea is to hit the wall with the ball in such a way that your opponent is unable to do the same without hitting the ground twice, or hitting it out of bounds. The game is played on a small court, similar to a squash court. It is possible that the high school gym is used for handball in Stars Hollow.

The first historical record of someone hitting a ball against a wall with their hand is from Scotland in 1427, when King James I was a keen player. The game in America may go back to the American Revolution, but the earliest mention of the modern game is from San Francisco in 1873.

In the next season, we discover the Seventh Day Adventist pastor is named Reverend Melmim, although in real life, Seventh Day Adventist pastors aren’t actually addressed as “Reverend”.

It seems that even though Lane is grounded so badly she isn’t allowed to leave home, even to attend school, she is allowed to go to Bible class with her mother (and presumably, church). Later in the episode, we discover Bible class is on Saturday morning.

As Mrs Kim told Stars Hollow High that Lane had an infectious disease and was too sick to go to school, letting her out to attend Bible class seems like something the school would get to hear about.

“Swing by around six”

SHERRY: So we’ll swing by around six?
RORY: Oh, sounds good.

The debate at Chilton started at 3.30 pm, and presumably finished no earlier than 4.05 pm, the end of the school day. Lorelai and Rory talked to Christopher and Sherry after the debate, and then they had a half-hour drive back to Stars Hollow. Say they got home at 4.45 pm, and have entertained Christopher and Sherry for about half an hour, it should be around 5.15 pm by now. Christopher and Sherry now have 45 minutes to drive back to Litchfield, get ready to go out, then drive back to Stars Hollow. Assuming a 20 minute travel time between Litchfield and Stars Hollow (the distance between Litchfield and Waterbury, and Litchfield and Washington Depot), they have only five minutes to get ready before getting back in the car.

It is very, very tight, but unlike other fantasy timescales in Gilmore Girls, this one is actually doable. Just.

White Castle

SHERRY: Great. Oh, of course this does leave you a sad little orphan.
CHRISTOPHER: Oh, that’s okay. I’ll have one of my patented White Castle bachelor dinners.

White Castle, a hamburger restaurant chain in the US operating in 13 states, mostly in New York and the Midwest. It is credited as the world’s first fast-food hamburger chain, founded in Wichita, Kansas, in 1921 by Walt Anderson and Billy Ingram. Anderson is credited as the inventor of the hamburger bun, while Ingram’s business savvy helped popularise the hamburger. The chain is still owned by the Ingram family.

In real life, the nearest White Castle restaurant to Litchfield is in Nanuet, New York, almost two hours drive away. Possibly Christopher is simply using the name to mean he’ll be grabbing a burger somewhere, or eating at a chain restaurant.

Wednesday Nights

SHERRY: And he told me about how he wasn’t really a presence in her life for years and how he’d like to make up for all that time that he wasted.
LORELAI: Well, he’s been doing really well lately.
SHERRY: I know. He is obsessive about his call dates to her. I mean, it doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing, he’s gotta call Rory Wednesday nights at seven o’clock. I like that about him.

We learn here that Christopher has been phoning Rory every Wednesday at 7 pm since the debutante ball, after years of neglect. It seems a bit suspicious he only became so conscientious when he got with Sherry, as if he’s mainly doing it to impress his girlfriend.

It’s not clear when the Wednesday night phone calls initially started. After Christopher visited them in March 2001, Rory asked for him to phone more often. That could have been when the Wednesday calls were implemented, but if so, there was a big break during the summer, as Christopher moved to Boston then without ever letting Lorelai and Rory know, and they only resumed contact in September 2001.

Martin Sheen

LORELAI: I think we probably would’ve met eventually.
SHERRY: Perhaps, at some function or other.
LORELAI: Yeah – you, me, Martin Sheen, all chained to the same tree.

Ramón Estévez (born 1940), award-winning actor known professionally as Martin Sheen. He first became known for his work in The Subject Was Roses (1968), and later achieved recognition for his leading role in Apocalypse Now (1979). He played President Josiah Bartlett in the television series The West Wing (1999-2006). He has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Martin Sheen has been active in countless non-violent acts of civil disobedience, and been arrested for protesting 66 times. He has rallied for peace, gun control, and in support of immigration, and protested against nuclear power, nuclear weapons testing, dangerous arms buildup, abuse of farmworkers, Canadian sealclubbing, the invasion of Iraq, and numerous other environmental, political, and social causes.

Lorelai jokes that the function she and Sherry might have met at could have been at an environmental protest against logging with Martin Sheen. Of course, Sherry is thinking of functions at Chilton.

Peppermint stick

SHERRY: Except that our colors were white and bright red. I looked hideous.
CHRISTOPHER: Oh, she’s being self-deprecating. You looked cute in that outfit.
SHERRY: No no, I looked like a peppermint stick. I swear, that’s where my addiction to clothes comes from. Trying to make up for all the years of having to wear the same thing every day.

A peppermint stick is a long stick of hard candy with peppermint flavouring, traditionally coloured with red and white stripes. They were developed in the US, and are often marketed as an “old fashioned” or traditional candy. They have been sold since at least 1837, when they were shown at an exhibition in Massachusetts, and were popular by the 1860s. By the early 1900s, they were already viewed nostalgically.

I don’t know of any private school in the US which has a bright red and white uniform. Note Sherry’s implication that she was very slim as a schoolgirl, when she compares herself to a skinny peppermint stick.

“Waves get really still”

RORY: That was just my mom being funny.

LORELAI: Yeah, it comes and goes. You’ll learn to notice the signs.
CHRISTOPHER: The waves get really still, the animals start to act funny.

Christopher humorously compares Lorelai’s sense of humour to natural disasters, as if it is a force of nature. The waves of the sea become calm just before a storm hits, while animals are said to act strangely before an earthquake.

Chaps

SHERRY: And your uniform is darling, really. I love the blue. Of course, I’m sure you look good in anything.
LORELAI: Oh yeah, you should see her in chaps.

Chaps are sturdy coverings for the legs consisting of leggings and a belt, usually made from leather, designed to protect the trousers of a horse rider from scratches against plants and branches. They are particularly associated with cowboys and the American Wild West, and originated in southern Spain, where they were brought to Mexico, and then adopted by American cowboys. They were common in Texas by the 1870s at least.