CAROL: If you were to tell either of my siblings that there was another life choice outside of the Ivy League, I think their khakis would wrinkle.
Khakis, another name for chinos, trousers made from a cotton twill (see Cotton Dockers). Developed in the mid-19th century for British and French military uniforms, it has since migrated into civilian wear. Trousers of such a fabric gained popularity in the US when Spanish–American War veterans returned from the Philippines with their twill military trousers. The fabric was originally made in khaki, and this is still the most popular colour.
RORY: I’ve dreamt of going to Harvard since I was a little girl.
CAROL: Yeah, a lot of four year olds dream of that. It comes right after meeting Harry Potter.
Harry Potter, the schoolboy wizard who is the protagonist of the popular Harry Potter book and film series, the novels written by English author J.K. Rowling, previously mentioned. In the films, he is played by English actor Daniel Radcliffe.
Rory was four years old in 1988-1989, and the first Harry Potter book was published in 1997, so Rory could hardly have been interested in him as a toddler anyway. Presumably Carol is thinking of her young clients in the present day.
There’s a little mistake in the writing here. Rory never actually tells Carol that she’s been dreaming of Harvard since she was four – only that she was a little girl. We know she was four because Lorelai told Max in Season 1, but somehow Carol knows about it too.
CAROL: My brother and sister got stuck on that conveyor belt. I, however, escaped somewhere around the eleventh grade, thank God … Oh, hey, but no offense. I mean, that’s just me. If you like being on the conveyor belt, then good for you.
RORY: I’m not on the conveyor belt.
Rory is definitely on the conveyor belt. Lorelai has been psychologically grooming her for Harvard since she was a toddler, and enrolled her at a private prep school that is a feeder school for Harvard.
Carol says she “escaped” the conveyor belt around eleventh grade, when she was sixteen or seventeen (about the same age Lorelai got pregnant and had to leave school). It’s not clear whether Carol means that she left school around that age to start working, or if she means she refused to begin applying to colleges, and made it clear she wasn’t going to attend university.
RORY: I don’t know. Your parents just made it sound like . . .
CAROL: Like I was holed up in the Chelsea with a needle sticking out of my arm screaming “Sid” at the top of my lungs?
A reference to Nancy Spungen (1958-1978), American girlfriend of English punk rocker Sid Vicious, and a figure of the 1970s punk rock scene. The two of them were habitutal heroin users, and eventually Nancy’s body was found in the bathroom of their room at the Hotel Chelsea in New York, stabbed to death. Sid Vicious died of an overdose before he could be brought to trial.
Their story is told in the film Sid and Nancy, previously discussed [pictured]. Carol seems to have all the same references as Lorelai as well.
CAROL: Stupid manager made me cover for Fiona today. That girl’s a major pie crust.
Pie crust, US slang for someone who is flaky (like pastry), unreliable. An old American proverb is, “Promises are like pie crust, easily broken”, so linking unreliability and pie crust goes back at least to the 19th century.
CAROL: I worship [Tom Waits]. I even mildly stalked him once … Last year, I heard he was staying at this hotel so I went there everyday and sat in the lobby, drinking massive amounts of coffee, waiting for him to walk by.
I can barely speculate which hotel Tom Waits could have been staying in the previous year. The only concert he had in 2001 was one in his home town of San Francisco, and he took a trip to Copenhagen in Denmark early in the year. He attended the ASCAP Awards at the Beverly Hilton in May, which might be what Carol is referring to (if so, she was in Los Angeles at the time for some reason – where the Palladinos live, probably not coincidentally).
Like Lorelai, Carol worships Tom Waits and drinks huge amounts of coffee. Her mild stalking of Waits at a hotel is replicated later by Lorelai, who stalks Bono at his hotel in exactly the same way.
Rory meets Carol Springsteen, the middle daughter of the family who is a year older than Rory and Jennifer, when they run into each other on Rory’s trip back from the bathroom. Rory had earlier seen a photo of Carol and heard her name, but Darren said she was on her “own path” in life. Note that being the middle child is once again posited as being marked out for being “different” in Gilmore Girls.
Rory now discovers that being on her own path just means Carol isn’t attending university, like Jack is and Jennifer will be, but works at a variety of jobs, including waitressing and dressing up as a bunny for children’s parties. Rory says that Carol has a “cool” bedroom – despite not being academically inclined, Carol’s room is filled with serious-looking hardcover books.
It quickly becomes apparent that Carol is another version of Lorelai, who rebels against her upbringing and begins her working life as a teenager. Unlike Lorelai, she didn’t get pregnant in high school, and hasn’t moved out – Darren and Marie don’t really approve of her life choices, but they still support her financially, and she isn’t unhappy enough to run away from home.
Carol is portrayed by Tinsley Grimes (later Webster), who had most recently been on That 80s Show and had a small role in the film The Banger Sisters. Unlike her character here, Tinsley is highly educated. She has a BA in English from UCLA and a Masters of Education in Child Studies from Vanderbilt University. She is currently a medical student at the University of Pittsburgh, and plans to specialise in psychiatry.
This is the music that Rory hears coming from Carol’s bedroom.
“Big in Japan” is the opening track on the 1999 Tom Waits album, Mule Variations. The album received widespread critical acclaim and was a modest commercial success, going to #30 in the US, #9 in the UK, and most popular in Norway at #1. Ironically, it wasn’t big in Japan, and didn’t chart there. Mule Variations won a Grammy for Best Contemporary Folk Album, and is regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time.
A round-robin tournament is one in which each contestant meets with every other contestant, usually in turn. It’s usually the fairest way of deciding an overall winner, but can be very lengthy. They are common in team sports – Darren’s love of sports might have prompted this idea. The word robin in this context is a corruption of the French word ruban, meaning “ribbon”.
Oddly, Marie (played by Anita Finlay, who, like her onscreen husband and children, had also been on Judging Amy) is never shown taking part in the quizzes or being expected to, as if her role is simply to bring out iced tea and say Darren is brilliant. It doesn’t seem very likely – surely Marie is also a college graduate? Perhaps we just never see her have her turn, and she takes her part during the round-robin tournament.
Lorelai looks very unhappy to be roped into the round-robin tournament. Jennifer looks like Christmas has come early, and Jack looks like he’s forcing himself to smile. I get the feeling he’s not quite as into the competitive quizzes as Jennifer. He doesn’t seem to be as good at them.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 