Category: S2Ep14: It Should’ve Been Lorelai

“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.

“Aw shucks, Pa”

SHERRY: Mm hmm. Well, you were very poised up there, very sure of yourself, just like your dad.
CHRISTOPHER: And your mom.
LORELAI: Aw shucks, Pa.

Aw, shucks is an informal American exclamation, expressing self-deprecation or a pleased embarrassment at being praised by another, as if modestly declining the compliment. It is considered to be unsophisticated, folksy, and probably rather dated.

Lorelai’s comment sounds very much like a reference to The Andy Griffith Show, previously discussed. In the show, Opie Taylor (played by Ron Howard), is the young son of the town sheriff, Andy Taylor (played by Andy Griffith), who Opie called “Pa”. Many of their interactions ended with Opie saying, “Aw shucks, Pa”.

“I paraphrased Proust”

RORY: Well, having company is about making sacrifices.

LORELAI: Martha Stewart?

RORY: I paraphrased Proust.

Martha Stewart, previously discussed.

Rory refers to Marcel Proust, previously discussed, the author of In Search of Lost Time, a novel in seven volumes.

I’m not sure which part of Proust Rory is paraphrasing from. There are so many times that the author reflects on sacrifices made for other people, and for the benefit of society that it is difficult to choose. However, this sentence from The Guermantes Way, Vol 3 of the novel, stood out for me as possibly reflecting Rory’s feelings:

The same familiar spirit represented to Mme. de Guermantes the social duties of duchesses, of the foremost among them, that was, who like herself were multi-millionaires, the sacrifice to boring tea, dinner and evening parties of hours in which she might have read interesting books, as unpleasant necessities like rain, which Mme. de Guermantes accepted, letting play on them her biting humour, but without seeking in any way to justify her acceptance of them.

Rory also submits to social duties she finds boring, in a way Lorelai doesn’t, but like Mme. de Guermantes, she would probably prefer to be reading “interesting books”, and uses her sense of humour as a coping mechanism to get through them.

That does sound a lot like Rory’s attitude, and if so, suggests she thinks of entertaining her father and his girlfriend as a boring necessity. A big change from the previous season, when she was so thrilled to see Christopher in Stars Hollow. Is it just Sherry making the difference, or is some of the gilt coming off Christopher already?

If this is the source, it means Rory has read at least the first three volumes of In Search of Lost Time.