Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: It’s as close as you’ll ever come to being a dog.
EMILY: I beg your pardon?
LORELAI: You know, a whole life of nothing but eating, sleeping, lying on your back and getting rubbed.
EMILY: I’d love the comparison to stop there.
Emily probably asks Lorelai to stop comparing her to a dog because she’s thinking the next thing on the list is cleaning her own private areas with her tongue! Or that Lorelai is getting perilously close to calling her mother a “bitch”.
EMILY: It was for charity, I had to bid on something. And I certainly didn’t want another portrait of George Washington. I’ve got four in the attic already.
George Washington (1732-1799), soldier, statesmen, and Founding Father who served as the first President of the United States from 1789 to 1797. Commander of the Continental Army he led the Patriot forces to victory during the American Revolutionary War, and presided over the 1797 convention which established the Constitution of the United States, and its federal government. He has been called “the Father of the Nation” for his leadership during the formative days of the country.
His legacy endures as one of the most influential people in American history, and his birthday has been a federal holiday in the US since 1879, celebrated on the third Monday in February. The Washington Monument in Washington DC is an obelisk built in his honour, his face is one of the four presidents carved into Mount Rushmore, while Washington state is the only US state to be named after a president. George Washington appears on the one dollar bill, and appeared on the nation’s first postage stamps in 1847.
George Washington was the husband of First Lady Martha Washington, previously discussed.
EMILY: I wanted to know if you’d like a gift certificate for a weekend at the Birch Grove Spa.
A fictional spa. In real life, there are several luxury spas in Connecticut where Emily and Lorelai could have gone. The Mayflower Inn in Washington Depot, which provided inspiration for the Independence in Stars Hollow, has luxury spa facilities [pictured], but I think they were introduced at the inn a year or two after the date of this episode.
LUKE: The ceiling’s falling in. I’ve got customers eating drywall here.
Drywall is a North American term for the building material which is elsewhere known as plasterboard, gyprock, or gypsum board – panels made from gypsum sandwiched between paper, used in the construction of interior walls and ceilings. The plaster is mixed with fibres and various additives that reduce mildew, flammability, and water absorption.
We open with the diner in disarray, because Luke’s apartment that he bought in the previous episode is still under construction. In real life, it usually takes months for the sale of a property to go through so you can begin work on it, but this is television, and Luke is already in the middle of renovations.
Jess, wearing a construction helmet, chivalrously brings Rory an umbrella to shield her from the mess. Although Luke gets cranky about Jess making fun of the situation, the umbrella saves Rory from being hit by debris just a minute or so later.
This is the first official sighting of Tom the Contractor, although it is the same actor (Biff Yeager) who played Tom who was the foreman at Rebuilding Together in Hartford where Rory did volunteer work. They have the same name and personality, and obviously look the same, so it seems perfectly possible that they are actually the same character. This is never confirmed, however.
It’s not clear how much time has passed since the previous episode, but Luke complains to Tom about the renovation taking another week, and in 2002 Easter was at the end of March, so perhaps three weeks have gone by and it’s now early April (Thursday 4th April). I won’t be able to keep blog entries in step with events in the show, or I will run out of time. Time gets very stretchy in the last few episodes of the season!
The title for this episode comes from the phrase, “there’s the rub”, to mean that there is a problem or contradiction which is difficult or impossible to resolve. It’s also a pun, because Lorelai and Emily are going to a spa to receive massages, or to be “rubbed”.
The phrase is believed to have originated from the sport of lawn bowls, played since ancient times, and known in England since at least the 13th century. A ball (known as a bowl) is rolled toward a smaller stationary ball, called a jack. The object is to roll one’s bowls so that they come to rest nearer to the jack than those of an opponent. A rub is a flaw in the playing surface that interferes with the ball’s trajectory.
The saying was popularised by William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. In the soliloquy scene, as Hamlet is contemplating suicide, he says, “To sleep; perchance to dream: ay, there’s the rub: for in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?”.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 