Category: S2Ep22: I Can’t Get Started

Lorelai Invites Christopher to the Wedding

Lorelai invites Christopher (another woman’s boyfriend!) to Sookie and Jackson’s wedding, as her “plus one”. At last her interest is piqued when he casually accepts this invitation, and she asks him if maybe he should run this plan past Sherry.

Christopher tells her that Sherry is out of town (as if that has somehow negated her very existence), and that they haven’t been getting on very well lately. Before she left on a business trip – more evidence that it was Sherry’s business trip they were on before, not Christopher’s, by the way – they agreed that they would take this time apart as an opportunity to do some thinking about their relationship.

This is all Christopher’s narrative of course, we don’t know if all, or any, of this is true, or if Sherry would have a different version of events. However, Christopher says he had already decided that he is going to start looking for an apartment so he can move out. Even though Christopher and Sherry are not actually broken up yet and Christopher has not told Sherry he’s moving out, nor has he made any moves to do so, Lorelai is now perfectly satisfied about taking Christopher to the wedding.

Note that Christopher hands Lorelai his coat to put over her bare shoulders, and that she sits increasingly closer to him during this scene, as he tells her about Sherry. She keeps her leg crossed away from him though, as if not ready to be completely vulnerable to him. We also get another reminder that the wedding is on Sunday, in case we’ve forgotten about it.

Gloria Allred

LORELAI: How dare you accuse my face of that! My face is calling Gloria Allred when we get home.

Gloria Allred (born Gloria Bloom in 1947), attorney known for taking high-profile and controversial cases, especially those involving the protection of women. She represented Nicole Brown Simpson’s family during the O.J. Simpson murder trial in 1995. She has been inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame.

Brigadoon

CHRISTOPHER: Please, I saw what your face was doing … It was counting up how many Brigadoon references you could come up with to torture him with at a later date.

Brigadoon, a 1954 musical film directed by Vicente Minelli, based on the 1949 Broadway musical of the same name by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe. The film stars Gene Kelly, Van Johnson, and Cyd Charisse and is about two American tourists on a hunting trip in Scotland who get lost in the woods and discover a miraculous village named Brigadoon, which rises out of the mists for one day every hundred years.

The film received lacklustre reviews and failed at the box office – unlike the stage musical, which was a big success.

Jackson Has to Wear a Kilt to the Wedding

Jackson is dismayed when his father hands him a kilt to wear to his wedding on the weekend. It’s a family tradition, and both Jackson’s father and grandfather were married in kilts, suggesting that the Belleville family have Scottish heritage. (Which made more sense when Jackson’s surname was Melville, which is a Scottish surname, while Belleville is French – although there is a historical relationship between France and Scotland, so it’s not unrealistic either).

I am not able to identify Jackson’s tartan – it looks most like a Buchanan Clan tartan, but I suspect it’s fictional.

Note that Jackson’s father is played by the real life father of Jackson Douglas, the actor who plays Jackson Belleville.

Sookie and Jackson’s Rehearsal Dinner

LORELAI: But if you’re gonna be in the area Thursday night, you can come with us to the dinner.

CHRISTOPHER: But it’s Sookie’s rehearsal dinner.

LORELAI: Oh, she would love it. She’s cooking for a thousand. It’ll be fun.

Sookie and Jackson’s wedding rehearsal dinner is on Thursday, and Lorelai invites Christopher to it, since he already offered to take Lorelai and Rory out to dinner that night. The Gilmore girls are strangely un-curious about how and why Christopher is suddenly so available for outings with them, and neither bothers to ask where Sherry is, or why she isn’t coming too.

Note we get another day of the week reference to keep us on track. The wedding rehearsal is Thursday, the elections are Friday, the wedding is on Sunday. Got it?

Junior Leadership Program in Washington

RORY: But if I win then I have to be vice president next year. Plus, I’ll have to spend my summer in Washington for some junior leadership program, which means six straight weeks of me and Paris together in a dorm room.

The program that Rory and Paris will be attending in Washington DC during their summer vacation seems to be similar to the real life Global Young Leaders Conference, where high school students from the US and around the world learn communication, decision-making, and negotiation while interacting with real life leaders, diplomats, lobbyists, and journalists. There are also visits to embassies and cultural landmarks.

Unlike the six weeks Rory has in front of her, the real life program only lasts for ten days, students are housed in a hotel, not a dormitory, and it costs thousands of dollars to attend. Rory never even mentions paying, so perhaps Chilton are footing the bill, or Rory and Paris will be offered scholarships.

Hillary Clinton

RORY: Um, actually, I have to get home. I have to review my campaign platform …

LORELAI: Yes, our little Hillary Clinton here is running for student body vice president.

Hillary Clinton (born Hillary Rodham in 1947), former First Lady of the US from 1993-2001 as the wife of President Bill Clinton. In 2000, she was elected as the first female senator for New York, becoming the first First Lady to hold elected office and the first to serve in the Senate.

In a later season, we learn that Hillary Clinton is one of Rory’s heroines.

Rory Gets Her Cast Removed

When Rory got her cast put on, the doctor said she would need to keep it on for two weeks, but it’s actually been three weeks since the night of the car accident when she gets the cast removed.

Lorelai takes Rory to Dr Ronald Sue, a specialist in orthopaedic medicine – who has an office in Stars Hollow, quite unbelievably. It feels like in Season 1, the writers tried to create a small town in New England that might be a little quirky, or niche, or even slightly magical, but was still a place you could convince yourself might almost exist.

Now it’s only Season 2, but already they are throwing anything into Stars Hollow that suits the plot, so this little town of less than 10 000 people has multiple takeout options which all deliver, a 24-hour pharmacy, a hospital, and an orthopaedic specialist. It feels like very lazy world-building. In this case it seems especially pointless, because there’s no reason Lorelai couldn’t have picked Rory up from school and taken her to an appointment with Dr Sue in Hartford.

Christopher invites himself to the medical appointment, announcing to everyone with self-importance that he’s “the father”, as if Rory has just been born, or like anyone cares. He’s driven from Boston to watch a minor two-minute medical procedure, and now he … drives back again? That makes perfect sense. Is it a hint he isn’t actually in Boston at this point?

Rory wears a red and black tee shirt which says STRANGE 13 to her appointment, as a nice callback to her Emily the Strange sticker.