Footnotes to the TV series
JESS: IRS.
NICOLE: I’m not IRS.
IRS, the Internal Revenue Service. It is responsible for collecting US federal taxes, and is an agency of the Department of Treasury.
Jess assumes that Nicole is at the diner to investigate Luke’s taxes, or provide an in-house audit. These audits can be selected randomly, so Jess is not implying that Luke necessarily did anything wrong when filing his tax return.
PARIS: I move to put to a vote the impeachment of Rory Gilmore.
Impeachment is the process by which a legislative body or other legally constituted tribunal initiates charges against a public official for misconduct. In the US, impeachment at the federal level is limited to those who may have committed “Treason, Bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors”—the latter phrase referring to offenses against the government or the constitution, grave abuses of power, violations of the public trust, or other political crimes, even if not indictable criminal offenses.
The US House of Representatives has impeached an official 21 times since 1789: four times for presidents, 15 times for federal judges, once for a Cabinet secretary, and once for a senator. Of the 21, the Senate voted to remove 8 (all federal judges) from office.
The four impeachments of presidents were: Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, Donald Trump in 2019 and again in 2021. All four impeachments were followed by acquittal in the Senate. An impeachment process was also commenced against Richard Nixon, but he resigned in 1974 to avoid likely removal from office.
As the student advisor says, school councils don’t have the authority to impeach anyone.
PARIS: I hold in my hand evidence accusing one Rory Gilmore of committing high crimes and misdemeanors.
As well as being part of the impeachment process in the US, this may be a possible allusion to the Woody Allen film, Crimes and Misdemeanours, previously discussed.
PARIS: At the beginning of this year, when we were sworn in as your government representatives, we placed our hand on a bible and we took an oath.
We saw the student council sworn in, and they actually swore on the Chilton student handbook, not the Bible. It’s possible Paris considers the handbook of equal standing to the Bible.
PARIS: Paris is here. Couldn’t wait to jump in there and take over, could you?
RORY: Tell it to the Timex salesman.
Timex, global watch manufacturing company founded in 1854 as the Waterbury Clock Company in Waterbury, Connecticut. In 1944, the company became insolvent but was reformed into Timex Corporation, now headquartered in Middlebury, Connecticut. The name was inspired by Time magazine and Kleenex, I guess because they are two successful products.
Sookie tells Lorelai that she complimented Jackson on a frog tee-shirt he wore while they were dating, so he bought her a frog figurine to celebrate six months of going out. There was another one for Christmas, and he told his family to buy her frog figurines for every occasion. Now she has a frog collection.
She tells this depressing story as if it is a cute anecdote. Sookie was so smart about relationships when she was single, and usually gave Lorelai good advice. Then she became incapable of even telling her boyfriend, later husband, that she didn’t love frogs all that much. They are a symbol of her inability to communicate with Jackson.
LORELAI: I don’t lie to guys to make them like me. I just got stuck when he said fishing and camping, and I was trying to be nice and not say, “Fishing? Great – cold, wet, and smelly. My three favorite things after those witches from Macbeth.”
Macbeth, previously discussed. The three witches play a pivotal role in guiding the plot.
The Kim family are planning a wedding for Lane’s cousin James, said to be “quiet and skulky”, so the family arranged a marriage for him with a girl from Korea who “doesn’t speak a word of English”.
This sounds absolutely awful for the young woman, coming to a country where she doesn’t speak or understand the language, to marry someone she’s never met. Amazingly, Rory and Lane express zero sympathy or concern for her, Rory even quipping that she hopes they make air holes in the box she’s shipped out in, as if she’s an animal.
Dave will be playing at the wedding, and during the conversation, it turns out that Rory has attended many weddings at the Kim household – so many that Lane says she is accepted as an honorary member of the family. We don’t see Rory and Lane together that much, so this is a nice way to tell us that in fact they are very close and have shared many important times that aren’t shown onscreen. It doesn’t really gel with the way Mrs Kim treats Rory in the show – certainly not like a family member (mind you, she’s not very warm to her actual family members).
Notice that the book Rory is carrying in this scene is Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman. Rory is shown reading this book all the way back in “Red Light on the Wedding Night”, so eighteen months later she is either still reading it, or is re-reading it. Although re-reading books is common, is re-reading biographies all that common, I wonder? I feel as if they are getting a bit lazy in finding new books for Rory to read (or be shown reading).
Rory and Lane go to buy cosmetics at the beauty store. Kirk is now working there instead of Shane, making this another of Kirk’s jobs (it raises the question, does Taylor own this business as well?). Kirk does have an interest in beauty products, having created his own line of skin treatments, which was shut down by the EPA.
I don’t know whether Shane has left the job at the store, or if she works there on a different shift. If the latter, her shift has changed, as she previously served the counter at the same time Rory was home from school.
LANE: Rory! Rory! The numbers are all adding up, the planets are aligning, and I am going to my senior prom!
In American English, a prom is a ball or formal dance held by a school or college, especially at the end of the academic year for final year students – that is, the senior class. It is is considered one of the essential milestones in a young person’s life, given great weight and significance in US culture. Prom is short for promenade, and the word has been in use since since the late 19th century.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 