Footnotes to the TV series
RORY: Wait, where are you going?
MAUREEN: I’ve gotta get back to work. I’m swamped today.
It’s between 8.30 and 10.30 pm, yet somehow everyone has to work. The original plan was to meet at 6 pm – why are they off work at 6 pm, but have to be at work at 9 pm?
RORY: Where’s everyone else? …
MAUREEN: Well, we had all planned on next week, but Sherry screwed up, so what can you do? Thank God you’re here. She’ll be thrilled. She’s feeling a little abandoned. Now, she’s right in there. Do not mention how fat she is. For some reason, she’s extremely sensitive about that today. Okay, kiss. I’ll call you later to find out how everything’s going.
To Rory’s dismay, when she finally arrives at the hospital in Boston, only Maureen is there – and she’s just about to leave. She says that “Sherry is feeling a little abandoned” by their defection – Rory also feels that she’s been completely abandoned, and left in sole charge of the pregnant Sherry, as Christopher is out of town.
Once again, being pregnant and “fatness” becomes mysteriously conflated. Sometimes you get the feeling the writers of the show don’t quite understand how pregnancy works.
Lorelai is at Luke’s diner to get a coffee before she drives to Hartford to have dinner with her mother. Luke isn’t there when she gets in, and when he does appear, he’s clean-shaven and dressed up – even wearing clothes that Lorelai picked out for him.
Then Nicole arrives, and Lorelai realises Luke is going on a date. Even though she’s dating Alex, she doesn’t seem pleased by this discovery, and rather childishly “tells on” Nicole for using a cell phone in the diner, when Luke doesn’t allow it. Busy career women get a bit of a bashing in this episode.
The second flashback shows teenaged Lorelai preparing for her debutante ball. She is about three or four months pregnant, so it is perhaps April or May, and can no longer do up the zip on her debutante dress, which she was fitted for three months previously.
Lorelai hasn’t told her parents about her condition, and earlier told Rory that she still hadn’t told them on her sixteenth birthday, which is around April. This seems to be the moment leading up to Emily finding out about the pregnancy, although at first she blames the dressmaker for sending Lorelai a dress that is too small.
We know that Lorelai never got to go to debutante ball because she got pregnant, and this scene shows how it happened. Rory got to fulfil her mother’s role by making her debut, even wearing the same dress to her ball. The dresses don’t look the same – Lorelai’s has butterfly sleeves and Rory’s is sleeveless – but perhaps the dress was altered for Rory.
If Rory was born in October, she was most likely conceived in mid-to-late January, even though Lorelai and Christopher are shown kissing in December. It can perhaps be assumed that they continued having sex for a few weeks before conceiving Rory.
MAUREEN: Listen, I have Graydon Carter on the other line.
Edward Graydon Carter (born 1949), Canadian journalist, editor of Vanity Fair from 1992 to 2017. Maureen is presumably his publicist, or the magazine’s. If so, why a New York magazine has hired a Boston PR team, I’m not really sure.
MAUREEN: She’s at Boston Memorial.
A fictional hospital, presumably inspired by Massachusetts General Hospital, the largest hospital in the state, and a 5 minute drive from Beacon Hill, the area that Sherry and Christopher seem to live in.
RORY: Well, I’m actually done with school now. I could grab a train and –
Hartford is three and a half hours from Boston by train, requiring a change at New Haven. The trains are two hours apart, meaning that if you miss one, there’s quite a wait for the next. Rory would also need to take a 15 minute bus ride from her school to Hartford Union Station in order to catch the train.
If Rory has finished school for the day, then it’s after 4.05 pm. Even with all the bus and train schedules lining up perfectly, Rory would not reach Boston until at least 8 pm. She would then need another 15 minutes to reach the hospital using the subway, and finishing the last part on foot. 8.30 pm seems to be the earliest she could get there, and 9.30-10 pm is probably more realistic.
It’s a truly terrible thing to ask a teenage high school student to do without any warning in the middle of winter, and with no time to get changed into warm clothing or to take anything other than her school bag with her. It is also a crazy thing for Rory to agree to, and quite impractical.
By the way, the meeting at the hospital for Sherry’s C-section was originally for 6 pm. How was Rory ever meant to get there in time on a Friday, when she has school?
MAUREEN: Listen, I know the invitation said that we were all gathering at the C-section next week, but Sherry just went into labor … She screwed up, she’s in labor, and she wanted me to call all the girls and beg them to get down to the hospital ASAP.
Sherry’s best friend Maureen calls Rory while she’s in the middle of a meeting for the school newspaper. Rory is back to having a cell phone again, and is able to take the call. Maybe she used a pager in between these two calls because her phone was charging.
Maureen tells Rory that “Sherry screwed up” by going into labour a week before her C-section is scheduled, a phrase that gets repeated again and again. It’s meant to underline how hopelessly ignorant Sherry’s friends are about childbirth, that they don’t understand that babies don’t necessarily arrive on schedule. How they can not know this? It’s in movies and on TV shows (like this one!). You can see that Sherry will receive little or no support from her friends after having Georgia.
Because this is the week before February 7th, we know the main events of this episode take place on Friday 31st January 2003.
During the call, Maureen refers to Rory as a “child”, something which Rory never confirms nor denies. In fact, although she is still at school, she is 18 (turning 19 that year) and an adult now.
RORY: My point is in ninety tries, there wasn’t one other picture that was good for the group and didn’t have me looking like I’m in Cirque du Soleil?
Cirque du Soleil, previously discussed. The circus show was covered in a 2002 reality TV series called Cirque du Soleil: Fire Within, and the production Alegría was broadcast on TV in 2002. The chances are very high that Rory and Lorelai watched them, considering their fascination with circuses.
It is clear from this exchange that Paris is still angry at Rory, and they are still in a fight. Rory refused to talk about Jamie with Madeline and Louise, in order not to further aggravate Paris, so she seems to be trying to improve the situation.
PARIS: I got copies for everyone, so let’s leave the Barneys clearance sale reenactment for another day, shall we?
Barneys New York is an American luxury brand founded in New York City in 1923 by Barney Pressman. Originally a men’s discount clothing store, Barneys claimed to be the first Manhattan retailer to advertise on radio and television. During the 1960s, Barney Pressman’s son Fred helped the store to transition to one selling luxury goods, and is credited with introducing Armani to the American market. Women’s clothing was included in 1976.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 