When Rory and Lorelai discuss the invitation to attend Sherry’s baby shower, Rory reveals she has been in contact with her dad for about a month, possibly around the time she got her application for Harvard. They’ve emailed each other and occasionally spoken on the phone.
Lorelai is surprised to learn this, and more surprised that Rory felt that she needed to hide that information from her mother. She is quick to reassure Rory that she has every right to talk to her father, and doesn’t have to hide that from her.
However, when Rory tries to pass on well wishes from Christopher, Lorelai is quick to shut it down. Just because Rory is in contact with Christopher, doesn’t mean she has to be. A healthy boundary! Enjoy, they’re rare.
LORELAI: An invitation to what? Oh, is it the White House again? Those boys never give up.
The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the US. It is in Washington DC, and has been the residence of every US president since John Adams in 1800. The term “White House” is often used to refer to the president and his advisers.
It’s now late October to early November, and Jess says he still hasn’t turned eighteen yet, which means his birthday must be either in November or December, making him a month or two younger than Rory.
Yet when Jess moved to Stars Hollow in September 2001, Luke said he was seventeen, meaning his birthday had already occurred by then. Either he has a movable birthday (like Rory), or Luke meant that he would turn seventeen within that calendar year. Parental figures love rounding their kids’ ages up on this show.
JESS: I saved up my pennies and I bought the car from Gypsy. She gave me a good deal. That’s how I got the car.
Luke has trouble understanding how Jess was able to buy a car. Lorelai helpfully suggested that Jess probably stole it, and with the uncanny ability Jess has to mind-meld with Lorelai, he also teases Luke by saying he mugged someone.
I’m not sure why this is all such a mystery. Jess’ car may be roadworthy, but it’s in poor condition otherwise, and Jess says Gypsy sold it to him at a bargain price. That could have been as low as $500, and is unlikely to be more than $1000.
Jess has been working at the diner every day for about a year, which was probably a full-time job over summer vacation, probably getting around $4 an hour. As little as 125 hours work could have paid for the car, and Jess, like Luke, has frugal habits, and is probably a good saver. (He also cleaned Lorelai’s gutters, and may have taken on other chores around town).
Even though there’s nothing at all unbelievable about Jess having an old car, it does get explained later in the episode.
In this episode, Jess gets an old car, which has been kindly identified for me by blog reader John Donaldson as a 1970s AMC Rebel or AMC Ambassador. I like the idea of Jess owning a Rebel, but having examined a few photos, I think it may look more like an Ambassador, as they seemed to more often have a two-toned colour??? Perhaps a 1973 model? More opinions welcomed.
Lorelai is not happy to discover Jess has a car, and refers to him needing to be stopped “before he kills again”. Apparently Rory getting even the tiniest injury needing medical attention is the equivalent of her being killed. However, Lorelai has learned her lesson, because she immediately offers to butt out, leaving Luke to handle the issue for himself.
LORELAI: Hey, what do you know about this town loner guy?
LUKE: Same as everyone. Just kind of skulks around with that backpack, never smiles.
LORELAI: Does he also make cheeseburgers and secretly harbor a desire to wear a backwards baseball cap? … [sings] They’re cousins, identical cousins . . .
Lorelai sings the theme song to The Patty Duke Show, a sitcom which ran from 1963 to 1966, and featured teenage star Patty Duke, previously mentioned, as “identical cousins” Patty and Cathy Lane, who looked the same, but had opposing tastes and personalities – so not really a very good reference if she is trying to imply that Luke and the Town Loner are very similar in their demeanour and habits.
TAYLOR: Well, that’s not indicated here, but it doesn’t matter, because protesting is not allowed in the town square, period. It’s un-American.
LUKE: You mean like the Revolutionary War?
BABETTE: And Rosa Parks?
TAYLOR: That’s different. They were against the British and buses. No one likes the British or buses.
Rosa Parks (1913-2005), an activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, she refused a bus driver’s order that she vacate her row of seats in the “coloured” section of the bus to make way for white people, once the “white” section was full. Her act of civil disobedience helped inspire the black community to boycott the Montgomery bus company for over a year. In 1956, the courts decided that bus segregation was unconstitutional.
Rosa Parks became an international icon of resistance to segregation, and collaborated with civil rights leaders such as Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr. Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job, and received death threats for years afterwards.
Rosa Parks received the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. California and Missouri commemorate Rosa Parks Day on her birthday, February 4, while Ohio, Oregon, and Texas commemorate the anniversary of her arrest, December 1.
Comically, Taylor thinks that Rosa Parks was protesting buses, which he appears to approve of! Is Taylor against public transport?
LORELAI: But he’s our Boo Radley, and we don’t have a Boo Radley, unless you count the troubadour or Pete the pizza guy or the guy who talks to mailboxes.
We learn here that Lorelai sees Pete the pizza guy as one of the town “outsiders”, along with the town loner, the town troubadour, and the (unknown) guy who talks to mailboxes. This might come as a surprise, since running a pizza restaurant and delivery service does not seem like something that would isolate a person from their town or be a suitable job for a hermit. It does seem very typical of Lorelai to choose someone considered a bit eccentric to be their regular pizza provider though.
In an earlier season, Lorelai nominated Jackson’s cousin Rune as a “Boo Radley”. She doesn’t mention him in this context, and in fact Rune is never seen or mentioned again. He was only meant to be staying in town temporarily, so presumably he left sometime after Christmas of 2001.
Here we are at another town meeting, which used to be on Thursdays, and then mysteriously were held on a Saturday this season. I don’t know what day it is now, but it is neither Thursday nor Saturday. They’re just sticking a town meeting in whenever they feel like it.
LORELAI: I once told a store my name was Squeegy Beckinheim just to see how many catalogs they would sell my name to, and apparently my name is to catalog companies what Brooke Shields’ picture is to Chinese restaurants.
Brooke Shields (born 1965), actress and model. She began her career as a child model and gained critical acclaim at age 12 for her leading role as an underage prostitute in the film Pretty Baby (1978). She continued to model into her late teenage years and starred in several dramas in the 1980s, including The Blue Lagoon (1980), andEndless Love (1981).
She returned to acting in the 1990s and appeared in several films, as well as starring in the TV shows Suddenly Susan and Lipstick Jungle. She is currently a voice actor on animated TV show Mr Pickles, and its spinoff, Momma Named Me Sheriff.
Lorelai refers to the practice of restaurants putting up photos of their famous customers, and sometimes, famous people they wish were customers. Brooke Shields may have eaten at a lot of Chinese restaurants when she was young – she was brought up by a “bohemian” single mother, and like Lorelai and Rory, they often had Chinese food for dinner. Brooke Shields does have a regular Chinese restaurant – Mr Chow, which opened in Manhattan in 1979, and became an upscale hotspot in the 1980s. Her favourite Chinese food is chicken sticks and fried seaweed.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 