LORELAI: All right, I’ll have a Jägermeister and a Jello-shot.
Jägermeister, a German herbal liqueur made with 60 herbs and spices designed to be taken after a meal to aid digestion. It was developed in 1934 by Wilhelm and Curt Mast, and is still served in its signature green bottle. Its name means “Master of the Hunt”, a title for a high-ranking gamekeeper. In the US, Jägermeister has become well known through its promotion of heavy metal and hard rock tours and festivals. It also sponsors the National Hockey League.
DEAN: Yeah, I’m back – and I’m glad to find you not blonde.
RORY: Yeah, I was just having way too much fun, so . . .
Rory refers to the Clairol hair lightener advertising slogan, “Is it true …blondes have more fun?”. It was written by advertising director Shirley Polykoff – a blonde – in 1956, and was considered rather risque at the time.
Rory bleakly jokes that she didn’t dye her hair blonde, because she was already having too much fun (of course she’s actually having a terrible time). Ironically, it is Jess’ girlfriend who is the blonde, and having a lot more fun than Rory.
With his usual ability to turn up unannounced wherever Rory happens to be, Dean has returned home from Chicago three hours early. Although this would have put a serious dent in her plans to be with Jess at the festival, she may be more glad to see him than not, considering that Jess is with someone else, and she’s just had a huge fight with her mother.
Note that even while hugging Dean, Rory is looking over his shoulder at Jess, her face hurt and angry.
In the story, Snow White’s wicked stepmother, a queen, has a magic mirror which she questions, “Magic mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?”. The mirror always tells the queen that she is the loveliest lady in the land … until one day the mirror informs her that Snow White is the fairest of all. And that’s when the trouble begins.
RORY: I know all of this about Dean … I know how great he is. I knew it before you did!
LORELAI: Well, knowing this has apparently not stopped you from dragging his heart all over this town.
A possible reference to the 1981 song “Stop Draggin’ My Heart Around”, written by Tom Petty and Mike Campbell, first recorded as a Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song. Stevie Nicks from Fleetwood Mac sang on the record, with Tom Petty joining her for the chorus and the bridge. It was released as the first single from Nicks’ 1981 debut solo album, Bella Donna. It was one of the first music videos played on MTV when it launched on August 1 1981, and peaked at #3 in the US.
The song is about a woman who feels weighed down by her relationship, and wishes to part, despite having an emotional attachment to her lover. That does seem to apply to Rory – she does have feelings for Dean, but feels “dragged down” by him.
LORELAI: If you want Jess, that’s fine – go get him, there he is. If you think that’s the great love of your life, then great . . . grab a liver treat and a squeaky toy and run to him.
Lorelai and Rory not only get into a fight in public at the festival, Lorelai gets perilously close to calling her seventeen-year-old daughter a “bitch” or a “dog” with her barb about grabbing a liver treat and a squeaky toy. She seems to suggest that Rory is acting like a “bitch in heat” over Jess, or is acting like a “dog” towards Dean.
The viewer is quickly made aware that although Rory hasn’t felt able to write to Jess over the summer, she is hoping to see him at the End of Summer Madness Festival. It is three hours before Dean is due home, and she is apparently planning to make the most of them. She insists on going to the festival in town, even though she’s only just got home from the airport, and changes into a nice dress. Lorelai insists on calling this “changing for Dean”. The Dean who isn’t there.
However, her plans are scuppered when she finally catches a glimpse of Jess – and it turns out that instead of spending the summer pining over her, he’s got a girlfriend (a blonde one, so you just know she’s stupid and awful!). Did he hope that Rory would see them and get the message that Jess Mariano is not some sap you can toy with, then toss aside while you waltz off to Washington for the summer? If so, message received.
Jess is kissing his girlfriend up against a tree, in flagrant view of the whole town. It’s very similar to the way Dean and Rory used to kiss against trees and shelves in the market, which must have been difficult for Jess to witness, so he seems to be getting his own back. Rory is getting a tiny taste of what Jess has been through for the past few months.
Rory and Lorelai almost immediately get into a fight at the festival when Lorelai says it’s lucky she didn’t throw “everything” (ie Dean, he’s everything now) away for Jess. She brushes Rory’s feelings for Jess away as a “little crush”, until Rory tells her mother that she kissed Jess at Sookie’s wedding while there with Dean. Lorelai is indignant on Dean’s behalf, conveniently forgetting that she herself slept with a pregnant woman’s boyfriend at the wedding, and doesn’t really have much high moral ground to stand on.
It is set up in the story, and repeated several times, that Rory went away for the summer, and therefore has had no contact with Jess since the wedding. The trouble is, the wedding wasn’t at the start of summer vacation, Rory still had two or three more weeks of school left. And she didn’t go to Washington for the summer vacation, only for the last six weeks of it. That makes at least eight weeks that she and Jess were in Stars Hollow together and somehow managed not to talk to or even see each other.
It doesn’t seem plausible – Stars Hollow is a small place. Presumably Rory was avoiding Luke’s diner in support of Lorelai, and busy with school, and getting prepared for Washington, but I can’t see how she avoided Jess for six weeks straight unless he was also determinedly avoiding her. If so, suggesting that he was very hurt and confused about being unexpectedly kissed, told to keep quiet about it, and then seeing that Rory and Dean were still together as if nothing had happened.
KIRK: Well, get rid of it … Uh, but don’t throw it in the trash. Apparently, that would be an EPA violation.
The EPA, Environmental Protection Agency. Independent agency of the US federal government tasked with matters of environmental protection. It began operation in 1970, under orders from President Richard Nixon, and is headquartered in Washington DC.
The fact that Kirk’s beauty products cannot be thrown out without violating orders from the EPA suggests that they are made from potentially hazardous chemicals. Probably a good thing that nobody at the inn used them!
LORELAI: Okay, so, do we do cheese stick, hot dog, cotton candy, or do we mix it up a little – start with the cotton candy and end with the cheese stick?
Cheese-on-a-stick, a carnival food item in the US, consisting of deep fried cheese coated with cornmeal batter, on a stick to hold it with. Dipping sauces may also be provided. Mozzarella is a popular cheese to use, and they seem to date to the 1970s.
A popular song written by German composer Hans Carste with lyrics by Hans Bradkte, first recorded as “Du spielst ‘ne tolle Rolle” by Austrian singer Willy Hagara in 1962. It was recorded in 1963 by Nat King Cole, with English lyrics by Charles Tobias, who gave it a nostalgic theme. Cole’s version went to #6 in the US, and #3 on the Middle-Road Singles Chart. It is the opening track on his album of the same name.
It is from the song that the episode gets its title, and serves as the inspiration for and soundtrack to Taylor’s First Annual Stars Hollow End of Summer Madness Festival. In keeping with the theme of madness, a barbershop quartet sings this song on a sanity-eroding permanent loop at the festival. It is performed by Mick Foster and Tony Allen in the show.
Lorelai and Rory are going to pick up Sookie and Jackson to go to the festival, which makes no sense. Sookie and Jackson live in the opposite direction to the town square, which Lorelai and Rory live close to. It would make more sense for Sookie and Jackson to walk to Lorelai and Rory’s house, and then onto the festival together. As it is, they would all have a long walk together from Sookie’s house to the town square – but Lorelai and Rory have to do it twice.
As it turns out, Lorelai and Rory have wasted their time, because when they get to Sookie’s, she and Jackson are having a fight, so they quietly walk back into town without them. Sookie has filled the house with tons of “manly” objects from Kim’s Antiques, including a stuffed grizzly bear (this must have all cost a fortune!).
Jackson demands that she get rid of it all and put the house back the way it was. Easier said than done – I can’t imagine Mrs Kim tamely taking everything back and refunding the money! Anyway, however implausibly, we can assume their ridiculous fight is over for this episode.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 