MRS. KIM: You see, this is exactly why I make these rules. You’re too young, too vulnerable. American boys have different values, they don’t understand respect, you get hurt. I do all of this so you don’t get hurt and now here you are hurt. I don’t like this, I don’t like this at all. Who is he, this boy who hurt you?
We can see that no matter how flawed Mrs Kim might be as a parent, and how wrong-headed her restrictions are of Lane, she does love Lane deeply and wants to protect her. She thinks that Lane is unhappy about Henry because she disobeyed Mrs Kim’s rules to keep her safe, while Lane knows she’s unhappy over Henry because her parents set so many rules that she was unable to form a real relationship, even with a boy they would have approved of.
EMILY: It’s not nothing. You’ve both been sitting here all night, not saying a word and not even looking at each other. Are you in a fight? LORELAI: I’m not. RORY: Please. LORELAI: Please what? You are the one who’s been freezing me out all week. RORY: I just haven’t had anything to say.
At Friday Night Dinner, we learn that Lorelai and Rory haven’t been speaking since they argued about Rory’s relationship with Jess. It’s a pattern they tend to get into when they are angry with each other, freezing each other out and refusing to talk things over.
It’s notable that in the scenes we see of them arguing together, Rory never once says what you expect from a girl in her situation: that Jess is only a friend who shares one of her hobbies, and that him buying her basket was just one of his pranks. She reminds Lorelai that she didn’t like Dean at first either, as if she is already thinking of Jess as a replacement for Dean.
Note that Rory is in angry red, and Lorelai in sad black for this scene, a common costume choice for fight scenes on the show.
EMILY: A cigar club. Can you imagine a more disgusting organization to join? Your grandfather now pays money to sit in an enclosed room with a bunch of other men and blow smoke in each other’s faces. Twice a week he comes home smelling like a flophouse.
This is Richard’s first attempt to reinvent himself after retirement by joining a cigar club, where men gather to buy and smoke cigars together.
In real life, there are many places in Hartford which have cigar bars and lounges. The upmarket Hartford Club [pictured] has a cigar room for guests, and this seems like the sort of place Richard would feel comfortable.
This explains Richard’s absence for Friday Night Dinner, now the writers can’t use his job as an excuse. It does seem a little strange that Lorelai and Rory can never miss Friday Night Dinner except for emergencies or extraordinary circumstances, but Richard can miss it just to smoke a cigar!
A flophouse is American English for a dosshouse: a cheap hotel, hostel, or boarding house designed to house poverty-stricken homeless people. It seems unlikely they would actually smell of expensive cigars.
LORELAI: I’ve known guys like Jess. He seems cool because he’s got this dangerous vibe and this problem with authority and he’s seen a lot of Sylvester Stallone movies.
Sylvester Stallone, (born Michael Sylvester Stallone in 1946), actor, screenwriter, producer, and director. He won critical acclaim for his co-starring role in The Lords of Flatbush (1974), and gained his greatest critical and commercial success in Rocky (1976). He is the only actor in US cinema history to have starred in a #1 film across six decades.
Lorelai is probably thinking about Stallone’s roles in the Rambo films, beginning with First Blood (1982), and in a slew of other commercially successful but critically panned action films in the 1980s and ’90s, which made Stallone one of the highest-paid action stars of his era.
Amusingly, Milo Ventimiglia (Jess) played Sylvester Stallone’s son in the 2006 film Rocky Balboa. Casting must have agreed that Jess really did have a bit of a Sylvester Stallone vibe.
LORELAI: I don’t know, hon. In the short amount of time he’s been here, he’s managed to make a lot of enemies. RORY: I’m sorry, when did I move to Salem?
RORY: You’re taking his side? LORELAI: I’m not taking sides here, okay? I’m Swiss, babe.
Switzerland remained neutral during World War II, and managed to remain independent through a combination of military deterrence, concessions to Germany, and good luck.
RORY: The other night when we were watching Julia, and Jane Fonda was playing Lillian Hellman. LORELAI: Oh yeah, and I made the Hellmann’s mayonnaise joke.
Hellman’s is an American brand name for a line of condiments, owned by the British company Unilever since 2000. They are sold as Hellman’s east of the Rocky Mountains in the US, and around the world, and as Best Foods west of the Rocky Mountains and in Asia/Oceania.
The company was begun by Prussian immigrant Richard Hellman, who opened his first factory in New York City in 1913 to make Hellman’s Blue Ribbon Mayonnaise. It was voted the best mayonnaise in the US in 1920.
RORY: You said you wanted to read The Children’s Hour. LORELAI: I did? RORY: The other night when we were watching Julia, and Jane Fonda was playing Lillian Hellman.
The Children’s Hour, 1934 play by Lillian Hellman. It is set in a girl’s boarding school run by two women, and when an angry student runs away, she tells her grandmother the women are having a lesbian affair to avoid being sent back. This false accusation destroys the women’s careers, relationships, and lives.
The play is based on an incident which occurred in Scotland in the 19th century, which Hellman read about in a 1930 true crime anthology called Bad Companions by William Roughead. The Children’s Hour was a financial and critical success, and was adapted into a film called These Three in 1936, then again under its original title in 1961; both versions were directed by William Wyler.
Julia, 1977 period drama film [pictured] directed by Fred Zinnemann, based on a chapter in 1973 Lillian Hellman’s controversial book Pentimento: A Book of Portraits. It is about Hellman’s alleged friendship with a woman named Julia, who fought against the Nazis prior to World War II. Jane Fonda plays Lillian Hellman, and Vanessa Redgrave is in the role of Julia. An image of the real Lillian Hellman is shown at the end.
Julia performed well at the box office and received generally positive reviews. However, it was felt, with good reason, that the supposedly true story must have been, at best, heavily fictionalised. At the time of her death, Lillian Hellman was still in the process of suing the writer Mary McCarthy for libel after she cast strong doubt on the story’s veracity.
In 1983, New York psychiatrist Muriel Gardiner claimed that she was the person the “Julia” character was based on. Lillian Hellman had never met Gardiner, but had heard about her through a mutual friend, so they couldn’t possibly have had the relationship or adventures together that Hellman had written about. This does seem the most likely explanation, however.
Muriel Gardiner wrote about her anti-Fascist activities in Vienna of the 1930s in a 1983 book, Code Name Mary: Memoirs of an American Woman in the Austrian Underground.
LORELAI: Oh, hey. Where’ve you been? I thought Taylor auctioned you off to the highest bidder. RORY: No, I just went to get some pizza and I, uh, wandered around the bookstore for a little while. Here. [hands her a book]
After the fundraiser, Jess took Rory out for pizza, as her picnic was inedible – a clear parallel to Luke bringing Lorelai diner food to replace her inadequate basket. They then wandered around Stars Hollow Books together. No doubt tongues were wagging in town over that.
Rory said it’s “tradition” to eat a picnic with the person who buys your basket, but sitting together on a secluded bridge for an hour, going for pizza, and then book shopping seems to be going above and beyond tradition. As Dean finds shopping for books boring and only goes with Rory so he can watch her, Rory would have enjoyed doing it with someone who shares her passion for reading.
Note that Lorelai makes the same joke about Rory being “auctioned off” that she made to Emily in regard to school dances.
It is unclear why Jess keeps Rory’s bracelet, but most likely just the sentimental pleasure of having something of Rory’s he can hold and touch. He probably intended to give it back at some point, the same way he returned her book. He may have also thought the handing back ceremony would be a flirtatiously teasing one – “Oh, you were looking for this? Another one of my magic tricks“.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 