Footnotes to the TV series
PAUL: Oh man! Mom, Dad, that is Luke.
DORIE: We’ve heard so much about you.
SID: Darn shame about that Rachel.
Now we discover that Lorelai spent a lot of her date with Paul talking about Luke! Not only recommending his business, but also discussing his relationship woes. No wonder Paul quickly realised he and Lorelai were better as friends.
LORELAI: All right, that’s it. This afternoon we are going to engage in some intensive retail therapy to bring you out of this funk.
RORY: No thanks.
LORELAI: I mean it. Today is the day we finally spring for the Powerpuff Girls shot glasses.
The Powerpuff Girls is an animated television series on the Cartoon Network about three kindergarten-aged girls with superpowers named Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. The girls live in the fictional city of Townsville with their father and creator, Professor Utonium.
The plot of each episode is a humorous take on superhero shows, with the girls having to defend their city from villains and monsters, while also dealing with typical little kid issues, like loose teeth and bedwetting. The original series was broacast from 1998 to 2005, but had various specials, a movie, and a range of spin-off media.
Episodes often contain hidden references to older popular culture, with sly tributes and parodies, and has been praised as both pop culture and high art, suitable for small children and adults. You can see why Lorelai and Rory love it.
The Powerpuff Girls have a wide range of merchandise, and you can indeed buy Powerpuff Girls shot glasses.
LORELAI: Maybe Dean won’t even come tonight.
RORY: Oh, he’ll be there. There aren’t enough monster truck rallies in the world to keep him away from Miss Patty’s tonight.
A monster truck is a specially modified truck for competition and entertainment, given heavy duty suspension, four-wheel drive, and oversized tyres. Monster trucks developed in the late 1970s, and by the early 1980s were popular side acts at motocross events. Today monster trucks take centre stage at rallies, usually having races and stunt driving. In real life, there are regular monster truck rallies in Hartford and Bridgeport, so Dean wouldn’t have any trouble getting to one.
Somehow Dean has devolved from being a big city boy who liked classic films, Hunter S. Thompson, and Nick Drake into a country boy who likes BattleBots and monster truck rallies. How did he go from seeming pretty perfect for Rory into someone we barely recognise?
LORELAI: Taking pity on your burger?
RORY: Not hungry.
LORELAI: Honey, you’ve got to eat. You’re gonna kill yourself in a couple of hours, you really need your strength.
The timeline of this episode, already fairly wonky with a week that seems to have gone missing, goes completely bazonkers on the day of the final rehearsal. Rehearsal starts at 5 pm, and Lorelai says Rory has to kill herself “in a couple of hours” (yet another suicide joke in the show). So it seems as if it is 3 pm, and they are eating mid-afternoon burgers, perhaps a late lunch.
Yet not long afterwards, Lorelai makes plans for them to go shopping that afternoon, as if it’s midday, then Paul and his parents come in for breakfast. Lorelai and Rory are eating burgers for breakfast??? They always have eggs or pancakes on a weekend (muffins if they’re not hungry), they’ve never had breakfast hamburgers before. Is this brunch or a second breakfast or an early lunch? What the dink time is it?
RORY: Maybe Duncan and Bowman aren’t the best people to be hanging out with. They’re not as smart as you Tristan, they don’t have what you have going for you. They …
TRISTAN: You know, I’m gonna have to bail before we get to the whole hugging part. And ask your boyfriend to remind me when it’s coupon day, okay?
Rory tries doing a bit of bad boy renovation, but it doesn’t work on Tristan the way it seemed to on Jess. Unlike Jess, I don’t think Tristan is doing the bad boy act to impress Rory – they hardly seem to have interacted this term until now.
The major difference between her talk with Jess and this one with Tristan is that there is no anger (no passion) like there was when she berated Jess for making things harder for Luke. I think Rory does care for Tristan, otherwise she wouldn’t try talking to him seriously and telling him how smart he is, but it’s gentler and more pitying than the way she is with Jess, or even Dean. Tristan resents this, and is quick to leave (a foreshadowing of his final “bailing”).
Jess has had a much tougher life than Tristan, but Rory never pities him, mentions his past, or gives him a sweet sisterly talking-to, and I think Jess probably appreciates that.
RORY: Are you all right?
TRISTAN: Yeah, I think somehow I’ll recover from the great romance between you and the Beave.
Tristan references the sitcom Leave It to Beaver, broadcast from 1957 to 1963. It centres on an inquisitive, naive young boy, Theodore “The Beaver” Cleaver (played by Jerry Mathers), and his adventures at home, school, and around his neighbourhood. His parents, June and Ward Cleaver, and his older brother Wally also featured.
The show has an iconic status in the US, with the Cleavers the epitome of an idealised suburban family from the mid-twentieth century. Very popular at the time, it has enjoyed a resurgence of popularity from the 1970s onward, thanks to reruns, and two movies and a sequel series have been made. Although it never won an award or the ratings, it is considered one of the all-time greatest television shows.
Tristan covers up his hurt by to implying that Dean is not only old-fashioned and suburban, but also innocent and child-like compared to the supposedly more worldly and sophisticated Tristan.
RORY: Look, things are really good for me and Dean right now, and I don’t want anything to mess that up. Especially not something that meant nothing at all to me and I wished had never happened in the first place.
Ouch. That genuinely hurt. If Tristan wasn’t already hellbent on making things difficult for Rory and Dean, I think that definitely sealed the deal.
I don’t think Rory is being entirely truthful that her kiss with Tristan meant nothing at all – it brought up so much emotion that she cried and was able to begin grieving the loss of her relationship. But that would be an incredibly awkward conversation to have, might be more insulting than what she actually said, and not really helpful in setting boundaries with Tristan.
(I don’t think she’s correct that things are “really good” with Dean either – he’s jealous and controlling, she’s scared to be honest with him because of how he’ll react, they have few interests in common, they have different values, she’s slowly becoming intrigued by another boy. But she’s not being dishonest, she just doesn’t have the experience or perspective to see these things for herself).
TRISTAN: You don’t want me to tell Dean that we kissed.
RORY: By George, I think he’s got it.
Rory is referencing the 1964 musical comedy-drama film My Fair Lady, adapted from the 1956 Lerner and Loewe stage musical of the same name, which was based on George Bernard Shaw’s 1913 play, Pygmalion.
In the film, phonetics professor Henry Higgins (Rex Harrison), has a bet that he can teach a Cockney flower girl named Eliza Doolittle (Audrey Hepburn) to speak with an upper-class accent. At first she makes no progress, but one day has a sudden breakthrough, leading Higgins to exclaim delightedly, “By George, I think she’s got it”.
My Fair Lady was a critical and commercial success, becoming the #1 film of 1964, and won eight Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Actor, and Best Director (for George Cukor). It is considered one of the greatest musicals, and one of the great films of all time.
RORY: Excuse me Tristan, can I talk to you for a second?
TRISTAN: [to his friends] I’ll meet you guys later, okay? [they walk away] I’m all yours.
Ooh, very smooth.
LORELAI: Hey Dean. Do you want some fries?
DEAN: No, I’m actually going home for dinner. My mom made fried chicken tonight and she saved me some.
LORELAI: Oh, you have a cooking mom.
RORY: That’s so nice.
That Dean had a mother who enjoyed cooking and cooked every weekend was established months ago during That Damn Donna Reed. Much of the plot hinged upon it. Dean and Rory had a huge fight because of it. Somehow Lorelai and Rory now react as if this is fresh news that they are barely concerned about, although they still do a little passive-aggressive sniping. Perhaps they are demonstrating they have mostly moved on from that.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 