RORY: And now Luke’s a pariah and it’s all because of you! What a shock, you don’t care about any of this. JESS: I didn’t say that. RORY: Go. I’m tired of talking to you.
The day after the town meeting which seems to have arranged specifically for everyone to dump on Jess, Rory talks to Jess about it. But instead of expressing sympathy for how unfairly the town has treated Jess, she attacks Jess for making Luke’s life more difficult.
Jess does seem to listen to her, but appears mostly interested in whether Rory was secretly amused by his pranks. If his plan was to get attention, then it worked spectacularly. The town had a meeting about him, and Rory has been forced to take notice of his behaviour. His plan is working!
Rory’s advice to Jess is basically the same as Lorelai’s on the evening of the dinner party: he’s got a good thing going with Luke, and he shouldn’t mess it up. Somehow, Jess is far more receptive to hearing it from Rory.
Rory’s “Go. I’m tired of talking to you”, is pure Emily Gilmore. It’s the usual way she ends an argument with Lorelai.
Lorelai is so disturbed by Mia’s news about selling the Independence that she begins backtracking on her plans to open her own inn, to Sookie’s dismay. Logically, it doesn’t make much sense – if Mia is going to sell, Lorelai and Sookie should be fast-tracking their plans, not shelving them. Mia even said they should make their move sooner rather than later.
A lot of Lorelai’s angst about the Independence being sold is the thought of her home being changed. Her special relationship with Mia would be severed, and the new owners of the inn could very well be faceless corporate types that turn it into a chain (always treated as some sort of ultimate horror on the Gilmore Girls).
For Sookie, who isn’t so emotionally invested in the Independence, the news is positive. Mia won’t be upset about them starting their own inn, and even if the Independence changes, they have their own lives to lead. She’d prefer the inn didn’t lose all its charm, but she’s sensible enough to realise that they can’t control what happens, and to focus on their own plans.
This difference in how they feel is enough for Lorelai to begin passively-aggressively attacking Sookie, and to shoot down any suggestions she has on how to improve things. Sookie wonders why they don’t buy the Independence, and Lorelai says they can’t afford it – even though she never asked Mia what she would sell the inn for.
Sookie asks if they should look for another inn to buy, and Lorelai says she doesn’t have time to look for a new location (because if someone doesn’t just randomly show you an inn, it’s too much hard work? Did either of them even check the real estate guides for the area?).
Finally, Lorelai begins criticising Sookie as a potential business partner. She is unreliable, not punctual, and keeps changing the menu, which would send them broke. Sookie is naturally devastated, but Lorelai’s criticisms seem like valid concerns. Even Sookie doesn’t have any comeback except to say Lorelai already knew all these things before. She doesn’t make any promises to change or improve, or suggest other ways she is going to support Lorelai to offset her flaws. In fact, Sookie’s flakiness is actually a problem when they do become business partners.
Notice that Lorelai tries to back out of their business deal by saying the “timing isn’t good” – the same weak excuse Rory made to Lorelai when she tried to wriggle out of going to Chilton.
The Town Troubadour is singing this song as they leave the town meeting. It’s from Grant-Lee Phillips 2000 album, Ladies’ Love Oracle, previously mentioned. It seems to be a message to Lorelai that her plans for opening her own inn are still very much in the early stages.
Lorelai finally gets the courage to tell Mia that she and Sookie have a dream of opening their own inn. Mia is very supportive, but also reveals that she receives many lucrative offers to buy the Independence, and the sooner they can strike out on their own, the better, as far as she is concerned.
Lorelai is dismayed to hear this, as buying the Dragonfly seems out of reach while Fran refuses to sell.
In this episode, Lorelai’s plans are upset by two independent-minded old ladies who own inns – one won’t sell her inn to Lorelai, while the other seems likely to sell her inn from under Lorelai.
RORY: Hey, I’m gonna go check on Dean. He’s been scraping that outline off the cement for two days now.
You might think that chalk would wash straight off pavement, but actually water only removes most of the chalk. Little particles get into all the tiny crevices and pores in the cement that require vigorous scrubbing. Yes, Taylor is that fussy! 99.5% clean is not good enough!
He also seems to be making Dean clean the pavement in the dark and after the store is closed, which surely can’t be legal, and certainly isn’t practical. I can’t help thinking this episode did not endear Jess to Dean even before jealousy entered the picture.
MIA: Well, I must say that was quite exciting. LORELAI: A little disturbing. I think the whole town needs a field trip.
A field trip is an excursion by a group of people away from their normal environment, most usually used in the context of education (what might be called a school trip or school tour in other countries).
Lorelai seems to be saying the whole town needs to get out of town, so they can learn how other people live. It’s the closest she gets to saying they should try to see things from Jess’ point of view, and she does seem to be bothered by how the town reacted to him.
Taylor and the rest of the town don’t seem able to understand what Luke is saying (he is slightly incoherent with rage), so Lorelai “translates” for him, standing shoulder to shoulder with Luke to signify her support of him. She asks the town to let Luke handle any problems he might be having – if there is actually a problem, which Luke isn’t willing to acknowledge even exists.
She could have asked the town to be more understanding and accepting of Jess, and give him a chance, but I don’t think Luke would have appreciated that.
LUKE: Look, I’ve lived in this town my entire life, longer than most everybody here.
Luke’s is presumably only in his early thirties, and yet he’s already lived in Stars Hollow longer than most of the people at the town meeting, a sizeable proportion of whom are fairly elderly. There’s obviously many residents who have moved there from somewhere else. (Bootsy is quick to remind Luke that he’s lived there slightly longer, being five weeks older, and we know Fran Weston has been there all her life).
TAYLOR: The bottom line here is that there is a consensus among townspeople who are in agreement that Stars Hollow was a better place before Jess got here. LUKE: So this half of the room gets the tar, and the other half gets the feathers? TAYLOR: Well, there hasn’t been any talk of tar and feathers. Although …
Tarring and feathering is a form of public torture and punishment handed out as unofficial justice, used in feudal England and colonial America, as well as the early American frontier, as a form of mob or vigilante vengeance. The last known example was in 2007 in Northern Ireland, against someone accused of drug-dealing.
The victim would be stripped naked or stripped to the waist, painted with hot tar, and then rolled in feathers (there were usually other punishments thrown in, such as whipping or scalping). The skin would be burned by the tar, and scraping it off later led to the skin being torn off, so it was extremely painful as well as humiliating. “Tarring and feathering” is now used as a term to denote severe public criticism.
Luke is saying the town meeting is on a par with the brutal mob justice associated with the Wild West, in agreement with Lorelai’s earlier comment. It is actually quite horrifying, because they seem to be saying Jess should be run out of town, even though he’s a high school kid who’s only guilty of petty theft and a few mild pranks.
It’s also baffling, because Jess isn’t exactly a stranger – he’s Luke’s nephew, Liz’s son, and the grandson of the respected William Danes. The town should be prepared to take him in as one of their own, and the fact that they won’t is a deeply troubling sign. Maybe there’s a good reason why Liz took off.
BOOTSY: This goes way beyond the Jess matter, Taylor. Luke’s been on my case since the first grade when he wrongfully accused me of sabotaging a clay imprint that he made of his hand. LORELAI: Ooh! Think hard, was he dressed like Sulu?
Lieutenant Hikaro Sulu is a character in Star Trek, played by George Takei in the original series. He is the ship’s physicist, third officer, and senior helmsman. He wears the same uniform as everyone else, so I’m not sure what Lorelai means about “dressed like Sulu”, unless she means “dressed like a Star Trek crew member”.
We now learn that as well as having an antagonistic relationship with Taylor, Luke also has a long-standing problem with Bootsy, his former classmate, going back to first grade. How many enemies does Luke really need?
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 