“You deserve to go to Harvard”

RORY: So does that mean that you might reconsider my suspension?
HEADMASTER: You’re an excellent student. You deserve to go to Harvard. I wouldn’t want to stand in the way of that.

Utterly, utterly ludicrous. No headmaster would ever tell a student they deserve to go to Harvard, especially one who’d just been caught in his office in the middle of the night. There are many excellent students, Harvard is very difficult to get in to, they won’t all make it. Yet in only her second year at Chilton, Rory is more or less told it is her right to be there.

The writers of Gilmore Girls never seemed to understand how schools and colleges actually operate. Considering how much of the show revolved around Rory’s secondary and tertiary education, it seems like something they maybe should have brushed up on.

“Thank you, Mrs Traiger”

SECRETARY: Headmaster Charleston, the parents are starting to arrive.
HEADMASTER: Thank you, Mrs. Traiger.

Mrs Traiger is Headmaster Charleston’s secretary, last seen in The Lorelai’s First Day at Chilton. I’m not exactly sure what she’s doing here in this scene. Can’t Headmaster Charleston handle this situation without his secretary? Does she have all the keys to the school? Did he phone her and make her get out of bed in the middle of the night and come down to the school, just so she can make all the phone calls to the parents? This woman is not getting paid enough!

Ya-Ya Sisterhood

RORY: And the next thing I know, I’m being pulled out of my bed in the middle of the night and I’m blindfolded and then before I know it, I end up here with the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, reciting poetry and lighting candles, and now I’m gonna be suspended because I was trying to do what you told me?

Rory is referring to the 1996 novel, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by American author Rebecca Wells, the sequel to a 1992 short story collection, Little Altars Everywhere. The story is about the disintegrating relationship between an unusual mother and daughter named Vivi and Sidda.

While Sidda is holed up in a cabin the woods to think things through, Vivi’s childhood friends intervene to bring the pair back together by convincing Vivi to mail Sidda her childhood scrapbook, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – the Ya-Ya Sisterhood being the secret society Vivi and her friends formed in 1930s Louisiana, in rebellion against Southern social codes of the times. The Ya-Ya Sisterhood devised its own bizarre initiation rites, based on an imaginary Native American mythos.

The novel was well reviewed and reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List. It was famous enough that Rory doesn’t need to have read it to know about it, but I can’t see any reason why she wouldn’t have. The focus on a powerful but flawed mother-daughter relationship would surely have attracted both Lorelai and Rory to the novel. Rory’s derogatory comment might suggest that if she did read it, she didn’t think much of it.

The book was made into a film starring Sandra Bullock which was released in June 2002, but Rory can’t be referring to that, because it hasn’t happened yet.

“Sing out, Louise”

RORY: I pledge myself to the Puffs, loyal I’ll always be …
FRANCIE: Sing out, Louise.

Francie is quoting from the 1962 musical comedy-drama film Gypsy, based on the 1959 stage musical, Gypsy: A Musical Fable, adapted from the 1957 autobiography Gypsy: A Memoir by burlesque entertainer Gypsy Rose Lee.

The film is about a domineering stage mother named Rose Hovick (Rosalind Russell), who drags her beautiful, gifted daughter June, and June’s shy, less-talented older sister Louise (Natalie Wood) around the country in her efforts to get them noticed. When June rebels and elopes, all of Rose’s efforts are poured into the seemingly impossible task of making Louise a star.

In the film (or the musical, originally starring Ethel Merman as Mama Rose), Rose makes her entrance by shouting, “Sing out, Louise!”, during her daughter’s audition. Francie is likewise encouraging the mumbling Rory to speak up while she recites her pledge.

In the film, the awkward Louise unexpectedly finds success as a burlesque star under the name Gypsy Rose Lee, which is what allows her freedom from her mother at last – a hint that shy Rory will find her own way to escape Francie’s clutches.

Anne Sexton

FRANCIE: The historical bell of Chilton, 120 years old. Every member of the Puffs has stood here under the cover of night to pledge her lifelong devotion to us. ‘I pledge myself to the Puffs, loyal I’ll always be, a P to start, 2 F’s at the end, and a U sitting in between.’
RORY: Anne Sexton, right?

Anne Sexton (born Anne Harvey, 1928-1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse, on themes such as her depression and suicidal feelings. She is often compared with Sylvia Plath, and the two were friends (they were both poets around the same age from the Boston area). She won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry in 1968, and took her own life by carbon monoxide poisoning.

Rory satirically compares the sub-literary Puffs rhyme with Sexton’s verse. The gloom-loving, suicide-romanticising Rory would surely have checked out Sexton’s poetry, and the Puffs seem to make her mind automatically swing towards thoughts of self-oblivion.

The Puffs Break into the Headmaster’s Office

The Puffs break into the Headmaster’s Office as part of their initiation ceremony into the Puffs, and also seems to serve as a hazing ritual at the same time, as it’s the sort of harmless prank that inductees to a secret society might have to go through to prove their sincerity. It’s very mild compared some of the things real sororities get up to, but has the same cult-like feel.

The Puffs seem to have been doing this ritual for at least fifty years without ever being caught or reprimanded, so it makes you wonder how Rory got so unlucky that Headmaster Charleston will very soon come in and bust them. Presumably it was common practice to turn a blind eye to the Puffs and their activities. The only thing that could explain it is if Headmaster Charleston is relatively new to the job, and has decided to crack down on sororities at school.

“Maybe someday I’ll stumble into a Disney movie”

RORY: This is the headmaster’s office. How did she get the keys? I’m sure he didn’t give them to her.
PARIS: Stop it. We are making very important social contacts here.
RORY: Hey, I’m not looking for social contacts. I have friends. I’m fine.
PARIS: Well, how nice it must be to be you. Maybe someday I’ll stumble into a Disney movie and suddenly be transported into your body, and after living there awhile, I’ll finally realise the beauty of myself. But until that moment, I’m going to go in there and I’m going to become a Puff. Now get out of my way.

During the show, Paris several times refers to Rory being like a Disney princess – something which has surely helped fuel all that Rory/Paris fanfiction! Rory is also referred to as another Disney character a few times – Bambi.

It is at this point that Rory, who seems to be joining the Puffs almost by default, good-naturedly but without being particularly interested (like playing golf or making her debut), has her first serious doubts about what she’s let herself in for. She knows the Puffs are doing something wrong, but is unable to stand up for herself against Paris and the other girls.

Rory doesn’t have many options to escape at this point. She’s half an hour from home, in the middle of the night, in her pyjamas, with no transport, and no money for a payphone. There was no Plan B in case things went wrong. Rory seems to be hoping Paris, who at least lives in Hartford, will be equally horrified and take charge of the situation. Unfortunately, Paris is determined to be Puffed.

“That’s how you look?”

PARIS: So, that’s how you look when you’ve just woken up?
RORY: Um, yeah.
PARIS: Nothing in my life is fair.

Of course, the viewer knows that this isn’t how Rory looks when she first wakes up. Lorelai warned her the Puffs would be coming over, and told her to put on cute pyjamas, brush her hair, and wear lip gloss. Instead of going to bed, she stays up reading, then quickly jumps into bed when she hears the Puffs at the door, so she hasn’t even been asleep, let alone woken up.

Liza Weil is attractive, so they had to work quite hard to make her look frumpy for these scenes, including putting on a skin treatment which she obviously didn’t need. She still ends up looking pretty cute.