Coming Home is a 1978 romantic drama war film starring Jane Fonda and Jon Voigt, in a love triangle story between Sally, the wife of a Marine Corps Captain deployed in Vietnam (played by Bruce Dern), and Luke, a young man who has returned from the war a paraplegic. He and Sally meet at the veteran’s hospital where Sally is volunteering. It has an excellent soundtrack of late 1960s songs.
The film received good reviews, and was popular with audiences. It is still regarded as one of the best dramatic films ever made.
RORY: There’s a bad draft over there where I usually sit. It’s kind of like a big downward gust. It’s not exactly ‘Toto, we’re not in Kansas any more’, but it’s still pretty darn uncomfortable, especially when you’re just gotten your hair to behave. So can I sit here?
In the film, Dorothy and her dog Toto are taken to the Land of Oz by a violent cyclone, and when they arrive, Dorothy says, “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re in not in Kansas any more” – a movie quote nearly everyone gets wrong, just like Rory does.
Rory is saying the draft isn’t exactly a cyclone, but she’d still prefer not to sit in it.
LORELAI: Oh, look, the Chilton Cheer Society wear matching hats. Eh? Go Harvard.
A school’s Cheer Society exists to financially and practically support its cheer squad. Presumably the parents wear matching hats to identify themselves, and will also cheer for the team from the bleachers.
Lorelai is reminding Rory that everything they’re doing is so Rory can attend Harvard.
LORELAI: Talk to some kids, I’ll hang out with their moms, and we’ll get into Harvard, take over the world, then buy Chilton and turn it into a rave club.
A rave club is one which hosts dance parties (“raves”), typically featuring Djs and electronic dance music. Most often associated with the early 90s.
Note that Lorelai says, “We’ll get into Harvard”, rather than “You’ll get into Harvard”, as if Rory has to succeed for both of them.
LORELAI: And these fanatics that run your school, they’re the ones that write the letters to the fancy colleges saying things like, ‘Hey she’s keen, look at her’ or ‘Have you seen the L tattooed on her forehead, ’cause it sure is a big one.’
Lorelai is referring to the habit, very common in the 1990s, of satirically making an L shape with the fingers on either your own or another’s forehead to denote you or they were a “loser”. Lorelai imagines the L to be tattooed on Rory’s forehead as a mark of permanent loserdom. Loner and loser seem to become conflated extremely quickly in this episode.
LORELAI: I told him that he was completely out of line with this treatment of you, that you are not a loner freak, you have plenty of friends, and you don’t own a long black leather Matrix coat, and they should fall down on their kneesocks everyday that you deign to show up at that loser school.
The Matrix, previously discussed. The hero Neo wears a long black leather trench coat.
Also, how does Rory have “plenty of friends”? She has one friend, Lane! Getting along well with your mother’s social circle doesn’t make them your friends, as Lorelai seems to think. Lorelai has trouble accepting that she and Rory aren’t one person, but two.
RORY: Hey. LORELAI: Hey. RORY: Hey. LORELAI: Yeah, look Fat Albert. Get me a soda, will you?
Lorelai is referring to the hero of the animated children’s television show, Fat Albert and the Cosby Kids (1972-1985). It was created by comedian Bill Cosby and inspired by his own childhood gang in Philadelphia, and his friend Albert Robertson. In the show, Fat Albert is wise beyond his years, and serves as the conscience of the gang to maintain its integrity. The lead singer of their band, Fat Albert is also athletic and loves sports, despite his weight.
HEADMASTER: Like mother, like daughter. LORELAI: Okay, hold on. HEADMASTER: Ms. Gilmore, active participation in Chilton activities for a parent is vitally important.
The phrase “like mother like daughter” can be found in the Bible, in Ezekiel 16:44. There, it specifically refers to the city and people of Jerusalem, who are said to have the Hittites as their “mother”. It isn’t complimentary, meaning that Jerusalem has taken on the same disgusting practices as earlier cultures, despite the love and protection of God. The proverb seems to have been well-known even in Old Testament times.
You can see Headmaster Charleston in the role of disappointed God, having offered the love and protection of Chilton to Rory, only to find that she has inherited her mother’s appalling habits!
Indignant that the school has dared to suggest her daughter is less than perfect, Lorelai marches into the headmaster’s office in high dudgeon to put him straight on the Gilmore Girl philosophy of not doing anything you don’t feel like.
Headmaster Charleston pulls the wind from her sails by immediately getting out her file (really? Schools keep files on parents? What kind of school is this?). The file is worryingly thin, denoting a lack of parental involvement. Lorelai has only been to one bake sale a year ago, and was observed to not stay afterwards to talk to other parents. Seriously, how does he know all this stuff? Why does he care?
Perhaps tactfully, Headmaster Charleston does not bring up the fact that Lorelai got rather too involved in the school by having a serious relationship with Rory’s teacher. That’s all forgiven and forgotten, but failing to hang out after a bake sale? That’s on your permanent record, Missy!
Now, usually when Lorelai is told to do something, she gets stroppy and calls everyone a Fascist, but this is Rory’s future, so after a few futile attempts to explain she’s too busy, she meekly leaves with a list of organisations at Chilton she might join.
Just as the school wouldn’t listen when Rory was slightly late to a test because she lives out of town and got hit by a deer, there is no attempt to understand that Lorelai is a single mother who works and studies, and is also doing about a million volunteer jobs in Stars Hollow already. Do fathers have to do any of this volunteer stuff for Chilton, or are their lives considered far too busy and worthwhile to be called upon in this way? If so, one of the more realistic things in the show!
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 