EMILY: So, Mom, if you’re going to be here for awhile, I can plan some things for you to do, some outings you might enjoy.
TRIX: Like what?
EMILY: Like the arboretum.
Emily may possibly refer to the Kim Arboretum in Elizabeth Park in West Hartford. It only received official arboretum status in 2019, but the trees themselves were planted more than a century before, with some trees growing naturally even earlier. Could it have been referred to as the arboretum even before official status was conferred, I wonder?
TRIX: Well, for the past year, I’ve been renting my home in Hartford to a group of musicians. They’ve recently moved out, so I had to come check on the house and secure a new tenant.
LORELAI: What kind of musicians?
TRIX: A rock and roll group of some sort. I believe they call themselves Korn.
Korn, a nu metal band formed in Bakersfield, California in 1993. The band is notable for pioneering the nu metal genre and bringing it into the mainstream. Their self-titled debut album was released in 1994, receiving positive reviews, and being credited with establishing the new wave of metal. Mainstream success came with Follow the Leader (1998) and Issues (1999), both of which debuted at #1. The band has sold more than 40 million records worldwide and have two Grammy Awards.
In real life they lived in Los Angeles in the early 2000s, not in Hartford.
TRIX: By choice, or do you scare the men with your independence?
LORELAI: Actually, I scare them with my Minnie Pearl impression.
TRIX: The lady with the hat.
Sarah Cannon, known professionally as her stage character Minnie Pearl (1912-1996), was an American comedian who appeared at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville for more than 50 years and on the television show Hee Haw from 1969 to 1991.
Richard’s mother Trix unexpectedly arrives on Richard’s birthday, both to visit her son and take care of some business. Emily is horrified and begins having a meltdown, but Lorelai decides to support her mother through this crisis. Previously she took a slightly malicious pleasure in watching her grandmother torture her mother – on the last visit, which took place in “The Third Lorelai”, Trix also ended up disgusted with Lorelai, so it seems that she now sees her mother’s point of view a little better.
RICHARD: Oh, I must say, I am a very spoiled man. Chuck Berry, and the complete History of the Peloponnesian War.
LORELAI: Well, sure, ’cause a partial history would skip all the dirty stuff.
RICHARD: I especially like the way you wrapped the books in a bow tie. It’s very, very clever.
The Outbreakof the Peloponnesian War, a historical account of the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which was fought between the Peloponnesian League (led by Sparta) and the Delian League (led by Athens). Written by historian and classical scholar Donald Kagan, a professor at Yale University, the book comes in four volumes. Lorelai has bought Richard all four volumes, hence it is the “complete” version. Lorelai has wrapped the books in the bow tie which was her original present for her father – Rory almost certainly suggested the books.
“Slow and steady wins the race” is a proverb from “The Tortoise and the Hare”, a story from Aesop’s Fables – a collection of tales from ancient Greece, attributed to a legendary slave named Aesop.
In the fable, the tortoise challenges the hare to a race, but the arrogant hare takes a nap midway through the race, sure that he has plenty of time to do so and still win the race. He wakes to find the tortoise has already crossed the finish line.
The moral of the story is that flashy overconfidence may be overtaken by conscientious plodding. In the same way, Dean hopes to win Rory back with his steady, reliable ways, while the “flashy” Jess misses out.
DEAN: I don’t know, Rory. Maybe . . . maybe, um . . . is there a way we could be friends? … If you want to.
RORY: Oh, I want to. I really want to. But –
DEAN: Don’t ask me how I’m gonna deal with him. I have no idea.
Although Rory was initially reluctant to have coffee with Dean, and refused to eat anything, by the end of this scene they are chatting easily, and she is smiling and sharing his custard pie. When Dean asks if they can be friends, she says she really wants to, with Jess being relegated to a “But – “.
Rory was friends with Jess, which gradually damaged her relationship with Dean until they broke up (again). Now she agrees to be friends with Dean while going out with Jess – what could go wrong? Of course, Dean is very much wanting it to go wrong, in order to cause Jess the same sort of problems he believes Jess caused him.
It does feel typically unfair that just as Rory is starting to feel more relaxed and confident with Jess, Dean worms his way back into the picture. Because drama.
DEAN: Yeah. You know, um, I wanted to tell you I applied to Southern Connecticut State …
RORY: Wait a minute, you do know that Southern Connecticut State is a four-year college?
DEAN: Yeah, I read that in the brochure.
RORY: But what happened to ‘I’m going to community college’?
Southern Connecticut State University, previously mentioned. It is located in New Haven, the same city as Yale. It feels as if the show was setting up a future plot line where Rory and Dean were both at university in the same city, but nothing ever came of it. Perhaps Dean changed his mind, or perhaps Jared Padalecki’s commitments to filming Supernatural meant that this idea fell by the wayside.
Charlemagne, or Charles the Great (747-814) [pictured], King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, and the first Holy Roman Emperor. Charlemagne has been called the “Father of Europe” as he united most of Western Europe for the first time since the classical era of the Roman Empire, as well as uniting parts of Europe that had never been under Frankish or Roman rule. His reign spurred the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of energetic cultural and intellectual activity within the Western Church.
Rory hasn’t been a student at Stars Hollow High since she was a freshman in 2000, but apparently Mr McKellan is still using the same material on his senior students. And it’s taken Dean two years to also have him as a History teacher. How many History teachers does little old Stars Hollow High actually have?
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 