Lorelai’s Contributions to Stars Hollow

Made all the donkey outfits for the 2001 Christmas Festival – we never saw this, but presumably it’s the same festival that the Christmas pageant is a part of. Seems like a lot of people dressed up as donkeys for the festival, in typical quirky Stars Hollow fashion.

Organised the Save the Historic Oak Tree campaign. Apparently Stars Hollow has a historic oak tree, which we haven’t seen, and Lorelai saved it.

Played the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof for the Stars Hollow Community Theater. Tevye is the father and patriarch in the musical, so Lorelai must have been great to beat any male competitors for the role (unless she was the only candidate, or they were doing a gender-flipped version). Either way, she obviously gave a standout performance. A reminder that Lorelai has to be both mother and father, as a single parent.

I don’t know why Sookie and Rory think any of these things will help Lorelai get a loan – do either of them know how banks work? They don’t give you loans based on how nice and community-minded you are.

$15 000

LORELAI: Fifteen thousand dollars?
RORY: We’re never eating again.
LORELAI: I don’t have fifteen thousand dollars. I’ve never had fifteen thousand dollars. I’m trying to picture fifteen thousand dollars – I can’t! That’s how unfamiliar fifteen thousand dollars and I are with each other!

Apparently Lorelai bought her house for less than $15 000, or the downpayment was less than that. That would seem almost unbelievable today, but is plausible for a house in rural Connecticut needing urgent repairs in the mid 1990s (for the downpayment, not the entire price).

Second Cousin Stan

RORY: This is one ugly looking baby. Whose baby is this?
LORELAI: That’s your second cousin’s Stan’s. Poor kid.
RORY: Ugh, he got Stan’s everything.

If Stan is Rory’s second cousin, then surely he is the son of Lorelai’s cousin? But where did Lorelai get a cousin from? We’re only told of one aunt, Hopie, who is Emily’s sister and lives in Paris (no husband or children were mentioned). It is implied that Richard is an only child, despite the proliferation of Gilmore aunts and uncles. And could Lorelai’s cousin already be old enough to be a grandfather?

It’s possible that Lorelai (or the writer?) means that Stan is Rory’s cousin twice removed, meaning that he is Richard’s cousin – if so, he’s presumably a lot younger than Richard since he’s just welcomed a new baby. Many people get second cousins and cousins twice removed mixed up.

The baby doesn’t actually seem particularly ugly, to me it just looks like a normal baby.

Extended Family

As Lorelai begins calling relatives to find out if they sent her the ice cream maker, we learn a few names from the extended family. They are identified as aunts and uncles, which may be courtesy titles for any elderly distant relatives. Or they could be Richard’s aunts and uncles, the siblings of either Trix, or Richard’s father.

Aunt Bobbie. Aunt Bobbie is a traditional Bible-thumping Christian, by the sounds of it.

Aunt Clarissa. Turns out to have recently died. Aunt Bobbie seems to suggest a belief that Clarissa would have been hell-bound.

Aunt Bunny. Has also died.

Uncle Randolph. The older brother of Bunny. Lorelai doesn’t seem to think he has much longer to live.

The Pennsylvania Gilmores. A branch of the family in this state is next on Lorelai’s list. It sounds as if she is working her way through the Gilmore side of the family first.

Emily Confronts Mia

MIA: When Lorelai showed up on my porch that day with a tiny baby in her arms, I thought to myself, what if this were my daughter, and she was cold and scared and needed a place to live? What would I want for her? And then I thought, I’d want her to find somebody to take her in and make her safe and help her find her way.
EMILY: That’s funny. I would’ve wanted her to find someone who would send her home.

Clearly shaken by the news that Mia is visiting Stars Hollow, Emily goes to see her at the Independence. Somehow, in all the years Lorelai and Rory lived at the inn, Emily and Richard never crossed paths with Mia. Perhaps they didn’t visit very often, or perhaps Mia tactfully made herself scarce whenever they came to see their daughter.

To Emily, Mia is the woman who stole her family and stuck them in a potting shed. It’s hard not to have some sympathy for her feelings, but by the time Lorelai left, she was eighteen and a half, and an adult. A young adult, for sure, but still legally capable of making her own decisions and living where she pleased.

Mia would have had no authority to send her back to Emily, and if she had refused to take Lorelai in, she would have gone somewhere else – perhaps somewhere far more hazardous. The truth is, Emily owes Mia for keeping her daughter and granddaughter safe, but she is too angry and proud to ever thank her.

Mia promises to send Emily a box of photos from when Rory was young, but never asks for her address (nor does Emily offer it). Perhaps Lorelai already gave Mia her parents’ address at some time?

Note that Emily wears deep red, with an artificial black rose on her lapel, as a symbol of her rage and mourning. Mia wears funereal black with a circle of pearls in the same position, as if in sympathy with Emily’s feelings (pearls are often a symbol of tears). Mia wears the colours of bereavement that Emily is not quite ready to admit to; she understands the depth of her loss.

Luke Protects and Mends the Chuppah

LORELAI: Thanks for doing this. I didn’t want the rain to destroy your beautiful chuppah. And I looked and looked in the yellow pages and I didn’t see a chuppah waterproofer listing anywhere.

Luke comes over because Lorelai is worried the chuppah Luke made for her wedding to Max might get damaged by rain – apparently this is the first time heavy rain has been expected since August? Or else there’s been so much successive rain that Lorelai is worried about its cumulative effect.

I’m not sure how Luke saved the chuppah from getting wet, possibly some sort of oil or coating to protect it from the elements (there’s a bottle of something in his bucket, but you can’t see the label). He also has to superglue the head of a wooden goat decorating the chuppah back on. It’s a nice symbol of how Luke is willing to maintain and protect his relationship with Lorelai.

As part of that, he asks Lorelai about her fight with Sookie, and listens to her fears about starting her own business, and her grief at losing her connection to the Independence. She speaks of the inn as her “memory home”, where both she and Rory took their first steps, saying it means more to her than her parents’ home (what a kick in the teeth for Emily and Richard!).

Lorelai’s Fight with Emily

EMILY: You can be so harsh sometimes, and I just don’t know where it comes from or what I’ve done to deserve it.
LORELAI: You did nothing … Mia showed up for a visit and I told her about our plans and she’s talking about selling the Independence Inn and it just wigged me out a little. It’s stupid, I don’t know, but that was our home for so long, mine and Rory’s.

During a pretty standard Friday night argument, Emily and Lorelai actually reach out and express their feelings to each other. (It’s interesting that Emily’s perception that Lorelai can be very harsh is exactly how Lorelai must often feel about Emily).

Unfortunately, whenever Lorelai is honest about how she feels, it often has the effect of hurting Emily. In this case, she has to hear that Lorelai thinks of the Independence Inn as she and Rory’s “home”, and is reminded that it’s the place where Rory grew up. Although she forgives Lorelai for her outburst, and says she understands, she is clearly hurt to hear the emotional attachment Lorelai still has to Mia and the Independence.

In this scene, Lorelai makes it sound as if the Independence was their home for many years, even though they only spent two or three years in the potting shed (as Lorelai said it’s where they lived when Rory was a baby). Possibly as Lorelai proved her worth, Mia was able to move she and Rory into more suitable accommodation in the inn, such as staff quarters. It may be that Richard and Emily only began visiting them at the inn after this point, which is why they never knew about the potting shed days.

“I’ve lived in this town my entire life”

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).

Andrew at the Meeting

Andrew from Stars Hollow Books is at the meeting, and says that his son told him about Jess setting off the fire alarms at the high school. We now discover that Andrew is the father of a boy, presumably a teenager. (He makes it sound as if he only has one son, although there may be daughters as well). He’s sitting next to Bootsy, as if they might be friends (or both in the trade of selling reading materials, so have something in common).

“You were special”

MIA: Not one thing to recommend hiring her. Just that … how do I put it and remain a lady? … that ‘who cares’ look in her eyes, so I gave her any job. The other maids hated you.
LORELAI: Yeah, well they were all so slow.
MIA: You were special.

This helps explain why Mia hired Lorelai, even though she had no experience or references. Not only a vulnerable figure, a teenaged mother with a baby, but one who didn’t want to be pitied or beg for help: only to be given the chance to earn enough for herself and her daughter.

Lorelai repaid Mia by being a hard-working and enthusiastic employee – so much so that the other maids were resentful of her. I suspect that years spent watching Emily’s maids get castigated and fired for minor errors gave Lorelai the motivation to pay attention to detail. This good attitude and work ethic no doubt soon led to promotions, raises, and bonuses at the Independence.