Senator Boxer

PARIS: I mean, come on, Senator Boxer, as one of our foremost Democratic leaders …

Paris is speaking to Barbara Boxer (born Barbara Levy in 1940), politician and lobbyist who served in the US Senate, representing California (where Gilmore Girls was filmed) from 1993 to 2017, as a member of the Democratic Party. She was known for having one of the most progressive voting records in Congress. Her daughter Nicole married Tony Rodham, the younger brother of Hillary Clinton in 1994, at the first White House wedding since 1971.

At 4 foot 11 inches in height, Barbara Boxer was one of the shortest members of Congress, sometimes standing on a portable platform to address the chamber – this became known as the “Boxer Box”.

Barbara Boxer portrays herself in this episode. She had previously played herself in cameo roles on Murphy Brown in 1994, and in the film Traffic in 2000. She went on to do so again in Curb Your Enthusiasm in 2007.

Kosher bacon

LORELAI: Huh, Kosher bacon.
SOOKIE: Beef, not pork.
LORELAI: I am so Jewish.

Beef bacon is made from beef belly, so that it’s streaked with fat like pork bacon, and then cured, dried, smoked, and sliced in exactly the same way. It’s leaner than pork bacon, though. It’s recently become popular because it’s halal and kosher – there’s a big market for it in the Middle East – but it’s not a new product. Bacon was made from beef and mutton as well as pork hundreds of years ago.

“I am so Jewish” is presumably a meta-comment from the writer, Amy Sherman-Palladino.

“I’ll alert the media”

LORELAI: Oh, hey, we need Q-Tips.

LUKE: I’ll alert the media.

LORELAI: See, that’s better with the accent.

LUKE: The reference is enough, you’ll learn that one day.

A reference to the film Arthur, previously mentioned.

In the film, Arthur, played by Dudley Moore, says, “I’m going to take a bath”. His English butler Hobson, played by John Gielgud, replies drily, “I’ll alert the media”. Dream-Luke is saying that he considers himself little more than Lorelai’s sarcastic butler. As this is Lorelai’s dream, it suggests that’s what she wants from Luke!

Dream-Luke’s comment that it’s not necessary to do an accent, the reference is enough, is a meta-comment by the writer (Amy Sherman-Palladino). Gilmore Girls referenced many, many films, but very rarely does anyone do the accent to match, or even attempt to reproduce how the line is said in the film (such as by shouting “Here’s Johnny” in a terrifying manner) . The writer is saying that a simple reference is enough for the intelligent viewer.

Rory Kisses Jess

After her father leaves to answer a phone call, Rory suddenly sees Jess, and discovers he has moved back to Stars Hollow. Only a complete idiot would fail to realise it was to see Rory again, and Rory isn’t an idiot. She kisses Jess, warning him not to tell anyone what happened, then runs back to her boyfriend Dean with a cheery, “Welcome home!”.

Yep, falling in love with a Gilmore girl isn’t any picnic. Just ask Dean.

The kiss with Jess in this season finale is a counterpart to the kiss Rory had with Dean in the finale of Season 1 as they reunited after breaking up. The first kiss had Dean looming over Rory and grabbing her almost roughly, as if taking possession of her (Jared Padalecki’s height partly explains this). The kiss with Jess, another reunion, is far more gentle and intimate, much more romantic. It feels more like Rory giving herself to Jess, rather than allowing herself to be taken.

Alexis Bledel and Milo Ventimiglia were a real life couple during the filming of the show, which is one reason why it appears far more convincing. They are almost too comfortable together for a first kiss.

Jackson Has to Wear a Kilt to the Wedding

Jackson is dismayed when his father hands him a kilt to wear to his wedding on the weekend. It’s a family tradition, and both Jackson’s father and grandfather were married in kilts, suggesting that the Belleville family have Scottish heritage. (Which made more sense when Jackson’s surname was Melville, which is a Scottish surname, while Belleville is French – although there is a historical relationship between France and Scotland, so it’s not unrealistic either).

I am not able to identify Jackson’s tartan – it looks most like a Buchanan Clan tartan, but I suspect it’s fictional.

Note that Jackson’s father is played by the real life father of Jackson Douglas, the actor who plays Jackson Belleville.

Rory Gets Her Cast Removed

When Rory got her cast put on, the doctor said she would need to keep it on for two weeks, but it’s actually been three weeks since the night of the car accident when she gets the cast removed.

Lorelai takes Rory to Dr Ronald Sue, a specialist in orthopaedic medicine – who has an office in Stars Hollow, quite unbelievably. It feels like in Season 1, the writers tried to create a small town in New England that might be a little quirky, or niche, or even slightly magical, but was still a place you could convince yourself might almost exist.

Now it’s only Season 2, but already they are throwing anything into Stars Hollow that suits the plot, so this little town of less than 10 000 people has multiple takeout options which all deliver, a 24-hour pharmacy, a hospital, and an orthopaedic specialist. It feels like very lazy world-building. In this case it seems especially pointless, because there’s no reason Lorelai couldn’t have picked Rory up from school and taken her to an appointment with Dr Sue in Hartford.

Christopher invites himself to the medical appointment, announcing to everyone with self-importance that he’s “the father”, as if Rory has just been born, or like anyone cares. He’s driven from Boston to watch a minor two-minute medical procedure, and now he … drives back again? That makes perfect sense. Is it a hint he isn’t actually in Boston at this point?

Rory wears a red and black tee shirt which says STRANGE 13 to her appointment, as a nice callback to her Emily the Strange sticker.

Inger

MAID: Dinner’s ready, Mrs. Gilmore.

EMILY: Bless you, Inger. Please go tell Mr. Gilmore. He’s in his den.

Emily’s maid for this week is played by Inger Jackson, who was Alexis Bledel’s stand-in on Gilmore Girls. (A stand-in a person who takes the place of a principal actor for rehearsals, camera blocking, or lighting setups). Inger has a few other minor roles in later seasons.

Lorelai Graduates

The moment arrives, and it is Lorelai’s turn to graduate, after three years of studying business at community college. As her name is read out, we discover for the first time that her middle name is Victoria (oddly enough, the last time we saw the name in the show, it was on a gay bar – The Queen Victoria!).

A popular fan theory is that because Richard named Lorelai after his beloved mother, her middle name of Victoria was chosen by Emily, and was perhaps the name she wishes that Lorelai had. It does seem like Emily to choose a name from royalty.

Richard and Emily look at Lorelai graduating with such pride, and I think feeling glad that they have been included in this important event. They could have been snobbish about her graduating from a community college, or even embarrassed that she doesn’t graduate until her thirties. They could have done the bare minimum; shown up, sat at the back, and given a quick congratulations before going home.

Instead they hire a professional filmmaker to record the ceremony, order dozens of corsages so Lorelai can choose whichever one she likes best, and watch Lorelai graduate with expressions of love and pride. They know how hard she has worked, and the struggles she has been through to graduate, so being there for her big moment is very important.

The writer (Daniel Palladino) has left poor Rory stuck on a bus and unable to get there, but it was so that Lorelai could share this touching moment with Richard and Emily – she gets to graduate as a daughter, not a mother, the way she would have if she’d been sent to Vassar when she was a teenager.

It’s slightly unbelievable Richard and Emily are not more concerned about Rory’s absence from the ceremony, but perhaps they don’t want do anything to ruin Lorelai’s special evening.

Bush League

ZACH: This place stunk. It’s Bush League.

Bush League is American slang for something which is of an inferior standard; unsophisticated, unprofessional, mediocre.

The slang comes from baseball, where the small-town teams below the minor league became informally known as the “bush league”, because of their rural origins, and because they often played on rough fields bordered by bushes. The slang dates to the very early twentieth century.

Note that the role of the repellent Zach is portrayed by Seth MacFarlane, who Daniel Palladino (the writer of this episode) worked with on his animated television sitcom, Family Guy.

Shaun Cassidy

LORELAI: Yeah, I never leave home without all the essentials: mirror, makeup, picture of Shaun Cassidy.

Shaun Cassidy (born 1958), singer, actor, writer, and producer. He is the son of Oscar-winning actress Shirley Jones and Tony Award-winning actor Jack Cassidy, the half-brother of David Cassidy from The Partridge Family, and the brother of actor Patrick Cassidy.

While still in high school, he signed a record contract and forged a career as a teen pop idol. His biggest hit was “Da Doo Ron Ron”, which went to #1 in 1977. At the same time, he starred in The Hardy Boys Mysteries on television, and had a role on General Hospital.

During the 1980s and 1990s he concentrated on stage acting, performing on Broadway and in the West End. He wrote his first television pilot in 1995 while appearing in Blood Brothers on Broadway alongside David Cassidy, and has gone on to have a successful career as a screenwriter and TV producer.

Lorelai implies she had a crush on Shaun Cassidy when she was a little girl, although also, a bit oddly, that her make-up routine dates to the same period, when she would have been aged 8 to 12. This actually makes more sense for someone Amy Sherman-Palladino’s age, as she would have been around 14 at the end of Cassidy’s pop star career.

It sometimes feels as if the Palladinos forget that the small age gap between them and their fictional character Lorelai would still make a difference in the childhood years, and they can’t just give Lorelai all Amy’s childhood memories.