Rory Finds Jess

[Jess is reading on a bench as Rory walks up behind him]

RORY: Hi.

JESS: How ya doing?

After all the effort Rory has made to come to New York, apparently on a whim, she seemingly just walks in a side gate of Washington Square Park and finds Jess straight away (Rory is looking pretty fresh for someone who’s been on a bus for hours and just had a long walk). He’s sitting helpfully on a prominent park bench right at the entrance. It is now presumably somewhere between midday and 12.30 pm.

I know Jess was very lucky, phoning Rory when Lorelai was drunk and had the stereo on loudly so they could talk in private, but it’s nothing to Rory’s luck in finding Jess! All she had to go on was that he often hung out in Washington Square Park, and without making any plans to meet at a particular day, place, or time, it looks as if she turns up and Jess is right there. I mean, even if Jess was in the park, it’s ten acres – it could take hours to search for him. And lucky he hadn’t gone to the toilet or to lunch just as she arrived!

It would have been more believable if Rory and Jess had some sort of agreement to meet in New York, but that would have made Rory much more sneaky, treacherous, and selfish. It has to seem completely spontaneous, so that the relationship between Rory and Jess can remain innocent.

None of the scenes in this episode were actually filmed in New York – they were all shot at the Warner Bros lot in California. This scene takes place in New York Park, Burbank. There is no side gate such as the one Rory walks through, and if she approached Washington Square Park straight down Fifth Avenue, she would come to the main entrance, with the famous archway. Needless to say, it doesn’t look like Washington Square Park, and the real park is far more crowded, especially on a sunny spring afternoon around lunchtime.

“Community colleges have ceremonies”

RORY: Well, community colleges have ceremonies.

LORELAI: My community college doesn’t even have a lawn, they won’t necessarily have a ceremony.

Rory is correct: community colleges have graduation ceremonies, like any other college. You don’t need a lawn – they can be held in an auditorium, theatre, gym or even a separate hired venue.

The fact that Lorelai’s college isn’t having one, only her business class as a separate event, is obviously just to fit in with the restrictions of filming the episode.

Mystery Breakfast Spot

LORELAI: We have arrived.

RORY: Arrived where? [looks up] Aw, you are without shame.

Somehow Lorelai has led Rory all the way to Sookie’s house without Rory having the slightest idea where they are going. This is even less believable than the time Lorelai took her right to the very gates of Harvard before Rory suspected where they were. How can Rory not remember where Sookie lives?

Once again, we see that Sookie seems to live a long walk from Lorelai’s house, yet somehow it is too close to get in the car and drive to it. Rory says they are in the opposite direction to the business district, and even wonders if they are walking to the next town, suggesting that Sookie lives on the outskirts of Stars Hollow. Yet the area doesn’t look any more rural than Lorelai and Rory’s street – which makes sense, because in real life, Sookie’s house was right next to Lorelai’s!

Lorelai cannot go to the diner for breakfast, because she and Luke are still in a fight over Jess. The show doesn’t make it clear whether Lorelai arranged in advance to have breakfast at Sookie’s, or if they have turned up unannounced first thing in the morning expecting to be fed (which would not be out of character). Either way, Sookie is delighted to have extra people to cook for.

“I wanna go to New York some day”

LANE: So, you’re from New York, huh?

SOPHIE: Yes, I am.

LANE: I wanna go to New York someday.

Previously, Lane said she wanted to live in Philadelphia, but that might have been just to have something to reply to Rory. Now she says she wants to go to New York – but it might be just to keep Sophie talking. It’s not actually possible to tell whether Lane has any ambitions to leave Stars Hollow at all.

Like Sophie, Carole King was born and raised in New York City, and like Sophie, she moved to the country. She moved to a ranch in Sun Valley, Idaho in the 1980s, only selling up a few years ago. Between New York and Idaho, she lived in L.A during the 1970s.

Rory’s Letter to Dean

DEAN: What happened? What’d you do to your arm?

RORY: [hands him an envelope] Here.

DEAN: What is this?

RORY: Just read it.

Rory waits for Dean to come home from Chicago that evening, sitting on the porch, in a mirror image of when Dean waited fruitlessly for Rory to come home from Friday Night Dinner. When his dad brings Dean home, presumably from the airport, Rory hands him a letter where she has written down what happened to the car.

It’s a quick way to avoid lots of superfluous dialogue, but it makes Rory look a little cowardly that she couldn’t talk to Dean directly. Are we meant to think that she was too scared to talk to Dean, or that she didn’t feel confident Dean would listen to her all the way through?

Dean does read the letter all the way through, while yelling and kicking a duffle bag, which seems a bit threatening. However, once he is assured that Jess has really and truly left town, he just asks Rory to join he and his family for dinner. Later they watch TV with Dean’s sister, Clara.

It seems odd that Dean doesn’t have any other questions or comments about the accident or about the car – he seems to think the only thing wrong with his relationship with Rory was Jess, and now he’s gone, they can get back to normal.

Rory didn’t seem to have met Dean’s family in the first six months or so of them dating, but she is obviously very familiar with them now.

A Film By Kirk

Kirk’s short film is reminiscent of a section of the 1977 surrealist horror film Eraserhead, written, directed and produced by David Lynch, previously discussed as Amy Sherman-Palladino’s favourite director. Shot in black and white, it was Lynch’s first feature-length film. Starring Jack Nance in the lead role, it tells the story of a man left to care for his grossly deformed child in a desolate industrial landscape.

Upon release, Eraserhead received negative reviews, being described as “pretentious”, in “sickening bad taste” and “unwatchable”, and opened to small audiences, with little interest shown in it. It gradually gained a cult following as a midnight movie, and today is critically lauded as a film that is both beautiful and nightmarish. It was the favourite film of Stanley Kubrick, and an influence on The Shining.

Note that the poster advertises the film as “A film by David Lynch” – Kirk seems to have used the tagline as the inspiration for his film’s end title.

The other actors in Kirk’s film are Mary Lynn Rajskub and Jon Polito as the girlfriend and the father respectively. Rajskub had been in the sitcom Veronica’s Closet and has since gone on to numerous other shows, such as 24 and Brooklyn Nine-Nine. Polito was a veteran actor who worked with the Coen Brothers several times, and appeared in the TV shows Crime and Homicide: Life on the Streets. Neither actor includes Gilmore Girls on their filmography!

If they are supposed to be other people from Stars Hollow helping Kirk out, we never see them again. Perhaps Kirk actually hired professional actors for his film. It doesn’t seem out of character.

Minor Hairline Fracture

DOCTOR: She sustained a minor hairline fracture to her wrist.

LORELAI: So she broke her wrist? ….

DOCTOR: It’s a tiny fracture, absolutely nothing serious. I’m gonna put a cast on it. She’ll wear it for a couple weeks, that’s it.

There is essentially no difference between a fracture and a break – a hairline crack and having a bone shattered into pieces are both referred to as a fracture. The terms are interchangeable. Fractures usually take 6 to 8 weeks to heal, a hairline fracture may be on the shorter side of that, but only two weeks in a cast doesn’t seem plausible. However, it’s not long until the end of the season, which probably has a lot to do with the doctor’s treatment plan!

Lorelai insists that the doctor do some more X-rays, which he agrees to, but hairlines fractures don’t typically show up on X-rays, so it’s a waste of everybody’s time. It’s just to give Lorelai a chance to keep Rory busy while she goes off to do some yelling. Most parents wouldn’t leave their injured kid at a hospital in the middle of the night like that, but this is TV, not reality! Unfortunately for the plot, it makes Lorelai look incredibly selfish. I mean, more so than usual.

“I love the blue collar work”

KIRK: Don’t get me wrong, I love the blue collar work. I enjoy the plight of the everyman. But as much as the mail letter delivered and the DSL line installed and the latest J. Lo flick rented fills me with a deep sense of pride …

Although something of an inside joke, this does provide confirmation that the “Mick” who was going to install a DSL line for Lorelai was in fact Kirk. Perhaps he got the job using a fake name, or stole/was given someone else’s name tag?

It also confirms that Kirk is doing all his jobs simultaneously, as he refers to delivering mail, installing DSL lines, and working at the video store as all jobs he is currently doing. Although he mentions it now, we don’t see Kirk working as a mailman until a later season.

Kirk’s numerous jobs are a tribute to Amy Sherman-Palladino’s father Don Sherman, who likewise took on a multiplicity of jobs to support his family while working as a comedian.

“I hate crossword puzzles”

LORELAI: I hate crossword puzzles. They make me feel stupid.

An inside joke. Lauren Graham is very good at crossword puzzles, and would go through several a day on set while waiting for her turn.

Lorelai is looking at a New York Times puzzle book, and judging by the shopping basket Rory is carrying, they are having mac and cheese made from a packet, Twinkies, and a can of Red Bull for dinner that night.

Giselle Gerard (Janet Hubert)

In this episode we meet Michel’s mother, Giselle, who is visiting from Paris. She and Michel adore each other, and are “best friends” mother and son, who love to tease and joke with each other, using a banter that sounds like something out of a Noel Coward play.

This makes them seem quite similar to Lorelai and Rory, who are also self-proclaimed “best friends” with a comic patter between them. Janet Hubert is only fourteen years older than Yanic Truesale, suggesting she is supposed to be a very young glamorous mother like Lorelai.

Michel addresses his mother by her first name at one point, and you can hear the French pronunciation of it – ZEE-ZEHL. Giselle may have possibly been named with the French ballet Giselle in mind, one of the world’s most popular classical ballets.