Emily the Cobra

NATALIE: There she is, the Cobra … This woman gets her way or she squeezes ’til you comply.

Emily’s friend is Natalie Swope, played by Judy Geeson. You may remember her as one of the ladies from Emily’s tea party on the patio in “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”. Emily introduces Natalie and Lorelai as if they are strangers, even though Natalie asked after Lorelai and seemed to remember her quite well in the previous season, despite not seeing Lorelai since she was a teenager (although, as Lorelai and Rory attended Emily’s Christmas party each year, this doesn’t seem plausible).

Natalie refers to Emily as “the Cobra”, because she squeezes people (puts pressure on them) until she gets what she wants from them. There are various snakes called cobra, but only those in the genus Naja from Asia are true cobras. They are notable for being able to rear up off the ground and flatten their necks to appear larger. They don’t attack prey by squeezing them, however – that’s pythons and boa constrictors. Cobras have highly venomous fangs instead, and all species are capable of delivering a fatal bite to a human.

Lorelai sometimes seems selfish and unreasonable in the way that she instinctively refuses her mother’s requests, but Emily’s reputation as domineering and manipulative, determined to get her own way at no matter what cost to the other party (the auctioneer is actually ill in this episode, but Emily has forced him to turn up and work) provides a good reason for that. She has no wish to be one of the Cobra’s many victims, and what seems like a reasonable request may well turn out to be something more sinister.

Luke Freaks Out Over Breastfeeding

LUKE: Why, why do they do this? This is a public place, people are eating here … This cannot be sanitary … When did that become acceptable? In the old days, a woman would never consider doing that in public. They’d go find a barn or a cave or something. I mean, it’s indecent. This is a diner not a peep show!

Luke is horrified when a woman nurses her baby in the diner. I have trouble accepting this “caveman” version of Luke, when he was depicted as intelligent and progressive in Season 1 – sometimes it feels as if the show couldn’t decide whether Luke was smart or stupid, progressive or reactionary.

He did tell Lorelai that he didn’t like small children very much, especially their messy, sticky side, and perhaps this is why he is having problems with seeing a baby fed, but it ends up being a judgement on the mother for putting on a “peep show” – therefore sexualising her need to feed her child, which is pretty creepy of Luke.

In Connecticut, women have been legally entitled to breastfeed in public since 1997, and it is prohibited for anyone to restrict or limit their right to do so. This includes restaurants and diners, so Luke has had five years to adjust to the law. As a responsible business owner, Luke would know of his legal obligations, and I don’t think he would behave like this, even if he did secretly feel a little uncomfortable.

As another mirroring scene, Jess is also shown being unable to handle seeing a woman breastfeed her baby. It’s not like this entire scene didn’t age well – it was outdated and unfunny at the time of first broadcast.

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.

“You look like little birds help you get dressed in the morning”

PARIS: Because people think you’re nice. You’re quiet, you say excuse me, you look like little birds help you get dressed in the morning. People don’t fear you.

A reference to Cinderella, previously discussed. In the 1950s film, Cinderella makes friends with birds and mice to cheer her lonely existence, and the birds are shown helping her get dressed, and even make a ballgown for her, with the help of the mice.

Six months ago, Rory was a friendless loser who couldn’t even get anyone to eat lunch with her, and Chilton was actually disturbed by how unpopular she was. Suddenly, everyone likes her so much that she can help Paris win the election just by existing. What happened?

“I thought it was, like, prayer time or something”

LOUISE: Oh, were we reading these now?

RORY: Yeah, that’s why we’ve all been kind of quiet for the past ten minutes.

LOUISE: I thought it was, like, prayer time or something.

Louise was originally the brighter of the two out of she and Madeline, and quite a good student. She seems to have been getting steadily dimmer, until she now doesn’t seem to understand that she’s meant to read educational materials when they’re handed to her. Chilton isn’t a religious school, so why she thought they’d be opening with a ten-minute private prayer session, I don’t know. Maybe she’s playing dumb so successfully it’s actually turned her brain.

“I was counting on this!”

RORY: We had plans! We made space in the closet!
LORELAI: Oh Rory, just because we moved a couple of boxes is not reason enough for me to get married!
RORY: Max was counting on this! I was counting on this!

After behaving with callous indifference towards Max and showing a deep cynicism towards his upcoming wedding with Lorelai, Rory is suddenly extremely upset that the whole thing is off. It turns out that she actually cares about Max, and was heavily invested in the relationship, despite zero evidence of that.

Ba Zing!

MICHEL: It is a weekend, and on the weekend I like to move, and the ladies, they like it too.
LORELAI: Especially when you move out of town. Ba zing!

Lorelai’s comeback to Michel’s statement mimics the one-line quip beloved of classic stage comedians to their “straight man”, even providing her own ba zing in imitation of the cymbal being hit to mark the punch line. Another indication that Michel was originally meant to be heterosexual.

Amy Sherman-Palladino’s father, Don Sherman, was a stand-up comedian in the 1960s, and there are numerous references to classic stage comedy in Gilmore Girls.

Queen Victoria

MICHEL: This is a drag club.
SOOKIE: It’s called the Queen Victoria. What did you expect, tea and crumpets?

Victoria, born Alexandrina Victoria (1819-1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 1837 until her death. She became a national icon, and is identified with standards of strict morality that we still refer to as “Victorian”. Hr reign of more than 63 years was longer than any other of her predecessors, and is known as the Victorian Era, a period of industrial, scientific and cultural change in the UK, coupled with a great expansion of the British Empire.

Michel seems put out that he has been taken to a drag club, perhaps another signal that he was originally not presented as a gay character. Sookie mentions tea and crumpets as a favourite afternoon snack of the Victorian era (and still popular today).

The Queen Victoria is a fictional drag club. In real life there is a gay bar in Hartford where you can see drag shows, but it is not actually a drag club per se. The sign outside the Queen Victoria identifies it as a “bar and grill” (unless that is the place next door) and in real life, Hartford has a couple of bars and cafes that have regular drag shows.

“I don’t tap any more”

[The girls start dancing. Kirk watches them as Rory walks over to him.]
RORY: How come you’re not up there Kirk?
KIRK: Oh, I don’t tap anymore. Bum knees.

This is the first indication we have of Kirk’s artistic leanings and dance training, later retconned so that he is actually a past student of Miss Patty (even though he had never met her in their first encounter on the show, in Cinnamon’s Wake).

Lorelai Gives Rory a Hammer

RORY: What is that?
LORELAI: A hammer.
RORY: It has feathers on it.
LORELAI: Yes.
RORY: Why?
LORELAI: So the rhinestones and bows won’t feel lonely.

This is the hammer referred to in the title, Hammers and Veils. Of course Rory can’t go off to help the needy like anyone else – she has to do it in an especially quirky, girly manner that immediately marks her as special and the centre of attention. It’s the Gilmore way.

Rory wouldn’t even buy purple legal pads for school because they’d make her look unprofessional at Chilton, but somehow she’s happy to take a gold-painted, pink feathered hammer to volunteer work which she is doing through Chilton, and for which the hammer would surely be useless. Maybe she’s more relaxed now that she’s one of the top students in her class.

Typically for the show, Rory is running ten minutes late for her volunteer job in this scene.