Tag: Character Insight

Rory Hears Shane on the Phone to Jess

SHANE: [on phone] Uh huh . . . All I know is I don’t have it, so it’s gotta be at your place . . . You’re not looking for it, you’re watching TV, I can tell . . . Yeah, whatever. I’ll just get a new one. So, what are we doing tonight? . . . I don’t know, I’m sick of eating. I’ve been eating like a pig, I feel all bloaty . . . It is so a word, it’s a word ’cause I said it. That’s how words get invented, ’cause people say them and then other people say them . . . You’re such a jerk sometimes and I’m always nice to you . . .

We have seen Jess and Shane embrace and kiss on the show, but this is the only time we ever hear them communicate, and it’s just one side of a brief telephone conversation. When a jealous Rory overhears it, she seems to use it as ammunition against Shane, as evidence that Shane is not “smart” enough for Jess (like she is).

This is a clear parallel to how Jess feels about Dean – that he’s not smart enough for Rory (like he is). Jess seems to have deliberately chosen a girlfriend who will make Rory feel the way he’s been feeling all along.

What the viewer can pick up from Shane’s side of the conversation is that Jess is not an attentive boyfriend, and Shane is aware of it. She can tell he’s watching television while pretending to be searching for her lost item (we don’t know what it is, but in a later episode she leaves a bra behind, so that could be it). She is also aware that Jess can be a “jerk” to her sometimes, and perhaps Rory should take this as a red flag, because later he isn’t a very attentive boyfriend to her, either.

Whatever Rory thinks of Shane, we can tell that Shane is smart enough to see through Jess to some extent, and is not deluding herself about the relationship. She can also speak up for herself, and lets Jess know how she feels. These are skills that Rory herself will later be lacking in her own relationship with Jess.

Lorelai’s Careers Talk Goes Off Script

Lorelai begins giving her careers talk at Stars Hollow High, but it is almost immediately hijacked by students who are more interested in hearing about when she got pregnant with Rory, and whether she regrets it. You get the distinct impression that for these teens, Lorelai has long been a source of fascination (and probably of gossip), and they have been waiting for an opportunity to ask questions about her decision to keep Rory and commit to being a single mother.

Lorelai looks to Debbie Fincher for help, but receives absolutely none – it’s a supervised event organised by the PTA, and yet nobody steps in to ask the students to keep their questions only on the subject of Lorelai’s career, not her personal life. Lorelai could have said something along these lines herself, but she makes an attempt to answer their questions honestly, to show that she’s not ashamed. Unfortunately, she makes a bit of a mess of it – by the end she is very unwisely offering to take them all out for coffee to discuss her life in more depth. Boundaries, Lorelai!

One of the girls asking questions is Riki Lindhome (she’s the one with blonde pigtails), who would play the role of Juliet in later seasons of Gilmore Girls. At that time she had had a small role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She later got her big break in Tim Robbins’ hit play, Embedded, and was then cast in her first film role by Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby (2004). She’s gone on to have a successful career in film and television, and performs in a comedy duo called Garfunkel and Oates with Kate Micucci.

“First love”

LANE: I finally have a first love, like what you and Dean have.

RORY: Right . . . exactly.

As Lane compares her feelings for Dave for how Rory feels about Dean, it couldn’t be made clearer that not only does Rory not love Dean, but that perhaps she never loved him – not in the all-consuming way that most young girls feel about their first love (and not in the all-consuming, obsessive way that Dean and Jess feel about Rory). Love is much more complicated for Rory, because the message she received from her parents’ situation is that first love doesn’t last, it doesn’t work out, and it may in fact be a mistake with far-reaching consequences.

No wonder Rory quickly backs out of the conversation.

I Don’t Mind

The song that is playing while Rory dyes Lane’s hair purple.

“I Don’t Mind” is a 2000 song by all-girl dream-pop band Slumber Party, from their self-titled debut album. The band received rave reviews from critics, but never made much of an impression on the public. The general consensus is that they just sounded too different from other bands in the early 2000s, and the word “underrated” for once doesn’t seem out of place here. Another shout-out to a girl band!

The opening stanzas say:

I don’t mind if you find
someone’s God, if he were different than mine
every time, by design
He’s hearin’ you and you

I just wanna be true
Live my life in the summer night with you
Whenever I go, remind me I’ve been gone for so long

The lyrics suggest that Lane is open to a relationship with Dave even if he doesn’t’ share her religion or worship God the same way. It ends on a worrying note:

I don’t mind if you find
The girl of your dreams and leave me behind

It’s as if Lane is already fearing for the future and preparing to let Dave go, when she’s only just fallen for him. Fortunately, this level of pessimism is unnecessary right now.

Sissy

LORELAI: What was your girlfriend’s name, Sissy?

LUKE: As a matter of fact, no.

Lorelai teasingly suggests a girlfriend whose name is the opposite of “butch” – a “sissy”, slang for an effeminate man. There’s probably a bit of homophobic humour to Lorelai’s joke.

Lorelai had a friend in high school of this name – “Crazy Sissy”, who talked to her stuffed animals. Sissy has already been on the show as a high school girlfriend – she’s the girl Tristan took to the winter dance at Chilton, because Rory turned him down.

Note that Luke lets Lorelai know that he did have a girlfriend in high school, but he’s not saying her name. As they both went to Stars Hollow High, there’s a good chance she still lives in town.

Butch Danes

[Luke walks over to her. His high school picture is hanging in the display case with the caption “State High Hurdles Champion: 1985 – Butch Danes”]

LUKE: For the love of . . . what’s that doing there?

Here we discover Luke’s nickname in high school was “Butch” (a very manly nickname, best known from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).

If Luke was seventeen in 1985, that would make him the same age as Lorelai, both of them born in 1968. If he was any younger that year, he would be younger than Lorelai, which doesn’t seem likely (it’s a stretch of plausibility that he’s the same age – Scott Patterson is almost a decade older than Lauren Graham). I don’t think he can have been eighteen, because he didn’t do his final year of high school.

Luke said he didn’t have a single positive memory from high school, yet he was a star athlete and a state hurdles champion. It can’t have been all bad. It’s definitely a lot better than what Jess has been through at school.

Cities in Dust

This is the song playing at Lane’s house when Rory is bleaching her hair, so that it can later be dyed purple.

“Cities in Dust” is a 1985 song by English rock band Siouxsie and the Banshees, released as the lead single from their 1986 album Tinderbox. It’s a goth rock and dance-pop song describing the 79 AD destruction of the city of Pompeii by the the volcano Vesuvius. It went to #21 in the UK, and #17 on the Dance Club charts in the US, the band’s first significant success.

The song has quite often been chosen for soundtracks, including by The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, another Amy Sherman-Palladino TV show.

The lyrics about the burning down of the city seem to mirror Lane’s feelings that she is burning all her bridges by dyeing her hair. This is reinforced by the fact that the bleach soon starts burning her scalp.

Love Burns

The song Jess has playing when Lorelai is at Luke’s apartment.

“Love Burns” is the opening track of rock band Black Rebel Motorcycle Club’s 2001 debut album, B.M.R.C. Released as a single, it went to #37 in the UK the following year. The band were heavily influenced by classic English rock, and tended to do better in the UK than in their home country of the US.

The song’s lyrics speak passionately of Jess’ feelings for Rory, and the depth of his pain and anger caused by her neglect and rejection:

She cuts my skin and bruise my lips
She’s everything to me
She tears my clothes and burns my eyes
She’s all I want to see
She brings the cold and scars my soul
She’s heaven sent to me

Now she’s gone love burns inside me
Now she’s gone love burns inside me
Now she’s gone love burns inside me

Never thought I’d leave you like the way I do, yeah
Kiss my love and I wish you’re gone
You can kiss my love and I wish you’re gone
Never thought I’d leave you like the way that I do

Lorelai said in the pilot episode that bad boys have motorcycles. Even though it’s actually “good boy” Dean who has the motorcycle, Jess is still linked with them through the band. The band takes their name from Marlon Brando’s character’s biker gang in the 1953 film, The Wild One.

If Lorelai is listening to the song, it can’t make her feel any more comfortable about Jess. They would tell her he is still obsessed with Rory, and is furious about her. Lorelai has always said that Jess is a messed up, angry kid, and the lyrics are actually a little scary, as a reflection of Jess’ feelings.

Stars Hollow Beauty Supply

This is the beauty store in town where Rory and Lane buy Lane’s hair dye. Amusingly, it has a typically practical, generic name, like Stars Hollow Agricultural Supply. You don’t get lured into shopping for beauty products in Stars Hollow by something called Charmaine’s House of Glamour, or The Beauty Spot – you buy beauty products in the same pragmatic manner you pick up animal feed or a box of nails.

I take it Lane and Rory don’t usually shop here, as Rory is surprised to find that Shane works at the store – possibly as as an after-school job, I’m not sure if the show ever confirms whether Shane is still in high school.

I’m also not sure if Rory ever knew Shane before – they’re about the same age and live in a small town, so it seems likely, but she never says anything like, “Ugh, that awful Shane, I’ve hated her ever since she stole Jimmy Dandridge’s lunch in Fourth Grade”. Perhaps their paths didn’t cross, but they are not strangers either, so that she was vaguely aware of Shane’s existence, but never gave her a thought. Stars Hollow is just big enough that this is possible, especially if Shane’s family moved to town only in the last few years.