Footnotes to the TV series
LANE: A big shout out to Mama Kim on that one!
RORY: Look, Mama Kim always starts out super serious on everything but then lightens with time.
I believe this is the first time Lane’s mother is referred to as Mama Kim, previously she was just “Mrs Kim” or “Lane’s mom”. Mama Kim is the preferred fan designated name for her character.
Rory’s comment is further evidence that Mrs Kim is not nearly as strict as she likes to make out, and is capable of eventually changing her mind.
LUKE: I hate that building.
LORELAI: What, the school?
LUKE: Three years of going there, I have no good memories.
Luke attended Stars Hollow High School for three years, meaning he didn’t complete the full four years of high school available in the US. He may have dropped out of school (sixteen was the legal age for this in Connecticut at the time), or done his last year of education at a trade school. From a conversation Luke had with the school principal, the second one seems the more likely.
If Luke regrets not doing four years of high school, then it might explain why he is so insistent that Jess remains at school. There is some irony in the thought he is forcing Jess to attend the school that he himself supposedly hated, when Jess is miserable there.
MRS. KIM: College applications … Every one in this pile approved by me and Reverend Melmin.
Last season Lane mentioned “the reverend” who takes them for Bible study class on Saturday morning plays handball. Now we discover his name is Reverend Melmin, who must be the pastor of the Seventh Day Adventist congregation in Stars Hollow. In real life, Seventh Day Adventist pastors aren’t actually addressed as “Reverend”, I think he would be “Pastor Melmin”.
Lorelai gets a phone call from Debbie Fincher, one of the mothers from Stars Hollow High School Parents and Teachers Association. We learn here that when Rory was a student at the school, Lorelai was actively involved in the PTA and got along well with the other parents, even being considered “a kick” because of her wicked sense of humour (very much like Emily, as it happens).
Rory was even friends (or at least friendly) with Debbie’s daughter Kathy Fincher, and used to go to her house to swim in their pool. Perhaps Kathy was one of the mysterious Stars Hollow girls who appeared at Rory’s sixteenth birthday party, and was never seen again? It does seem a little odd that Rory lives in a small town with teenagers that she went to school with and was apparently even friends with, yet has only kept in contact with Lane. Perhaps she runs into them offscreen.
The reason for Debbie’s call is to ask Lorelai to give a talk at the high school about her success in business, and to think of someone else they might ask. Lorelai agrees, and promptly suggests Luke as the second person.
Debbie Fincher is played by Heidi Swedberg, who had been in TV series such as Northern Exposure (1991), Murder She Wrote (1994), and Touched by an Angel (1996). She was best known for playing George Costanza’s fiancée Susan Ross in Seinfeld (1992-1997).
The piece by jazz legend John Coltrane Lane is listening to in her bedroom.
“Naima” is a 1959 ballad John Coltrane composed, naming it after his wife, Juanita Naima Grubbs. He recorded it for his fifth studio album, Giant Steps, released in 1960. Giant Steps is regarded as one of the most influential jazz albums of all time, while “Naima” was one of his first well-known works, and is a jazz standard. John Coltrane recorded it many times, and it appears on several live albums and compilation albums.
It seems slightly unusual that Lane loves both punk and jazz, but her tastes are clearly eclectic. You may recall she is also a huge fan of jazz legend Charlie Parker.
This episode is the first time we see Lane’s bandmates, Zack and Brian.
Zack is the lead guitarist and vocalist for the group, shown almost immediately to be a typical frontman, good looking and confident. He later becomes Lane’s boyfriend, then husband. Zack is played by Todd Lowe, who at this stage had had small roles in a few films, such as Where the Heart Is, and The Princess Diaries, and appeared in two episodes of Walker, Texas Ranger (once as a character named Zack!). Amy Sherman-Palladino used him again later in Bunheads, and he became best known for his role on vampire drama True Blood.
Brian is the bassist for the group, a little awkward and nerdy. He is played by John Carbrera, who is a friend of Sean Gunn who plays Kirk on Gilmore Girls; they attended the same theatre school in Chicago. At this stage Carbrera had had a few minor roles in TV shows such as CSI and NCIS. The previous year, he had won an award for his work in theatre. Recently, he has increasingly concentrated on screenwriting.
There have already been characters with these names on Gilmore Girls – Zach was Lorelai’s classmate at community college in Season 2, and Brian was one of the waiters at the Independence Inn in Season 1.
[Shane rushes over to Jess at the counter]
LORELAI: That girl’s a freak.
[Jess and Shane start kissing]
Lorelai says that Shane is a “freak” because she kisses her boyfriend in public – something Rory does all the time, and something Lorelai did when she was a teenager! It’s a pretty terrible thing to say about a teenager who is literally right there.
Even though Lorelai doesn’t want Rory to go out with Jess, for some reason she seems miffed that Jess has chosen somebody else, and snipes about Shane (she should be grateful Shane is making Jess unavailable). She may be trying to send Rory the message that only a “freak” would go out with Jess.
LANE: Hello Stars Hollow, are you ready to rock?
LORELAI: Let me guess, band practice tonight?
Lane was given permission by Sophie to use the music store to practice drumming two evenings a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6 pm (evenings when she knew her mother would be out doing church activities). Lane is now really pushing that generous offer by finding a band that needs a drummer and letting them use Sophie’s music store as a free rehearsal space! It sounds like a pretty awful way to repay Sophie, but maybe Lane already fixed this up with Sophie offscreen. I hope so.
You may be wondering whether this episode starts on a Wednesday evening – it can’t be Friday, because Lorelai and Rory are having dinner at the diner, instead of heading off to Hartford for Friday Night Dinner with Richard and Emily. It appears to be a Saturday, oddly enough, so perhaps Lane also got Sophie to agree to a third evening of band practice per week. How Sophie would have agreed to all these changes to the orginal agreement, I don’t know.
This scene shows how happy Lane is to finally be in a band and playing music, she is absolutely radiating joy as she bounces into the diner and starts eating Rory’s dinner. Lane isn’t making any effort to keep her activities a secret, and even though Stars Hollow is super gossipy, she doesn’t seem worried about Mrs Kim finding out. Maybe that’s how confident she feels now she’s actually living her dream.
LORELAI: So, I think I’m in touch with the other side …
RORY: With Republicans?
The Republican Party in the US, founded in 1854 by anti-slavery activists, with an elephant as its symbol, for reasons nobody seems sure about. It shifted towards the right in the early twentieth century and is now a socially conservative party, tending to favour free market economics. It supports lower taxes, gun rights, restrictions on immigration, restrictions on abortion, restrictions on unions, and increased military spending. Since the 1850s it has been the main political rival to the Democratic Party, so when Lorelai says she is in touch with “the other side” (meaning the supernatural realm), Rory asks whether she means the other side of politics. Lorelai and Rory are Democrat supporters.
JACKSON: I have this collection of antique farming tools that my dad passed down to me.
SOOKIE: Pre-Revolutionary War. They’re kind of valuable.
JACKSON: And I’ve got no place to put them. I’ve been looking for the right space.
LORELAI: In Rory’s room?
Sookie and Jackson continue being ridiculously annoying since their marriage. Now Jackson asks Lorelai if he can store his valuable collection of antique farming tools in Rory’s room when she goes away to college, as he has nowhere to put them. Oh really? So where are they now? Because wherever they are, that’s a place he has to put them.
The idea that when a teenager goes away to college their bedroom is now “free space” is ludicrous. Rory will still need to come home, she will need somewhere to sleep, study, and put her things away for at least a few years. And even if Lorelai did decide to use Rory’s room for something else, why on earth would she want to display someone else’s old tools in it?
I think this is meant to be a sad or bittersweet moment when Lorelai realises with a pang that Rory will soon be gone, but it ends up being stupid and irritating instead.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 