Rory is holding this book when Lorelai comes home and they discuss Rory’s relationship with Dean.
A Bolt from the Blue and Other Essays is by Mary McCarthy, who Rory seems to be a fan of. It is a selection of her essays spanning her career from the late 1930s to the late 1970s, and includes her theatre reviews and political writings, so it is another of Rory’s books on journalism. It was edited by A.O. Scott, and published in 2002. Mary McCarthy, like Dorothy Parker – another of Rory’s favourites – was known for her bitingly witty and malicious reviews. Later, Rory will emulate these literary heroines with her own cruel review.
RORY: All I did was think about what you said, that’s all. Then I analyzed the situation.
LORELAI: And then you made a pro and con list.
RORY: You’re mocking me, but yes, I did. And after all of this, I came to the conclusion that I want to make things good with Dean, and he deserves my undivided attention.
After spending the evening with her boyfriend, Rory does some hard thinking alone, and decides that she wants to stick with Dean, and give their relationship the best shot possible. The fact that she had to make a pro and con list doesn’t sound as if she’s exactly carried away with passion by this point.
The question is, would she have reached this decision without Lorelai’s input, knowing she would have earned her mother’s disapproval if she’d chosen to break up with Dean? More importantly, would she have reached this decision if Jess had still been available? My guess is, no, and hell no.
This leaves Rory’s relationship with Dean on a pretty precarious footing.
LORELAI: I just . . . I feel like I’m never gonna have it . . . the whole package, you know? That person, that couple life, and I swear, I hate admitting it because I fancy myself Wonder Woman, but . . . I really want it – the whole package.
Here Lorelai admits that she would actually like to be in a stable, established relationship, suggesting one of the reasons she may have agreed to get engaged to Max, even knowing he wasn’t right for her.
RICHARD: And I am shocked by your naïveté … Did you really have pictures of Norman Rockwell family Christmases dancing in your head? Lorelai had her chance for a family, she walked away from it. That was her choice.
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), painter and illustrator, most famous for the cover illustrations of idealised or sentimental American life he created for The Saturday Evening Post for five decades. His Christmas illustrations [pictured] are well known as iconic images of the Yuletide season, and still popular.
Richard also references the poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, and previously mentioned as a classic work which has shaped the American view of Christmas. In the poem it says,
The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
Richard mocks Emily’s hopes for Lorelai and Christopher to be together as idealistic and sugary-sweet as Christmas paintings and rhymes. He has never wavered from his position that Lorelai had one chance to have a husband and family, when she was sixteen, with Christopher, and that walking away from it was irresponsible. The idea that not marrying Christopher might have been the responsible thing to do, not to mention that stepping back from Christopher and Sherry now is the more moral choice, is something he cannot fathom.
When Lorelai goes to dinner with her parents, they ask where Christopher is (they have bought him a far better gift than they bought Lorelai, who got scone mix). Lorelai explains that Christopher’s girlfriend is pregnant and he went back to her, and surprise, surprise – it’s all Lorelai’s fault somehow! Emily accuses her of “flitting from man to man” when she only went on one nothingy date since breaking up with Max more than a year ago.
The last time Lorelai had an argument with her parents about Christopher, it was Emily who ran upstairs to cry on her bed. This time it is Richard who specifically blames Lorelai for not being with Christopher, still harping on about not “following the correct procedure” and getting married when she was sixteen. He then goes off to sulk in his den about it.
Emily and Richard never take Lorelai to task for sleeping with someone else’s boyfriend – they regard Christopher as already “hers”, and Sherry as someone he’s known for “two minutes” (it’s actually more than a year now). They don’t blame her for jumping into things too quickly with Christopher and getting Rory’s hopes up, either. In fact, they offer no moral guidance to their daughter at all, only chastise for not getting her hooks into Christopher and ruthlessly refusing to let go. Their lack of concern for Sherry and her unborn child is utterly chilling.
By the way, Emily had a meltdown about Lorelai and Rory eating on the patio (at a barbecue!), because only barbarians eat outdoors. Yet she is serving some sort of cheese and biscuit refreshment on the patio in this scene. For that matter, she has had a tea party on the patio. Apparently it is alright to eat small snack-sized amounts of food outdoors, but not a full meal. The rules of Emily Gilmore are hard to understand.
DEAN: Yeah, I’m back – and I’m glad to find you not blonde.
RORY: Yeah, I was just having way too much fun, so . . .
Rory refers to the Clairol hair lightener advertising slogan, “Is it true …blondes have more fun?”. It was written by advertising director Shirley Polykoff – a blonde – in 1956, and was considered rather risque at the time.
Rory bleakly jokes that she didn’t dye her hair blonde, because she was already having too much fun (of course she’s actually having a terrible time). Ironically, it is Jess’ girlfriend who is the blonde, and having a lot more fun than Rory.
With his usual ability to turn up unannounced wherever Rory happens to be, Dean has returned home from Chicago three hours early. Although this would have put a serious dent in her plans to be with Jess at the festival, she may be more glad to see him than not, considering that Jess is with someone else, and she’s just had a huge fight with her mother.
Note that even while hugging Dean, Rory is looking over his shoulder at Jess, her face hurt and angry.
The viewer is quickly made aware that although Rory hasn’t felt able to write to Jess over the summer, she is hoping to see him at the End of Summer Madness Festival. It is three hours before Dean is due home, and she is apparently planning to make the most of them. She insists on going to the festival in town, even though she’s only just got home from the airport, and changes into a nice dress. Lorelai insists on calling this “changing for Dean”. The Dean who isn’t there.
However, her plans are scuppered when she finally catches a glimpse of Jess – and it turns out that instead of spending the summer pining over her, he’s got a girlfriend (a blonde one, so you just know she’s stupid and awful!). Did he hope that Rory would see them and get the message that Jess Mariano is not some sap you can toy with, then toss aside while you waltz off to Washington for the summer? If so, message received.
Jess is kissing his girlfriend up against a tree, in flagrant view of the whole town. It’s very similar to the way Dean and Rory used to kiss against trees and shelves in the market, which must have been difficult for Jess to witness, so he seems to be getting his own back. Rory is getting a tiny taste of what Jess has been through for the past few months.
Rory and Lorelai almost immediately get into a fight at the festival when Lorelai says it’s lucky she didn’t throw “everything” (ie Dean, he’s everything now) away for Jess. She brushes Rory’s feelings for Jess away as a “little crush”, until Rory tells her mother that she kissed Jess at Sookie’s wedding while there with Dean. Lorelai is indignant on Dean’s behalf, conveniently forgetting that she herself slept with a pregnant woman’s boyfriend at the wedding, and doesn’t really have much high moral ground to stand on.
It is set up in the story, and repeated several times, that Rory went away for the summer, and therefore has had no contact with Jess since the wedding. The trouble is, the wedding wasn’t at the start of summer vacation, Rory still had two or three more weeks of school left. And she didn’t go to Washington for the summer vacation, only for the last six weeks of it. That makes at least eight weeks that she and Jess were in Stars Hollow together and somehow managed not to talk to or even see each other.
It doesn’t seem plausible – Stars Hollow is a small place. Presumably Rory was avoiding Luke’s diner in support of Lorelai, and busy with school, and getting prepared for Washington, but I can’t see how she avoided Jess for six weeks straight unless he was also determinedly avoiding her. If so, suggesting that he was very hurt and confused about being unexpectedly kissed, told to keep quiet about it, and then seeing that Rory and Dean were still together as if nothing had happened.
LORELAI: Nothing. Your comforter came into my room by itself . . . and brought your Bauhaus T-shirt with it.
Bauhaus, English rock band, formed in 1978. The group consists of Daniel Ash (guitar, saxophone), Peter Murphy (vocals), Kevin Haskins (drums) and David J (bass). The band is named after the German art school, Bauhaus. One of the pioneers of gothic rock, Bauhaus were known for their dark image and gloomy sound, although they mixed many genres, including dub, glam rock, psychedelia, and funk.
Their 1979 debut single, “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” is considered one of the harbingers of gothic rock music and has been influential on contemporary goth culture. Their debut album, In the Flat Field, is regarded as one of the first gothic rock records. Bauhaus went on to achieve mainstream success in the UK with their third album, The Sky’s Gone Out, which peaked at No. 4 on the UK Albums Chart in 1982. That same year, they also reached No. 15 on the Singles Chart with a standalone cover of David Bowie’s “Ziggy Stardust”, earning them an appearance on Top of the Pops. They broke up in 1983.
This is another indication that Rory likes gothic rock, and dark, gloomy music in general.
MRS. KIM: This was Sherman’s shaving table … General Sherman, famous man, burned Atlanta, liked a close shave.
General William Tecumseh Sherman, previously mentioned. A general in the Union Army during the Civil War, he invaded Georgia with three armies in the spring of 1864. His campaign against Atlanta ended successfully in September of that year with the capturing of the city, and he gave orders that all civilians were to evacuate the city before giving instructions that all military and government buildings were to be burned, although many private homes and businesses were too. This victory made him a household name, and ensured the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln in November that year.
RORY: And then, probably when you’re not looking, you’ll find someone who complements you … Someone who likes what you like, someone who reads the same books or listens to the same music or likes to trash the same movies. Someone compatible … But not so compatible that they’re boring … I mean, you respect each other’s opinions and you can laugh at the same jokes, but I don’t know – there’s just something about not quite knowing what the other person’s gonna do at all times that’s just really exciting.
Rory (with her vast experience of dating one boy she doesn’t even love any more) tells Paris how to know when she has found the right person. Except that Rory’s description of the perfect partner – reads the same books, laughs at the same jokes, respects your opinions, is unpredictable and exciting – sounds a lot like Jess, and not at all like Dean, who doesn’t read or joke, doesn’t respect Rory’s opinions, and is predictable and boring. Hmm!
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 