Tag: Character Insight

Walkin’ After Midnight

The song sung by Kirk at the wedding. It’s a country pop song, written by Alan Block and Don Hecht in 1954, first recorded by Lynn Howard with The Accents in 1956.

It is best known for the version sung by country music artist Patsy Cline, first performed in 1957 on the television show, Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts. Despite Cline not liking the song, she won first place in the TV contest, and there was such a strong audience response to the song that it was rushed out as a single within a month.

“Walkin’ After Midnight” became Patsy Cline’s first major hit, selling over a million copies, and reaching #12 on the charts, #2 on the country music charts.

The song is about someone so lonely after a breakup that they go for long walks in the early hours of the morning, unable to sleep for the misery. It’s a suitable choice for Kirk, who had earlier confessed his loneliness to Luke.

Almonds for Table 5

RORY: Do you happen to know where the almonds I made for table five went?

LORELAI: No.

RORY: ‘Cause they were here last night before Sookie’s dinner.

Rory spends six hours wrapping Jordan almonds in tulle as wedding favours for Sookie and Jackson, only for Lorelai to eat some of them, because Gilmore girls are fun and quirky, and do what they want. Good work teaching your daughter that stealing is cute, Lorelai. Keep at it – just a few more examples, and I’m sure the message will sink in!

Also – six hours to make forty wedding favours? How slowly does Rory work? Each one should only take a couple of minutes.

Lorelai Invites Christopher to the Wedding

Lorelai invites Christopher (another woman’s boyfriend!) to Sookie and Jackson’s wedding, as her “plus one”. At last her interest is piqued when he casually accepts this invitation, and she asks him if maybe he should run this plan past Sherry.

Christopher tells her that Sherry is out of town (as if that has somehow negated her very existence), and that they haven’t been getting on very well lately. Before she left on a business trip – more evidence that it was Sherry’s business trip they were on before, not Christopher’s, by the way – they agreed that they would take this time apart as an opportunity to do some thinking about their relationship.

This is all Christopher’s narrative of course, we don’t know if all, or any, of this is true, or if Sherry would have a different version of events. However, Christopher says he had already decided that he is going to start looking for an apartment so he can move out. Even though Christopher and Sherry are not actually broken up yet and Christopher has not told Sherry he’s moving out, nor has he made any moves to do so, Lorelai is now perfectly satisfied about taking Christopher to the wedding.

Note that Christopher hands Lorelai his coat to put over her bare shoulders, and that she sits increasingly closer to him during this scene, as he tells her about Sherry. She keeps her leg crossed away from him though, as if not ready to be completely vulnerable to him. We also get another reminder that the wedding is on Sunday, in case we’ve forgotten about it.

Sookie and Jackson’s Rehearsal Dinner

LORELAI: But if you’re gonna be in the area Thursday night, you can come with us to the dinner.

CHRISTOPHER: But it’s Sookie’s rehearsal dinner.

LORELAI: Oh, she would love it. She’s cooking for a thousand. It’ll be fun.

Sookie and Jackson’s wedding rehearsal dinner is on Thursday, and Lorelai invites Christopher to it, since he already offered to take Lorelai and Rory out to dinner that night. The Gilmore girls are strangely un-curious about how and why Christopher is suddenly so available for outings with them, and neither bothers to ask where Sherry is, or why she isn’t coming too.

Note we get another day of the week reference to keep us on track. The wedding rehearsal is Thursday, the elections are Friday, the wedding is on Sunday. Got it?

Hillary Clinton

RORY: Um, actually, I have to get home. I have to review my campaign platform …

LORELAI: Yes, our little Hillary Clinton here is running for student body vice president.

Hillary Clinton (born Hillary Rodham in 1947), former First Lady of the US from 1993-2001 as the wife of President Bill Clinton. In 2000, she was elected as the first female senator for New York, becoming the first First Lady to hold elected office and the first to serve in the Senate.

In a later season, we learn that Hillary Clinton is one of Rory’s heroines.

Rory Gets Her Cast Removed

When Rory got her cast put on, the doctor said she would need to keep it on for two weeks, but it’s actually been three weeks since the night of the car accident when she gets the cast removed.

Lorelai takes Rory to Dr Ronald Sue, a specialist in orthopaedic medicine – who has an office in Stars Hollow, quite unbelievably. It feels like in Season 1, the writers tried to create a small town in New England that might be a little quirky, or niche, or even slightly magical, but was still a place you could convince yourself might almost exist.

Now it’s only Season 2, but already they are throwing anything into Stars Hollow that suits the plot, so this little town of less than 10 000 people has multiple takeout options which all deliver, a 24-hour pharmacy, a hospital, and an orthopaedic specialist. It feels like very lazy world-building. In this case it seems especially pointless, because there’s no reason Lorelai couldn’t have picked Rory up from school and taken her to an appointment with Dr Sue in Hartford.

Christopher invites himself to the medical appointment, announcing to everyone with self-importance that he’s “the father”, as if Rory has just been born, or like anyone cares. He’s driven from Boston to watch a minor two-minute medical procedure, and now he … drives back again? That makes perfect sense. Is it a hint he isn’t actually in Boston at this point?

Rory wears a red and black tee shirt which says STRANGE 13 to her appointment, as a nice callback to her Emily the Strange sticker.

“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?

“We added the votes up”

Madeline and Louise have been busy polling a cross-section of students to find out if they are voting for Paris. Madeline is quick to say that Louise added the votes up, not her, which Paris approves. Obviously Louise is much better at Math than Madeline. Sometimes it feels as if the show can’t decide whether Madeline or Louise is the “dumb one” out of the two.

It’s bad news for Paris, as the students overwhelmingly say they think Paris is the best candidate, but they won’t vote for her because they don’t like her, and find her scary. Paris immediately decides she needs “nice Rory” to soften her image.

Why do people keep thinking Rory is nice and sweet? She’s currently nursing an injury due to a car accident because she recklessly let the town bad boy drive her car, she just went to see him in New York behind her boyfriend’s back, she thinks it’s okay to steal, treats fat people as entertainment, she can sometimes be mean to her best friend, and let’s not forget that whole “retarded kid” comment. There’s a whole other side to Rory that people just refuse to see. She is, in fact, flawed and human! Not a Disney princess.