Tag: Character Insight

“He and I never met”

CHRISTOPHER: Well, [Max] and I never met. I didn’t even know he existed until late in the game. Hell, I didn’t even know you were engaged until you called me from your bachelorette party. And I wasn’t invited to the wedding – or did my invitation get lost in the mail?
LORELAI: Well, you’ve moved a lot this past year.

Lorelai and Max’s relationship moved extremely quickly and they had a significant break from it. When they got back together, they got engaged almost immediately. In fact, Lorelai only seems to call Christopher from her bachelorette party in hopes of getting talked out of it (in which case, mission accomplished).

It is interesting she never told Christopher though, considering that she was going right through her address book to tell distant relatives and the man who did her shower that she and Max were back together. Maybe she didn’t want to get talked out of it that soon. I suspect if she had sent him an invitation, it would have gone to the wrong address, and he would’ve been a no-show (again).

Christopher is getting awfully huffy about this neglect, but by the time Lorelai phones him to say she is getting married, we find out later he is already with Sherry – something which he hid from Lorelai. It looks very much as if Lorelai’s news pushed him into committing Sherry faster than he otherwise would have.

“Was Sherry with you?”

LORELAI: When I invited you to Rory’s debate, was Sherry with you?
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, of course. She’s been with me the whole trip. Why?
LORELAI: It’s just that you gave me no indication that she was with you.

Lorelai is quite reasonably suspicious of Christopher’s motives and behaviour. He came into their lives six months ago, only telling them he had a girlfriend just before he left. Once again, he has weaselled his way into their lives without mentioning that Sherry was going to be with him.

Would Lorelai have invited him to Rory’s debate if she knew Sherry was coming too? Probably not. Christopher would no doubt say that justifies his lies of omission, so he can see Rory – although he only seems to want to see her so he can impress Sherry with what a great father he is.

Wednesday Nights

SHERRY: And he told me about how he wasn’t really a presence in her life for years and how he’d like to make up for all that time that he wasted.
LORELAI: Well, he’s been doing really well lately.
SHERRY: I know. He is obsessive about his call dates to her. I mean, it doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing, he’s gotta call Rory Wednesday nights at seven o’clock. I like that about him.

We learn here that Christopher has been phoning Rory every Wednesday at 7 pm since the debutante ball, after years of neglect. It seems a bit suspicious he only became so conscientious when he got with Sherry, as if he’s mainly doing it to impress his girlfriend.

It’s not clear when the Wednesday night phone calls initially started. After Christopher visited them in March 2001, Rory asked for him to phone more often. That could have been when the Wednesday calls were implemented, but if so, there was a big break during the summer, as Christopher moved to Boston then without ever letting Lorelai and Rory know, and they only resumed contact in September 2001.

“I paraphrased Proust”

RORY: Well, having company is about making sacrifices.

LORELAI: Martha Stewart?

RORY: I paraphrased Proust.

Martha Stewart, previously discussed.

Rory refers to Marcel Proust, previously discussed, the author of In Search of Lost Time, a novel in seven volumes.

I’m not sure which part of Proust Rory is paraphrasing from. There are so many times that the author reflects on sacrifices made for other people, and for the benefit of society that it is difficult to choose. However, this sentence from The Guermantes Way, Vol 3 of the novel, stood out for me as possibly reflecting Rory’s feelings:

The same familiar spirit represented to Mme. de Guermantes the social duties of duchesses, of the foremost among them, that was, who like herself were multi-millionaires, the sacrifice to boring tea, dinner and evening parties of hours in which she might have read interesting books, as unpleasant necessities like rain, which Mme. de Guermantes accepted, letting play on them her biting humour, but without seeking in any way to justify her acceptance of them.

Rory also submits to social duties she finds boring, in a way Lorelai doesn’t, but like Mme. de Guermantes, she would probably prefer to be reading “interesting books”, and uses her sense of humour as a coping mechanism to get through them.

That does sound a lot like Rory’s attitude, and if so, suggests she thinks of entertaining her father and his girlfriend as a boring necessity. A big change from the previous season, when she was so thrilled to see Christopher in Stars Hollow. Is it just Sherry making the difference, or is some of the gilt coming off Christopher already?

If this is the source, it means Rory has read at least the first three volumes of In Search of Lost Time.

“Sherry, this is Rory”

CHRISTOPHER: This is Sherry. Sherry, this is Rory.
SHERRY: Oh, finally, finally, finally. I am so beyond thrilled, I can’t tell you. All he does is talk about you. I couldn’t wait to meet this amazing person.

Confirmation that Rory didn’t visit Christopher and Sherry in Boston during her Christmas break, despite being invited.

Goodness knows what Christopher has to say about Rory. He hardly knows her!

Amazon.com

RORY: I don’t know if I have time to pick it up.
LANE: What? Rory, do you wanna hear how I used up my five minutes of phone time today? Talking to Amazon.com trying to get them to overnight it to me in a plain package with a return address referencing something Korean and religious.

Amazon, previously discussed as the place Rory buys many of her books. Apparently it’s where Lane buys her new and used music as well.

I’m not sure why Lane couldn’t have just had the CD mailed to Rory’s address, except that I’m starting to think Lane actually enjoys devising zany schemes.

Two Fat Ladies

LORELAI: There’s always something on. Uh! Struck gold!
RORY: Not Two Fat Ladies again.
LORELAI: Why not? They’re brilliant.

Two Fat Ladies, British cooking show originally broadcast on BBC2 from 1996 to 1999. The show centred on the titular ladies, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson, travelling around the UK on a Triumph Thunderbird motorcycle – registration N88 TFL (88 is “two fat ladies” in bingo calling, the origin of the show’s name) – and a Watsonian Jubilee GP-700 “doublewide” sidecar. Paterson was the one driving the motorcycle, with Dickson Wright in the sidecar.

Two Fat Ladies was frequently repeated in the US on the Food Network, and the Cooking Channel. The show came to an end, because as Lorelai notes, one of them passed away. This was Jennifer Paterson, who died of lung cancer in 1999, one month after diagnosis. Clarissa Dickson Wright died in 2014, from pneumonia.

Rory, who is apparently tired of watching all of the repeats of the show pleads, “Can’t we find some other really fat people to watch?”, to which Lorelai responds, “Wow, that sounded a little insensitive” (really, Lorelai? But you’ve got the sweetest kid in the world!).

Fat jokes? Insensitive comments? Without even looking, I knew this episode must have been written by Daniel Palladino.

“Don’t forget me in my solitude”

LANE: Don’t forget me in my solitude.
RORY: Never.

A possible reference to (In My) Solitude, a 1934 song by Duke Ellington, with lyrics by Eddie DeLange and Irving Mills. It is considered a jazz standard. Ellington’s second version of the song went to #2 on the charts of 1934. Covered at least 28 times in the 1930s and ’40s, it was recorded several times by Billie Holiday; one of her renditions was chosen for the 2021 Grammy Hall of Fame.

Some of the lyrics seem to describe Lane’s emotional state very well, perhaps even providing a disturbing insight into her present thoughts:

I sit in my chair
I’m filled with despair
There’s no one could be so sad
With gloom everywhere
I sit and I stare
I know that I’ll soon go mad