Tag: Character Insight

“Move to California”

LORELAI: She’s been acting so weird lately. They’re fighting. Openly fighting. I don’t think they’ve ever done that before. I’m not sure what to do about it.
CHRISTOPHER: Move to California. That’s what I do when my parents fight.

This apparently explains why Christopher moved to California, to get away from his parents’ fighting. From what we saw of Francine, she was far too cowed to look as if she ever fought with her husband, but perhaps she’s been thoroughly brow-beaten into submission by now. Most likely, this is another of Christopher’s lies, used to justify his behaviour.

Lorelai has supposedly never seen her parents fight before – if so, they must have been very careful to keep serious conflict hidden from their daughter while she was growing up to give her a stable home environment. However, this is the same Lorelai who claimed she and Rory never had a fight until Rory was nearly sixteen. She’s possibly just forgetting all the previous fights her parents had.

“I’m working for this firm”

CHRISTOPHER: I’m working for this firm that helps those overblown tech companies scale back and stay afloat now that they’re facing leaner times.

Christopher is still working in the technology industry after his failed internet start-up, and once again it seems as if his job is something quite sketchy and fly-by-night. A shadowy industry based on helping those who soared too high and are now in danger of failing, and an occupation that doesn’t have a name or description – there’s nothing solid to Christopher’s work life, even when he manages to find and commit to a job.

Christopher says he’s been trying to figure out what he wants in life for the past ten years, so only since he was 23, and has had a string of failed business ventures. It’s in sharp contrast to Lorelai, who began working in her teens, and has remained with the same business, gradually climbing the ladder until she became the executive manager.

Christopher’s only conclusion that he shares with Lorelai is that he doesn’t want his parents’ life, which is a very nebulous, and negative, ambition. He doesn’t have a solid occupation, employment history, or life goal. There’s something so barely there about Christopher, all smoke and mirrors and shifting sands.

Chai Latte

CHRISTOPHER: Ooh, I gotta say, this isn’t like the chai lattes in Boston.
LORELAI: Yeah, well, expecting Luke to make a chai anything was completely insane.

Chai tea is a tea beverage originating in India; in Hindi it is called Masala chai, or “mixed spice tea”. Recipes vary, but it’s based on strong black tea combined with spices such as cardamom, pepper, and ginger, with milk and sugar added. A cinnamon stick is often added for a sweet-spicy flavour. A chai latte is produced by steaming and frothing the milk before adding it to the spiced tea. The drink became popularised in the west in the 1990s.

Did Luke really not know how to make chai tea, or did he deliberately sabotage Christopher’s drink? Lorelai suggests he just put an old stick in a cup of tea, which seems like more than simple incompetence (especially as he could have said the diner didn’t provide chai lattes). Seeing Lorelai happily walking around town with Christopher while he was visiting Stars Hollow must have been deeply annoying for Luke, especially as Lorelai and Christopher had sex the last time he was there.

Dancing Lessons

Rory and Dean are given a quick dancing lesson by Miss Patty at her dancing school – the Miss Patty’s Place that’s been such a feature of Rory and Dean’s relationship. Could their nerves over being in a place that got them into trouble be one reason their dancing is so poor? (Mind you, Rory is said to be physically uncoordinated which makes her bad at sport, and Dean hates dancing).

The other debutantes will have had weeks of dancing classes. Rory apparently just had this one lesson. It seems unbelievable that Emily would send her granddaughter to make her debut while so ill-prepared.

“He seems a little less jolly than usual”

LORELAI: Hey Mom, I might be reading too much into this, but um, is something going on between you and Dad?
EMILY: What are you talking about?
LORELAI: I don’t know, he just seems a little less jolly than usual.

Even the self-centred Lorelai has picked up that her parents are not getting along, and that her father isn’t happy. While Emily is seemingly obsessed with Rory’s debutante ball, Richard appears quite uninterested, even refusing to pick up his own tuxedo from the dry cleaners as he has too much work to do. Yet he is home early, not in work clothes, and drinking alcohol … hmm.

Emily declares that everything is fine, and Lorelai uncharacteristically backs down, saying that she must have been mistaken.

Ju-jitsu

LORELAI: Mom, there’d have to be a 12k run and a jujitsu demonstration for her to go through twelve pairs of pantyhose.

Ju-jitsu (or jujutsu) is a Japanese martial art. Its name translates to “yielding art”, because it is based on using your opponent’s force against them, rather than providing an opposing force.

There are often references to sports and games of conflict in conversations between Lorelai and Emily.

Volvo Sedan

LORELAI: Oh yeah. A Volvo sedan, are you kidding?
CHRISTOPHER: This is a great car.
LORELAI: For driving to bingo.

CHRISTOPHER: I’ve got Alpine head units, two subs, and two twelves. In exchange, no passenger-side airbag.

Volvo is a Swedish brand of luxury cars founded in 1927; the name is Latin for “I roll”. It was founded upon the concept of safety, and their cars have long been marketed as safe and reliable; many of the Volvo’s safety innovations have now become standard or even compulsory. Lorelai sees it as an old person’s car, because of its staid and rather boring image.

I think Christopher’s car is a 2001 Volvo S80, an executive sedan. He describes the car’s sound system as Alpine brand head units, with two sub woofers, and two twelve-inch sub woofers (maybe he means two amplifiers and two twelve-inch sub woofers?), which means he had to give up passenger-side airbags, a major feature of the S80. So he’s bought a safe car, and made it less safe (for the person who’s not him), so he can enjoy music.

As Lorelai notes, Christopher has given up his cool motorcycle for a sensible car, but the old (selfish) Christopher still lives. Take warning!

(There is an immediate shot of the Massachusetts license plate, to remind us Christopher has moved to Boston. It begins with 169, which seems like a naughty joke, although it’s not a vanity plate, so not deliberate on Christopher’s part).

Gentleman Caller

CHRISTOPHER: Whoa! Hold it right there. A lady never runs out to meet a gentleman caller who hasn’t been announced.

A callback both to The Glass Menagerie, previously discussed, and to the advice Emily gave Rory, when she wanted to run out to Dean before he’d knocked at the door. Christopher lets Rory know that he’s lived in Emily’s world, and knows its rules, but that he also takes an ironic, playful attitude to them. He’s letting Rory know that he understands exactly how to behave at her debut, but will be an ally for her in not taking it too seriously, so that she’s relaxed about it rather than stressed.

Then again, Lorelai is running right behind Rory – is his teasing comment secretly aimed at Lorelai?

BattleBots

RORY: Remember that I’ll be watching BattleBots with you for a month.

BattleBots is an American robot combat television show, where competitors design and operate by remote control their own armoured machines, which fight in an elimination tournament. It first aired in 2000.

Here we discover this is a favourite TV program of Dean’s, and that Rory needs a bribe to induce her to watch it with him. Considering that Dean tamely watches everything Lorelai and Rory do, with no complaint, it seems a bit much she can’t put herself out to watch something he enjoys unless he does her a favour.

On the other hand, Dean is Rory’s boyfriend – he shouldn’t really need any “payment” to be her escort for her debutante ball. It should be something he wants to do for her, especially considering that Emily would be more than happy to organise a suitable escort for Rory in his stead. I feel as if Dean is having things both ways: going to the ball only reluctantly and with a lot of moaning, yet if Rory went with someone else, he’d be very jealous and sulky about it.