Tag: Character Insight

“You don’t get pregnant saying I love you”

RORY: Dean. Please, it’s just not that easy for me. I mean, saying “I love you” means a lot. Think about it from my point of view. I mean, my mom and our life. I mean, my mom said that she loved my dad and then . . .
DEAN: You don’t get pregnant saying “I love you”.

Dean is being almost stubbornly dim-witted here, and refusing to consider how Rory’s family circumstances might have coloured her feelings about love, because her parents were teenagers who loved each other, but didn’t stay together. Lorelai told Rory that she would always love Christopher, but she still refused his marriage proposal, and he went away. In other words, Rory knows that love is not enough, it isn’t any guarantee that your relationship will last. Saying “I love you” is filled with anxiety for Rory, because in her limited experience, the next thing that happens is “Goodbye”.

The fact that Dean’s mind jumped straight to pregnancy might suggest that he was hoping a shared “I love you” might be the first step toward having sex with Rory.

“Go home and discuss it with your mother”

RORY: Please, don’t be mad.
DEAN: Why? Because I say I love you and you wanna think about it? I mean, go home and discuss it with your mother? Make one of your pro/con lists?

Dean’s angry comment suggests that there’s some real jealousy of Rory’s closeness with her mother at work, and perhaps the knowledge that everything in their relationship will be talked over with Lorelai rankles. He may feel that things would have progressed faster with Rory if her mother wasn’t always around.

This is the first explicit mention of Rory’s pro-con lists, which are apparently essential to her decision-making process. They will continue to feature in Gilmore Girls.

“I love you”

DEAN: Rory?
RORY: Yeah?
DEAN: I love you. (pause) Rory?
RORY: Yeah?
DEAN: Did you hear me?
RORY: Uh huh.
DEAN: Well, say something.

For Dean, announcing that he loved Rory was the obvious climax to his anniversary campaign of dinner out and promise of a car, perhaps even the icing on the cake of everything else he had given her. The inexperienced Rory did not see it coming, and is taken aback, unable to say “I love you” in return because she is unsure of how she feels.

Rory is ruled by her head rather than her heart, and tends to over-think everything anyway, so it’s not surprising that she cannot immediately know how she feels, let alone say how she feels. Unlike Dean, she has never been in a relationship before, and her very existence is a warning to her that jumping into things without careful thought is a bad idea.

If Dean was more mature or experienced, he would have backed off and given Rory the space to feel love in her own time. But he isn’t, so he sulks and acts as if she’s refusing to give him what’s he’s due – what he’s paid for, with dinner and a car! He’s too young and foolish to know that any love worth having cannot be bought that way.

Rory’s Car

After the anniversary dinner, Dean tells Rory that he is building her a car from a wreck; the seats and windshield were put in the day before. Rory is almost overwhelmed by this gesture, and it’s hard not to think that Dean has gone overboard on this three-month (yeah, right) anniversary.

At this point, the viewer has to feel that Dean is way more heavily invested in the relationship than Rory. Not only has has he kept track (no matter how wrongly) on how long they’ve been dating, he’s booked a fancy restaurant, and ordered pretty much everything on the menu so that Rory doesn’t need to choose, and now he announces he’s building her a car. He’s into hand-made gifts, but this isn’t a leather bracelet we’re talking about – it’s an actual car! (And there is a symmetry that their relationship both begins and ends with a gift from Dean).

Rory doesn’t seem to realise that this is a really huge present, which means that the other person clearly has major expectations of you and the relationship. The only big presents she’s ever got are from her mother and grandparents, and she accepted them as signs of their unconditional love. This is her first experience in a romantic relationship, and she’s about to learn that big gifts come with big strings attached.

Oblivious to what’s ahead, she looks up at the stars in wonder, as if, on this night dedicated to love and destiny, they have blessed her union with Dean the way they bless all young lovers in Stars Hollow. She feels that it’s a moment all too perfect to last, and she’s right, of course. Those distant stars are perhaps more ambivalent about love than she knows.

Lorelai’s Escape

Pretending that she has to go to the toilet, Lorelai sneaks upstairs and begins making her escape through the window when Richard comes in, looking for her on Emily’s instructions. Poor Lorelai can’t even go to the toilet without her mother sending a search party to find her, although in this case Emily’s instincts were actually correct.

It looks bad, because to Richard and Emily, teenage Lorelai sneaking out the window was Lorelai going to meet boys, get drunk, get into trouble, and basically ruin her life. There’s an acknowledgement, even from Lorelai herself, that on some level she hasn’t really grown up. She can’t have an adult conversation with her parents, or make up a believable excuse to leave early – her immediate response is to revert to her teenage self, and sneak out without thinking about it too much.

To his credit, Richard listens to everything Lorelai has to say, and simply calls out to Emily that he couldn’t find Lorelai. They don’t have a close relationship, and have recently argued, but they do share one thing: a great dislike of the odious Chase Bradford. Richard cannot escape himself, but he at least allows Lorelai to, and for that she must feel a genuine gratitude.

“Set of illustrated encyclopedias”

RORY: You did all this for me.
DEAN: It’s not over yet.
RORY: This is just like that Christmas when I got a full set of illustrated encyclopedias. [Dean gives a confused look] I wanted them.

Another example of Dean and Rory just aren’t on the same page. When she says the experience of the anniversary dinner is just like getting a set of encyclopedias, Dean is confused – to him that means a really boring present. Rory has to explain that getting a full set of illustrated encyclopedias is actually a wonderful thing that made her happy. Apparently all the clues Rory has given him about loving books and knowledge still haven’t quite sunk in.

“Arcade game”

LORELAI: Oh no, it’s that arcade game where the mole keeps sticking his head out and you have to pound him as many times as you can with the mallet. You would be a master at that game. … They would erect a statue of you next to it with perfect hair and pearls and a big bronze mallet.

Lorelai is referring to Whac-a-Mole, a popular arcade game first introduced in the mid-1970s. A Whac-a-Mole machine is a cabinet with five holes, from which the moles pop up at random, while the player has to hit them with a large plastic mallet.

Lorelai says that Emily would be a master at Whac-a-Mole as she’s so good at continuing to “whack” at Lorelai, but in colloquial use when people refer to a situation being like Whac-a-Mole, they mean that it’s futile as the moles keep popping up annoyingly no matter how many times you hit them. Lorelai is unwittingly (?) providing a testament to her own resilience and cockiness in the face of Emily’s assaults.

Chase Bradford

EMILY: Oh, Lorelai, I’d like you to meet Chase Bradford.

Lorelai turns up for Friday Night Dinner without Rory (who’s out with Dean) to find that Emily has wasted no time in attempting to set her up with a former neighbour named Chase Bradford (Paul Cassell), who’s just moved back to Hartford.

It’s really very sudden, as the previous Friday it seems as if Richard and Emily might have tried to get Lorelai back with Christopher, Rory’s father. Lorelai received a marriage proposal from Christopher less than a week ago, which she turned down – I wonder if Emily pushed him into doing that?

Emily is desperate to find Lorelai a man who isn’t “that diner guy”: Lorelai’s recent admission to Emily that she might be interested in Luke appears to have made her extra determined to get Lorelai into a safe relationship. She’s picked out practically the first man to come along, and he’s extremely dull, and slightly creepy. Lorelai might sympathise with Lane, who also feels her mother is starting to lower her standards when choosing blind dates for her.

Chase Bradford’s suitably preppy name might have been inspired by Chase Bank, formerly Chase Manhattan, one of the largest banks in the US. His surname might be after William Bradford, one of the pilgrims from the Mayflower, who became Governor of the Plymouth Colony. He has numerous descendants, many of them wealthy and well-connected, so there might be a suggestion here that Chase is one of them.

Misery

LORELAI: Oh God. Mom has gone a little crazy with the figurines here, huh? A little Kathy Bates. Although you probably haven’t seen Misery, which is a good thing because Rory couldn’t sleep alone for a week after we watched it.

Misery is a 1990 thriller film directed by Rob Reiner, and based on the 1987 novel of the same name by Stephen King. The movie is about a popular romance novelist (James Caan) who is held captive by a crazed fan (Kathy Bates) so he can continue writing about her favourite character, named Misery. The movie was a success, and Kathy Bates won Best Actress at the Academy Awards for her role.

Lorelai is referring to the numerous figurines owned by Kathy Bates’ character, which the writer must be careful not to disarrange when he manages to sneak out of the room where he has been confined. Lorelai must feel that she is in a similar position, and the film also gives us a clue as to how trapped and tortured Lorelai felt when she lived with her parents.

Rory would have only been six when the film came out, so she and Lorelai must have rented it on video at some point when she was older. We don’t know how old she was (it might have been quite recently), but either way it was still too scary for her, and she had to sleep in Lorelai’s bed for a week afterwards.