Pop-Tarts

SOOKIE: You – get in here and tell me the happenings at home.
LORELAI: I’m assuming you mean “did we get our toaster fixed” and no, it’s been cold Pop-Tarts for a week, it’s like a damn Dickens novel.

Pop-Tarts are convenience food pastries, introduced by the Kellogg Company in 1964. Pop-Tarts are thin, retangular pieces of pastry sealed with a sugary, flavoured filling, often with frosting (icing) on the outside.

They are already cooked, so you can eat them cold, as Lorelai and Rory have been doing, without ill-effect, but are designed to be warmed in a toaster or a microwave. Why the Gilmores haven’t been heating theirs in the microwave is a mystery. Presumably they prefer to eat them cold rather than microwaved.

Pop-Tarts are Lorelai and Rory’s go-to breakfast when they eat at home, so of course they are a nutritional nightmare – high in calories (at least 200 per Pop-Tart), low in nutrients, and loaded with sugar. Just two Pop-Tarts (a standard serve) contain all of the recommended daily sugar allowance.

Lorelai and Rory are hardly unusual though: Pop-Tarts are Kellogg’s most popular brand in the United States, and sales have continued to rise every year for more than thirty years.

’86 Suzuki

DEAN: I got an ’86 Suzuki.
CHRISTOPHER: Nice!

Suzuki is a Japanese company which makes a variety of vehicles, including motorcycles. The motorycles they released during the 1980s were smaller and lighter models, designed to appeal to the American market, but with still quite powerful engines for their size.

This is the final confirmation that Dean definitely does have a motorcycle, as Lorelai intuitively knew from the beginning, despite Dean’s protestations. It seems that the Gilmore girls really do love a man on a motorbike.

“I wanna be around more”

CHRISTOPHER: I haven’t been enough a part of Rory’s life. So I wanna be around more, to be a pal she can depend on. I mean I’m not crazy, I know there’s already a life going on here and God knows she doesn’t need anyone besides you but … if you give me a chance …
LORELAI: I’ve always had the door to Rory open for you.

Christopher is making a massive understatement that he hasn’t been enough a part in Rory’s life – he’s barely been in her life at all, and only on his own terms.

Although Christopher agrees that Lorelai has “always had the door open” open to him, previous and future events make us doubt how much of that is really true. Lorelai is intensely jealous of anyone else developing a close relationship with Rory, and has even tried to stop her getting to know her grandparents better.

When Christopher makes a real attempt to get closer to Rory in a future season, Lorelai does everything she can to block it. It would have been even easier when Rory was a baby or a small child, and lacked the ability to see what Lorelai was up to.

“Kind of a big success”

CHRISTOPHER: I don’t know how much your dad has told you but I’m on the verge of kind of a big success; it’s for real this time. I’ve got a company with an actual cash flow, I’ve got employees, I’ve got an accountant, for God’s sake. He wears a tie and says words like “fiduciary” and “ironically”. I mean it’s for real this time, Lor.

This is the Internet start-up business in California that Richard told Lorelai and Rory about in the Pilot episode, approximately six months ago. We now hear more about it from Christopher without ever finding out what exactly the company does, or was supposed to do.

(A fiduciary is a person who holds a legal position of trust in business, typically being in charge of financial assets to either have them in their safe-keeping or to invest them wisely on another’s behalf. Although this would cover many different types of jobs, it is typically used to refer to a trustee who is responsible for the money in a trust fund – it may suggest that Christopher’s accountant is helping him use his trust fund money to pay for his business venture).

Christopher’s reassurance that “it’s for real this time” suggests that he has attempted, and failed, at several businesses previously – or has even flat-out lied about trying to start a business. Little wonder that Lorelai is rather sceptical about it.

“Tomorrow’s Saturday”

RORY: I’m gonna go study before the food gets here.
CHRISTOPHER: What? Tomorrow’s Saturday.

At this point we discover, surely to our astonishment, that it is now Friday evening. To recap the events of the day:

Lorelai and Luke unloaded their paint, and made plans to paint the diner on Friday. We now know that it was already Friday then, but for some reason they don’t say “next Friday”, or “in a week’s time”. Despite having a whole week to do the painting, Lorelai decides on Friday, which is not only the day she goes to business class, but Friday Night Dinner with her parents! She says this doesn’t matter, as she can “get out early” for a special occasion. That Emily would consider painting Luke’s diner a “special occasion” is highly dubious.
Lorelai and Rory went to the market to buy fruit as Lorelai felt under the weather and was worried about her nutrient intake (maybe this is how she stays healthy – she eats just enough fruits and vegetables not to get sick). Lorelai and Rory met Christopher in the street.
Christopher came to stay with them, and they ordered Chinese food for dinner while Rory did her homework.

So what the heck happened to Friday Night Dinner? Did they skip it that week? And is Lorelai even attending business class any more? And if this is Friday, March 9 then we will definitely run out of Friday nights before the end of the month.

(Also take note that Christopher is completely unaware of his daughter’s study habits or zest for academic life. He really knows nothing about Rory, and they can’t have ever had a proper conversation before).

Memorial Day

RORY: Hey, how’s Diane?
CHRISTOPHER: Uh, Diane is ancient history.
RORY: When I met her at Easter you said she could be the one.
CHRISTOPHER: The one to be gone by Memorial Day.

Memorial Day is a public holiday in the United States to remember those who have died while serving in the armed forces. It’s observed on the last Monday of May, which in 2000 was May 29. It is commemorated with military parades, and by decorating the graves of fallen soldiers with American flags. Memorial Day is considered the unofficial start of summer.

Christopher brought his girlfriend Diane to meet Rory at Easter in 2000, which would have been April 23, telling her that the relationship was serious and possibly permanent. About a month later, the relationship with Diane was over, yet he doesn’t bother telling Rory that until March 2001.

There’s been almost of year of phone calls from Christopher, yet he hasn’t thought to fill Rory in on a significant event in his life such as breaking up with a supposedly serious girlfriend he was thinking of marrying.

The writer (Daniel Palladino for this episode) is keen to drum it in that Christopher is an inattentive father, but it also means that Rory and Lorelai haven’t bothered asking him how Diane is in all that time either – even after she didn’t turn up to Christmas with him (unless Christopher kept fobbing them off with evasive answers).

“He’s never been to Stars Hollow before”

LORELAI: He’s gonna come and go as he pleases babe, you know that.
RORY: … Yeah, but he’s never been to Stars Hollow before.

We discover in this episode that Christopher has never visited Lorelai and Rory before, ever. It’s almost unbelievable that he would come to Hartford once or twice a year to see them, but never once bother to take the half hour drive to Stars Hollow. It’s a real sign that Christopher just hasn’t been interested enough in his daughter.

Christopher (David Sutcliffe)

In a mild cliffhanger ending to the episode, Rory’s father Christopher Hayden (David Sutcliffe), who has been living in California for some time, unexpectedly arrives in Stars Hollow.

We at once understand why Lorelai loved him as a teenager, but rejected him as a husband and co-parent to their daughter. Christopher is good-looking, charismatic, and rides a cool motorcycle, but is clearly unreliable and immature – it’s hard not to cringe when he yells at Lorelai to take her top off in front of their teenaged daughter.

It’s also obvious that Rory adores her father. The way she eagerly runs to him for a hug demonstrates the longing she must have felt to have a father in her life – even an unsatisfactory one like Christopher. While Lorelai knows what Christopher is like, Rory still has stars in her eyes over him: just as Lorelai must have had seventeen years ago.

Lorelai once said that Rory’s boyfriend Dean reminded her of Christopher, but now that we actually see Christopher for ourselves, there isn’t a strong resemblance. Interestingly, David Sutcliffe does look a little bit like Nathan Wetherington, the actor who played Dean in the original Pilot.

(Christopher looks astoundingly clean and refreshed for someone who has just ridden his motorcycle for 3000 miles; the bike is very clean as well).

Motorcycle

LORELAI: Kill me and bury me with that bike.
RORY: What is it? A Harley?
LORELAI: That is a 2000 Indian, 80 horsepower, 5 speed close ratio Andrews transmission, and I want to get one.

Indian is a brand of American motorcycle, first produced from 1901 to 1953 in Springfield, Massachusetts, until the company went bankrupt. Initially made by the Hendee Manufacturing Company, their name was changed to the Indian Motorcycle Manufacturing Company in 1928.

The rights to the Indian name were acquired by a succession of companies after the bankruptcy. In 1998, the Indian Motorcycle Corporation of America was formed from a merger of nine different companies, and in 1999 they began making Indian motorcycles in Gilroy, California (a hint as to who is riding the bike). The company went bankrupt in 2003, but rights to the name have again been acquired by a succession of companies, and they are still being made.

Rory wonders if the motorcycle is a Harley-Davidson, often just called a Harley. Harley-Davidson have been making motorcycles since 1903, first manufactured in Milwaukee, Wisconsin; they are the main rival company to Indian. Rory clearly has far less knowledge of motorcycles than her mother, and possibly knows of Harleys through motorcycle-loving Dean, who may yearn for one of these Midwest-originating bikes.

Andrews makes parts for motorcycles, including transmissions, and have been supplying Harley-Davidson since 1972. They were also supplying Indian, at least in the early 2000s.

Lorelai’s lust for the motorycle explains why she was so worried that Rory would be attracted to a boy who rode one – she assumed it would be a case of like mother, like daughter. This soon turns out to be correct. In fact, Rory jumps on the back of her father’s bike with suspicious ease, making us wonder if Dean kept his promise to Lorelai to never let Rory on his motorcycle.

Valium

RORY: Can we go for a weekend [to stay with Richard and Emily]?
LORELAI: We’ll see how much Valium Auntie Sookie can lend Mommy, okay?

A possible confirmation that it was Valium that Sookie gave Lorelai when she hurt her back on the night of Rory’s dance.

It also confirms that Lorelai and Rory aren’t a “democracy”, as she told her daughter in the first episode. Here Rory wants to spend a weekend with her grandparents in Martha’s Vineyard, and they never go because Lorelai doesn’t want to. Rory could have gone by herself, but Lorelai doesn’t facilitate or encourage that either. Rory probably could have forced Lorelai, but if she did that she wouldn’t have been Rory (and she and Lorelai would never have had the close bond they valued so highly).