LOUISE: You’d think the brain trust behind P.E. could come up with some sport that didn’t give you helmet hair all afternoon.
A brain trust is a group of experts appointed to advise a government, leader, or organisation. The concept comes from President F.D.R. Roosevelt. In the UK, the term brains trust is more common. It is often used sarcastically, to imply the people in charge aren’t very intelligent at all.
Louise makes it sound as if they have no choice about doing fencing for Physical Education, yet in Season 1, Rory said that there were numerous sports to choose from at Chilton. She signed up for golf, but is doing fencing now. A lot of fans find that confusing, yet it doesn’t seem that strange that a different sport might be chosen for each year, or each semester.
RICHARD: These are our guests, Natalie and Douglas Swope.
EMILY: You two have met.
LORELAI: Yes, at the auction.
NATALIE: Good to see you again.
The show seems to have committed to the new timeline where Lorelai and Natalie Swope first met at the auction in “Eight O’clock at the Oasis”, supposedly about six weeks previously. However, when Natalie was visiting Emily in “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”, she asked after Lorelai, who she remembered very well even though she hadn’t seen her since before she had Rory (as Lorelai is said to have attended the Christmas party at Richard and Emily’s every year, this in itself doesn’t seem very likely – did Natalie never attend one of the parties?).
We meet Natalie’s husband, Douglas, in this episode. Again, surely he and Lorelai would have met in the original timeline, but obviously not in this one, as he wasn’t at the auction. Douglas is played by John Aniston, the father of Jennifer Aniston. He had roles on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and The West Wing, as well as a long-term connection with Days of Our Lives.
LOUISE: I’m having [Thanksgiving] dinner with my dad.
MADELINE: Isn’t he still in jail?
LOUISE: Yes, but his company donated some treadmills for the inmates so he swung a special trailer for dinner that they’re gonna set up for us in the parking lot. We have it for about two hours and then one of the Manson girls gets us.
In the episode “Back in the Saddle”, Louise mentioned that her father was due in court, on mysterious charges (she didn’t bother finding out what he had been arrested for). Now it’s seven months later, and Louise’s father is undertaking his sentence – for whatever it was. Madeline refers to it as “jail”, rather than “prison”, possibly suggesting a shorter, lighter sentence (although sometimes people use the word jail for both jail and prison, so that’s not certain at all).
It does sound as if Louise’s father is in a low or medium security facility, since he is permitted to spend his Thanksgiving dinner in a trailer in the parking lot with his daughter (and possibly other family members, it seems unlikely only Louise would go and see him). These trailers are a reward for good behaviour given to model prisoners, so Louise’s father is clearly well-behaved – even the donation of treadmills to the prison would not be enough on its own. Connecticut is one of only four states that allow extended visits like this (the others are California, New York, and Washington).
Louise says the trailer then goes to “one of the Manson girls”, referring to the female members of the Manson family who were convicted for their crimes. In real life, they were incarcerated in California, and in high security prisons, so this could not have really happened. (Squeaky Fromme was in a high security mental treatment facility in Texas).
Interestingly, there is a state prison in Cheshire, Connecticut called the Manson Youth Institution, for men under the age of 21. Louise can’t be referring to that either, as they are young men, not women, and they are not permitted visits such as she describes.
It is just possible that Louise’s father is being held at the federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut [pictured], a medium and low security prison and satellite prison camp which has facilities for both male and female inmates – so if Louise’s dad’s trailer wasn’t going to a “Manson girl”, it could feasibly be going to a female prisoner, at least. The facility in Danbury has often featured in pop culture, including Orange is the New Black.
ANDREW: Why would you ever tell me that you went out with Liam Neeson? Why would you do that?
Rory said that Andrew always ended up having a fight with his dance partner in the first fifteen minutes of the marathon, but he doesn’t have a fight until the six hour mark. Yet Lorelai still says it’s “right on time”.
KIRK: Man, I wish my mom would let me have a car . . . or a bike . . . or my roller skates back.
Kirk complains about not being allowed to have a car, but in “I Can’t Get Started”, he said his car was blocked in by Christopher’s Volvo at Sookie’s rehearsal dinner. Possibly he was actually his mother’s car, or it was another of Kirk’s stories.
LORELAI: But he’s our Boo Radley, and we don’t have a Boo Radley, unless you count the troubadour or Pete the pizza guy or the guy who talks to mailboxes.
We learn here that Lorelai sees Pete the pizza guy as one of the town “outsiders”, along with the town loner, the town troubadour, and the (unknown) guy who talks to mailboxes. This might come as a surprise, since running a pizza restaurant and delivery service does not seem like something that would isolate a person from their town or be a suitable job for a hermit. It does seem very typical of Lorelai to choose someone considered a bit eccentric to be their regular pizza provider though.
In an earlier season, Lorelai nominated Jackson’s cousin Rune as a “Boo Radley”. She doesn’t mention him in this context, and in fact Rune is never seen or mentioned again. He was only meant to be staying in town temporarily, so presumably he left sometime after Christmas of 2001.
Here we are at another town meeting, which used to be on Thursdays, and then mysteriously were held on a Saturday this season. I don’t know what day it is now, but it is neither Thursday nor Saturday. They’re just sticking a town meeting in whenever they feel like it.
This episode is centred around Sookie and Jackson’s wedding day, and the first shot is the poster the couple are using for the celebration. It’s a huge blown up photo of Sookie and Jackson against a field of flowers (possibly a standard photography studio background?), with Sookie holding a wedding cake, and Jackson in a Hawaiian shirt holding a bunch of bananas. It’s typical sweet goofiness from this so-far adorable couple.
Note that the wedding date is prominently displayed as May 19 2002, changed from the earlier May 15. And May 19 really was a Sunday in 2002! This is the first time we’ve got a rock-solid date for anything that actually fits into a real world time frame.
If you keep an eye out, you will see other photos of Sookie and Jackson used on decorative throw pillows and what not in this episode – I imagine that Jackson’s cousin with the printing business was called in to do these, and he quite likely made the poster as well.
RICHARD: This whole week, this whole experience with Rory and the locker first aid kit – that is a damn good idea, by the way, no matter what those yarnheads at that school of yours say. Anyway, this whole week made me realize something – I don’t want to be retired.
When they were first discussing the Business Fair, Rory said they had three weeks to prepare for it. Yet Richard, who helped them develop and market a product right from the beginning, says that he worked with them for a week.
Richard retired in December and finished at work in January, being restless and miserable ever since. Now in April, he decides that he’s had enough of retirement and wants to return to working life in some capacity. After a winter of discontent, Richard is ready to emerge in the spring to begin life anew.
LORELAI: Hey, did you notice when he gets mad he gets taller? … The day I told him I was pregnant, twenty-four feet tall.
And yet in “Rory’s Birthday Parties”, Lorelai told Rory that on the day she finally told her parents she was pregnant, “it was the only time they ever looked small to me”.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 