Tag: Continuity

“A little more on the left”

(They put the hat rack in Emily’s foyer)
EMILY: Watch it, watch your head. Get it over here. Okay yes, yeah, I think that was about – no I think it was maybe a little more on the left. Oh God, I should have put tape down.
LORELAI: Mom, you don’t think that the coat rack could’ve moved a quarter of an inch in five years?

Emily told Lorelai that the hat/coat rack from Richard’s mother had never been used or even taken out of the crate before she regifted it to her, but now it seems that the rack had been in Richard and Emily’s house previously.

For that matter, Richard’s mother hasn’t been to Hartford for over twenty years and has never seen the rack in their house, so why does it need to be placed in a very specific position that she will remember?

“Fifteen years”

HENRY: Sorry I’ve been monopolising Lane all night.
RORY: Oh no, that’s okay. I’ve had her for fifteen years. I’m actually a little sick of her.

That would mean that Rory and Lane have known each other since they were one year old, but Rory didn’t move to Stars Hollow until she was nearly two. This might show again that the original intention was for Lorelai and Rory to move to Stars Hollow in 1985, when Rory was only a few months old.

“So where’s that list?”

LORELAI: So where’s that list?
RORY: What?
LORELAI: The list, we’ve got a lot to do Missy, otherwise I’m gonna be dragging your butt outta bed at 6 again tomorrow morning. So, where do we start?

I’m not sure how they can start at all yet. Rory woke Lorelai up at 6 am, and they would have been at the diner by around 6.30 am (Lorelei got dressed, they talked, and they walked there by a slightly longer route than usual). It can’t be any later than 7 am by now, and the shops and recycling centre surely won’t be open for another hour at least.

When Rory asks Dean if he is okay after his fight with Luke, the clock shows that it is still only 6.25 am, so somehow the speedy Rory and Lorelai were able to get ready, walk to the diner, and eat breakfast all within less than half an hour.

I’m not sure when Luke had a chance to cook their breakfast while he was fighting Dean, but perhaps someone else did it, or the Gilmores just decided to leave without eating breakfast – yet another case of them storming out of a meal without eating anything. If so, it makes the visit to the diner seem pretty pointless: they could have not eaten at home.

Even if they skipped breakfast it barely seems possible they could do everything in 25 minutes, but if that’s what happened then they still have around two hours before the shops open.

“If you tell Miss Patty …”

RORY: If you tell Miss Patty, everybody in town is gonna know.
LORELAI: Honey, people have their own lives and their own problems. I hardly think you and Dean breaking up is the main thing on their minds.

What Rory is worried about Lorelai telling Miss Patty is unclear. It has already been established that Miss Patty knew about Rory and Dean breaking up without being told, from the “numerous sources” to which Lorelai vaguely attributes her knowledge. Lorelai’s reasonable response has already been proven dead wrong, so I don’t know why she is persisting with it. It looks as if this is a scripting error which made it through rewrites and editing, as it seems to belong to their much earlier conversation.

Getting Over Max

RORY: I am fine.
LORELAI: But if you could see the look on your face.
RORY: It’s the same look you had on your face when you broke up with Max. Did wallowing help you get over him?
LORELAI: I’m not saying wallowing will help you get over Dean. It’s part of the process. It’s the mourning period. It’s a step, an important step. The only thing that will get you over somebody is time.
RORY: How much time did it take you to get over Max?

It was just yesterday afternoon from their perspective that Lorelai told Rory that she still missed Max, so Rory should already know that she isn’t over him. Maybe she is being disingenuous, although it’s strange that Lorelai doesn’t recall their conversation either.

Three-month Anniversary

DEAN: There must be some other excuse that you could use.
RORY: Like what?
DEAN: Like it’s your three-month anniversary with your boyfriend.
RORY: It is?
DEAN: Yeah. Three months from your birthday. I mean, that’s when I gave you the bracelet and that’s when I figured this whole thing kinda started.
RORY: Wow. Three months.
DEAN: Actually, technically your birthday was on a Saturday, so really it should be Saturday, but I work Saturday and I planned out this whole big thing so I thought maybe we could do it on Friday.

There is no way that we are only three months from the night that Dean gave Rory her bracelet as a birthday present (despite what Dean says, it wasn’t her birthday, but the day after her birthday). That was in late October, so three months later would be late January. It’s now mid-March, so it’s roughly four and a half months from her birthday.

Frustratingly, it is about three months after another significant date in their relationship – the night of the Chilton Winter Formal on December 9, when Dean and Rory mutually agreed that they were boyfriend and girlfriend. It would have made a lot more sense if Dean decided that was the start of their relationship, and then we could have dated their anniversary dinner to March 9.

Dean says technically it should have held on the Saturday as Rory’s birthday was a Saturday (again, not her birthday, but her birthday party in Stars Hollow), but he has to work that night. That isn’t how anniversaries work – they are on the same date each time, not on the same day of the week. This one is just really perplexing. (It also shows that if there is any clash in their schedules, Dean expects Rory to change her schedule to suit him, rather than changing his schedule for her).

We’re probably meant to be struck by how much more invested in the relationship Dean is than Rory, as she paid no attention to the one-month and two-month anniversaries while he did. However, due to this sloppy and confusing writing, you can hardly hardly blame her for that.

Dean has arbitrarily decided what marks the start of their relationship, and has his own method of deciding what makes a month. Under these circumstances, any normal person would have been at a loss to keep up. Of course, it does show that Rory just hasn’t been paying attention to her relationship and is taking it for granted.

The Bahamas

RICHARD: Well Straub, how is retirement treating you?
EMILY: Yes, do tell us about the Bahamas.
STRAUB: You can get an entire island there for the cost of a decent house here.

The Bahamas (officially the Commonwealth of The Bahamas) is a sovereign state made up of an archipelago of over 700 islands, cays, and islets in the Atlantic Ocean. Under British control for most of its modern history, it has been independent since 1973, but, like other Commonwealth nations, retains the British monarch as head of state.

The Bahamas is a popular destination for Americans to retire to: it is English-speaking, has a warm climate with beautiful beaches, and only 40 minutes by plane from Florida. Residents don’t pay any tax either, which is another drawcard, and to become a permanent resident, all you have to do is buy a property worth $500 000 or more.

It is possible to buy a very small island in The Bahamas today for as little as $500 000 – the price of a nice house in Hartford. I suspect for Straub, a “decent” house in Hartford would be around the 1 million mark in today’s money, and for a million dollars, you could get a rather nice little islet in The Bahamas.

That Straub and Francine live in The Bahamas provides a convenient excuse as to why they haven’t been any part of Rory’s life. (Emily asks them what The Bahamas is like, but in a later season we discover she and Richard spent the previous Christmas in The Bahamas, presumably so that Richard could relax after his angina attack).

“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).

“She decided to be stupid”

RORY: [on the phone] Yeah, you too. Bye. [hangs up] That was Lane.
LORELAI: Oh, and what’s the verdict?
RORY: She decided to be stupid and tell her mother the truth – that she wanted to go to a rock concert with us tonight in New York.
LORELAI: Stupid.

In the very last episode, Double Date, Lorelai said she could never lie to Mrs. Kim to help Lane disobey her, citing “the mom code”. Yet now she says that Lane was “stupid” to tell her mother the truth, suggesting she was quite prepared to lie to Mrs. Kim on Lane’s behalf.