Rory’s Date with Jess

LORELAI: Oh, hey. Where’ve you been? I thought Taylor auctioned you off to the highest bidder.
RORY: No, I just went to get some pizza and I, uh, wandered around the bookstore for a little while. Here. [hands her a book]

After the fundraiser, Jess took Rory out for pizza, as her picnic was inedible – a clear parallel to Luke bringing Lorelai diner food to replace her inadequate basket. They then wandered around Stars Hollow Books together. No doubt tongues were wagging in town over that.

Rory said it’s “tradition” to eat a picnic with the person who buys your basket, but sitting together on a secluded bridge for an hour, going for pizza, and then book shopping seems to be going above and beyond tradition. As Dean finds shopping for books boring and only goes with Rory so he can watch her, Rory would have enjoyed doing it with someone who shares her passion for reading.

Note that Lorelai makes the same joke about Rory being “auctioned off” that she made to Emily in regard to school dances.

Miss Flexibility

LUKE: You’re Miss Flexibility over here?
LORELAI: Hey, I can be flexible.
LUKE: Please.
LORELAI: I can. As long as everything is exactly the way I want it, I’m totally flexible.

A keen piece of self-insight from Lorelai.

Lorelai and Luke eat their picnic in the gazebo, because Luke can’t stand sitting on the ground to eat (he enjoys hiking and camping – does he sit around the campfire on a deck chair???). He seems to have picked the most romantic spot possible, because it is still decorated with wreaths of flowers.

Jackson and Sookie Get Engaged

JACKSON: I think we should get married … Soon.
SOOKIE: Are you pregnant?
JACKSON: What do you say? Sookie?
SOOKIE: Yes! I say yes. Oh my God, we’re getting married!

In typical Gilmore Girls fashion, a marriage proposal comes out of a fight, and the wedding is scheduled to happen as soon as possible.

Sookie seems to have packed the basket expecting or hoping for a proposal, because there’s a vase of roses, candles, champagne, and even what looks like a tiny wedding cake with white icing. She may not have been quite so surprised by the proposal as she acts. Is it possible that Sookie deliberately ignored Jackson’s hints about moving in together because she was holding out for marriage?

A bit of trivia – this scene was filmed in the dark, and then the light turned up in editing until it appears to be a sunny afternoon.

“Nice picture”

[Rory walks past the video store, which her picture is in the window. As she stares at it, Jess walks over to her.]
JESS: Nice picture.

Oh, very smooth. We already know how much you like Rory’s pictures, Jess!

Rory has been named Citizen of the Month in Stars Hollow, which is why her photo is up in the window of the video store. It shows her in her Chilton uniform against a blank background, and may be from school photo day.

Rory wonders where Taylor and Kirk got the photo from. Good question!

Aunt Cecile

LORELAI: Oh, oh. Well, uh . . . ugh, why don’t we move Aunt Cecile? She was always so annoying at parties. She loved the knock-knock jokes.
RORY: Mom! … You can’t just kick out Aunt Cecile.
LORELAI: Knock-knock. Who’s there? Pineapple. Pineapple who? That’s where it ended. Never fully grasped the knock-knock concept.
EMILY: She was a complete idiot. Okay, it’s decided – Cecile goes.

Aunt Cecile is one of the deceased Gilmores currently in the mausoleum, and is almost unanimously voted out to the annex as the least popular corpse, due to her habit of telling incomplete knock-knock jokes. I assume she is the sister of either Trix, or Richard’s father.

Cecile, an Anglicised French form of Cecily, was most common around the turn of the twentieth century, although it has never been very popular in the US. By the mid-twentieth century it was fairly rare.

Note that Emily is dressed in black, suitable for her role discussing death and burial.

Lorelai Apologises to Emily

Emily goes to to the kitchen to get more bread (wherever is the cook or the maid during these dramatic kitchen scenes? Do they just happen to be on a break in the middle of a meal, or in the toilet? Is there another food preparation or storage room somewhere? Even weirder, are they just out of shot and actually present the whole time?).

Lorelai apologises to Emily for not trusting her motives in helping, saying that she isn’t used to people doing things without strings attached. Emily immediately realises that Lorelai is talking about her and Richard, but Lorelai continues thanking her, saying she didn’t have anywhere to turn and was all out of ideas, and that she doesn’t know what she would have done without Emily. Hm, maybe she needs to thank and apologise to Rory as well now?

Emily thanks Lorelai, and then gives her parting shot – with a wicked smile, she tells her the DAR will be holding all their meetings at the Independence Inn from now on. She leaves, seemingly without the bread she supposedly came in for. Emily wasn’t joking either. A year later, there is mention of the DAR meetings still being held at the inn.

Of course, the DAR would have been free to book the Independence if they wanted to anyway, and Emily has organised things so that the inn Lorelai manages gets more business. It’s up to the viewer whether she has really taken revenge on Lorelai, or is trying to give her even more help. Or both!

Note how beautifully this scene is composed and shot, and that here is the colour red again to indicate strong emotion. Lorelai in red with a red light on her hair, vase of red flowers, red strawberries on the cake, little red desserts, red grapes, a red pepper in the fruit bowl (slightly oddly). Only Emily remains in cool blue and silver, her emotions under control.

Minutemen

TAYLOR: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new uniforms of the fabulous fighting Minutemen.

The Stars Hollow basketball team is called the Minutemen. They are patriotically named after the Minutemen from American history – civilian colonists who independently formed their own militia groups during the American Revolutionary War, so called because they were ready to fight at a minute’s notice. They were among the first to fight during the war, comprising perhaps a quarter of all troops. Generally young, they provided a highly mobile, rapidly deployed force that could respond immediately to threats.

We knew of the Minutemen way back in Series 1, Episode 1, in the Pilot. When Rory is talking to Dean for the first time at school, there is a sign outside the high school saying Go Minutemen, listing them as the champion team of the 1997-98 season.

Termite Whisperers

[They ring the doorbell, Sookie answers]
SOOKIE: There they are, my little termite whisperers.

Sookie references the 1998 drama film The Horse Whisperer, based on the 1995 novel of the same name by Nicholas Evans. The film is directed by Robert Redford, who also stars in the title role, and is about a “horse whisperer” who is able to train horses through kind, gentle methods.

The Horse Whisperer was a commercial success and well received. It led to anyone having a supposedly ability to handle a difficult creature, person, or situation as a “[whatever] whisperer”, just the way Sookie does. Even though Lorelai and Rory haven’t handled them well at all!

Note that the horse whisperer in the film is a horse trainer from Montana. This is so suspiciously like Bootsy’s claim in the previous episode that he spent a summer training horses in Montana that I think he either chose his vacation after watching the film, or simply made the story up, inspired by the film.

Walking to Sookie’s House

Even though it’s the middle of the night, there’s snow on the ground, and they’re in pyjamas, Lorelai and Rory put on coats and scarves and walk to Sookie’s house. In other episodes, they say that Sookie’s house is a long walk from theirs (they seem to have to go through the centre of town to get there), but for some reason they always walk, even when complaining about the distance. Apparently it is both too far to walk quickly, and too close to drive (perhaps a mile???).

In real life, the sets for Lorelai’s and Sookie’s houses were right next to each other, and could be accessed through a door between them. Note that there are still snowmen standing from the previous episode’s contest – apparently they are left up until they melt in early spring.

“You will take them again and do better”

PARIS: Louise, what did you get?
LOUISE: Highlights, just around my face.
PARIS: You will take them again and do better.

Although Paris is correct that you can retake the PSAT, you can only do it once every twelve months. So Louise would need to wait until October 2002 to retake it – by which time, she would have taken the actual SAT, making it redundant. If you want to take your PSATs more than once, you need to start at least a year in advance. I feel as if Paris would know this.

Note that Louise’s results are apparently lower than Madeline’s, and it is actually she who is worse academically than her best friend. Louise seemed to be the brighter one in Season 1, but Paris berates her by saying, “You don’t study, you don’t apply yourself”, as if she knows Louise is capable of doing better, but is simply lazy.