PARIS: Fine, you have four other acts to choose from. Take your pick. TRISTIN: Yeah, well Summer’s in Act 1, Beth and Jessica are in Act 2, Kate’s in Act 3, and uh, Claire, Kathy, and Mary are in Act 4. So this is the only one free of ex-girlfriends.
Technically yes, but Tristan has been on a date with Paris and kissed her goodnight, and he kissed Rory at Madeline’s party. Louise and Madeline have expressed plenty of interest, and as they are meant to date a new boy every week, it’s not very believable that Tristan wouldn’t have been their boyfriend at some stage, at least briefly.
Note that this is another example of a Beth as an ex-girlfriend – Dean has an ex-girlfriend of this name back in Chicago, who went on to date his cousin. It seems odd to me that Tristan teased Rory by calling her Mary, when he already had an ex-girlfriend named Mary – unless he went out with her after that.
RORY: Hey. MADELINE: Hey. LOUISE: We’re the Monkees.
The opening words to the theme song of The Monkees television show, a sitcom running from 1966 to 1968, starring the American pop group, The Monkees, as four young men trying to make it as a rock and roll band. The verse says:
Hey hey, we’re The Monkees
And people say we monkey around
But we’re too busy singing
To get anybody down
The show utilised a number of innovative new wave film techniques to the sitcom format, and won two Emmy Awards, including Outstanding Comedy Series. Even after its run ended, it continued its popularity thanks to reruns, in particular a massive resurgence after 1986, when it was shown on MTV.
Note that this is essentially the same joke used in regard to Fat Albert in Like Mother, Like Daughter.
While waiting for the group project meeting to start, Madeline reads Jane magazine (1997-2007). This was a women’s fashion magazine founded by Jane Pratt, aimed at the 18-34 market, and designed for those young women who had grown up with Sassy (1988-1996), a feminist magazine for teenage girls which had Pratt as the first editor. Jane’s reputation was for being witty, quirky, trashy, and occasionally thoughtful, with a readership who saw themselves as “wild and crazy” party girls.
It folded because it’s young readership were now getting more interested in digital platforms, such as Jezebel. Jane Pratt went on to found the infamous xoJane online magazine (2011-2016).
Madeline is reading the November 2001 issue with Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro on the front cover. This issue actually had a double front cover, and you can see Madeline holding up the one with Shirley Manson, P. Diddy, and Alicia Keys on it. The magazine that month had interviews with other music stars, including Jennifer Lopez, Janet Jackson, Sheryl Crow, and Tommy Lee.
LUKE: I asked [Sookie] how your plans were going with the new inn, and she very awkwardly changed the subject to women’s basketball … She’s never shown much interest in sports before … What’s going on with that? LORELAI: Oh well, you know, women’s basketball is getting super popular. That’s good, I think. The tall girls need an outlet.
Rune thought Lorelai was too tall, even referring to her as a basketball player. Here Lorelai is quick to imply she’s not a “tall girl” who needs the “outlet” of playing basketball. (She’s about an inch shorter than average for a female basketball player).
Luke says that women’s basketball is in season and maybe Lorelai and Sookie could go to a game together. I think he must mean the women’s college basketball tournament (NCAA Division 1), which opens in November, as the professional league, the Women’s National Basketball Association, has a season running from May to September.
RORY: You did it [the chalk outline]. The whole town knows you did it. They had a meeting about it. JESS: You actually went to that bizarro town meeting? Those things are so To Kill a Mockingbird.
To Kill a Mockingbird, the 1960 novel by American author Harper Lee, previously mentioned. The novel is set in the fictional Alabama town of Maycomb during the Great Depression, and focuses on small town prejudices, traditions, and taboos. The book made an immediate sensation on publication, won the Pulitzer Prize, and became a bestseller. One of America’s most beloved novels (and a great favourite worldwide), it is often set as a text in high schools.
Note that Jess uses the word “bizarro”, just as Lorelai has done.
Lorelai is so disturbed by Mia’s news about selling the Independence that she begins backtracking on her plans to open her own inn, to Sookie’s dismay. Logically, it doesn’t make much sense – if Mia is going to sell, Lorelai and Sookie should be fast-tracking their plans, not shelving them. Mia even said they should make their move sooner rather than later.
A lot of Lorelai’s angst about the Independence being sold is the thought of her home being changed. Her special relationship with Mia would be severed, and the new owners of the inn could very well be faceless corporate types that turn it into a chain (always treated as some sort of ultimate horror on the Gilmore Girls).
For Sookie, who isn’t so emotionally invested in the Independence, the news is positive. Mia won’t be upset about them starting their own inn, and even if the Independence changes, they have their own lives to lead. She’d prefer the inn didn’t lose all its charm, but she’s sensible enough to realise that they can’t control what happens, and to focus on their own plans.
This difference in how they feel is enough for Lorelai to begin passively-aggressively attacking Sookie, and to shoot down any suggestions she has on how to improve things. Sookie wonders why they don’t buy the Independence, and Lorelai says they can’t afford it – even though she never asked Mia what she would sell the inn for.
Sookie asks if they should look for another inn to buy, and Lorelai says she doesn’t have time to look for a new location (because if someone doesn’t just randomly show you an inn, it’s too much hard work? Did either of them even check the real estate guides for the area?).
Finally, Lorelai begins criticising Sookie as a potential business partner. She is unreliable, not punctual, and keeps changing the menu, which would send them broke. Sookie is naturally devastated, but Lorelai’s criticisms seem like valid concerns. Even Sookie doesn’t have any comeback except to say Lorelai already knew all these things before. She doesn’t make any promises to change or improve, or suggest other ways she is going to support Lorelai to offset her flaws. In fact, Sookie’s flakiness is actually a problem when they do become business partners.
Notice that Lorelai tries to back out of their business deal by saying the “timing isn’t good” – the same weak excuse Rory made to Lorelai when she tried to wriggle out of going to Chilton.
EMILY: Lorelai, your daughter’s being impossible. She won’t pose in an appropriate manner. RORY: I’m trying to, Grandma. It’s just awkward.
Rory goes to her grandmother’s house after school to pose for her portrait, but it turns out this means sitting on a “throne” (a needlework armchair) in a red velvet dress with a hungry honking swan, and her arm raised in an odd pose. The living room portrait is quite normal, so it’s strange that Emily suddenly wants this bizarre “swan princess” picture of Rory. It might explain why Lorelai’s own portrait was never completed. Rory is already looking quite grumpy, just as Lorelai got fed up with being painted.
Lorelai is able to quickly convince Emily that a picture of Rory sitting and reading would be natural and appropriate, saving the day.
RORY: You were a Trekkie? LUKE: I was not a Trekkie. LORELAI: Uh uh, I do believe that denying you were a Trekkie is a violation of the Prime Directive. RORY: Indubitably, captain.
Trekkie: a fan of the Star Trek franchise. Many serious fans dislike the term, preferring “Trekker”. Long stereotyped as hyper-obsessive supernerds, and even satirised by Star Trek itself.
Prime Directive: in Star Trek, the Prime Directive is a guiding principle that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilisations.
“Indubitably, captain”: Possibly the sort of thing Rory thinks that Mr Spock would say to Captain Kirk. The closest thing to it is a piece of dialogue from the 1987 series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, when Data says, “Indubitably, sir. Indubitably” to Captain Picard.
Lorelai is an arch-hypocrite to characterise Luke as a Star Trek nerd because he wore a Star Trek tee-shirt, and make fun of him: she is a huge fan of the show herself, and has made numerous references to it, including to Luke. In fact, she uses Star Trek lingo to make fun of Star Trek, something everyone, but most of all Luke, should have picked her up on.
Also note that Rory has done the same thing in regard to Lane’s erstwhile crush, Rich Bloomenfeld – she made a snarky comment about him wearing the same Star Trek tee shirt every day when he was younger. It’s essentially the same joke as this, with Luke wearing a Star Trek tee-shirt when he was younger. Like Lorelai, Rory is a hypocrite; she has made references to watching Star Trek herself.
Fun fact: the name Lorelei appears in the animated series of Star Trek (1971-present). In the 1973 episode, The Lorelei Signal, a compelling musical signal lures the Enterprise to a remote planet, where the female inhabitants drain the male crew of their life force. During the process, the men’s judgement is affected as they experience euphoric hallucinations – rather like the way men behave around the two Lorelais in Gilmore Girls! In the episode, it is up to the female crew members of the ship to take command and rescue the men, so it’s a real girl power instalment.
POLICEWOMAN: Everyone’s accounted for Taylor. It looks like this is just an elaborate prank. TAYLOR: But it looks so real. Where’d they get the police tape? POLICEWOMAN: Kids have their ways.
TAYLOR: Who’d be depraved enough to pull a stupid prank like this? POLICEWOMAN: Hard to say. [Rory sees Jess standing across the street smirking as he watches the crowd]
The police officer reassures Taylor that the chalk outline and police tape is just a prank. Somehow, she knows that a child or teenager is responsible. To be fair, Rory also knows – Jess isn’t exactly being subtle here. The police officer seems to be remarkably blasé about someone stealing police tape from the police station. The bizarre way the police behave makes me think that they were in on the prank with Jess, either overtly or tacitly. It’s actually the only way this scene makes any sense.
Once again, one of Jess’ pranks is connected with Rory – it takes place outside the grocery store where her boyfriend works, at a time when he’s doing a shift, so that there’s a good chance of her seeing it. It seems to be a calculated move to get her attention and show off to her, as well as encroaching on her boyfriend’s territory.
In line with the autumnal colours of this episode, Jess wears a dark red tee shirt – Dean is also wearing a red sweater in a bright tone, as if Dean and Jess are the light and dark attractants for Rory (or the public and the private). Red is love and passion, but also aggression and danger, like a red rag to a bull. Both Jess and Dean wear grey sleeveless jackets over their red tops, as if in partial concealment of their feelings. There is nothing on their sleeves – yet.
Jess’s top is a vintage 1980s tee shirt with a Tasman Empire Airways Ltd logo on it – the former name of New Zealand’s flag carrier airline (since 1965, Air New Zealand Ltd). The show keeps connecting Jess with travel, journeys, and flight.
The fire truck going past is also bright red; in fact notice how many things in this scene bear the colour red. It’s a callback to when Rachel was telling Lorelai about her distress in discovering Luke’s romantic preference for Lorelai with the fire department in the background. It’s another painful love triangle situation marked with sinful scarlet, bloody red.
The poster in the background announces another Autumn Festival, nearing the anniversary of Rory and Dean’s first kiss. This suggests that the date is Tuesday 30th October, the day before Halloween. Yes, I know it looks bright and sunny, but that’s because we’re in TV Land, not the real Connecticut!
Does the big number 7 on the fire truck mean that Jess is blessed with luck in his endeavour? Or does it represent the seven days of the week, and the great wheel of time?. It might be a sign that Jess’ time has come. So much can change in just one year.
NOTE: Thank you to reader M for pointing out that the red vehicle is a fire truck or fire engine, not a bus as I incorrectly stated!
SOOKIE: ‘Fran’s Old Place’! It’ll be like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. People will be trying to figure out who Fran is.
Ruth’s Chris Steak House is a chain of over one hundred upscale steakhouses across the United States, Canada and Mexico. The original Chris Steakhouse was founded in New Orleans in 1927 by Chris Matulich. It was purchased in 1965 by divorced single mother Ruth Fertel, who needed money to send her sons to college.
The name was changed to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in 1976 after a fire forced Fertel to move the restaurant to a new property. It allowed her to to keep some continuity, as she was legally not able to use the name Chris Steakhouse for any other locations than the original restaurant. Fertel admitted she always hated the name.
Note the similarities between Ruth and Lorelai – both struggling single mothers who need money for their children’s education. Both will even suffer the setback of a fire!
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 