Lorelai Tells Her Parents About Christopher

When Lorelai goes to dinner with her parents, they ask where Christopher is (they have bought him a far better gift than they bought Lorelai, who got scone mix). Lorelai explains that Christopher’s girlfriend is pregnant and he went back to her, and surprise, surprise – it’s all Lorelai’s fault somehow! Emily accuses her of “flitting from man to man” when she only went on one nothingy date since breaking up with Max more than a year ago.

The last time Lorelai had an argument with her parents about Christopher, it was Emily who ran upstairs to cry on her bed. This time it is Richard who specifically blames Lorelai for not being with Christopher, still harping on about not “following the correct procedure” and getting married when she was sixteen. He then goes off to sulk in his den about it.

Emily and Richard never take Lorelai to task for sleeping with someone else’s boyfriend – they regard Christopher as already “hers”, and Sherry as someone he’s known for “two minutes” (it’s actually more than a year now). They don’t blame her for jumping into things too quickly with Christopher and getting Rory’s hopes up, either. In fact, they offer no moral guidance to their daughter at all, only chastise for not getting her hooks into Christopher and ruthlessly refusing to let go. Their lack of concern for Sherry and her unborn child is utterly chilling.

By the way, Emily had a meltdown about Lorelai and Rory eating on the patio (at a barbecue!), because only barbarians eat outdoors. Yet she is serving some sort of cheese and biscuit refreshment on the patio in this scene. For that matter, she has had a tea party on the patio. Apparently it is alright to eat small snack-sized amounts of food outdoors, but not a full meal. The rules of Emily Gilmore are hard to understand.

“I was having way too much fun”

DEAN: Yeah, I’m back – and I’m glad to find you not blonde.

RORY: Yeah, I was just having way too much fun, so . . .

Rory refers to the Clairol hair lightener advertising slogan, “Is it true …blondes have more fun?”. It was written by advertising director Shirley Polykoff – a blonde – in 1956, and was considered rather risque at the time.

Rory bleakly jokes that she didn’t dye her hair blonde, because she was already having too much fun (of course she’s actually having a terrible time). Ironically, it is Jess’ girlfriend who is the blonde, and having a lot more fun than Rory.

With his usual ability to turn up unannounced wherever Rory happens to be, Dean has returned home from Chicago three hours early. Although this would have put a serious dent in her plans to be with Jess at the festival, she may be more glad to see him than not, considering that Jess is with someone else, and she’s just had a huge fight with her mother.

Note that even while hugging Dean, Rory is looking over his shoulder at Jess, her face hurt and angry.

“You finally found a way to fill September”

TAYLOR: This, young lady, is for the first annual Stars Hollow End of Summer Madness Festival.

LORELAI: You finally found a way to fill September, didn’t ya?

The previous season, there was some sort of Harvest Festival in early September, with scenes of happy people bringing sheaves of wheat to the centre of town, and hanging autumn leaf decorations on lamp posts. The season before that, there was a Teen Hayride in mid-September. It seems like September was getting filled with activities already.

Note that after Lorelai finishes talking to Taylor, she takes a wistful look at Luke, working in his diner, to remind us that she and Luke still aren’t speaking to one another.

“I have a list of suspects”

LORELAI: Hey Taylor, how’s the leg?

TAYLOR: It’s just fine.

LORELAI: Still haven’t found out who put that banana peel on your doorstep, huh?

TAYLOR: No, but I have a list of suspects.

Now that Jess is back in town, surely he is pretty high up on on the suspect list?

Note that the dress Lorelai is wearing is very similar in colour and design to the pink lace-trimmed nightgown she wore in her dream. Either the dress she was going to wear got into her dream, or she decided to wear something that reminded her of her dream.

Jess Returns to Stars Hollow

Luke goes upstairs to his apartment and finds Jess there. Luke’s first question is how Jess got in, because the only entrance is through the diner and up the stairs, and nobody saw Jess come up. Either he was able to time his arrival so that everyone was busy and distracted just as he got there, or he was able to gain entrance by climbing into an upstairs window somehow – neither of which sounds very plausible.

Jess tells Luke that although things are fine with his mother, and he’s not in any trouble, he wants to come back to Stars Hollow and live with Luke. Luke says that things will have to be different, and Jess agrees. Luke informs Jess that Rory and Dean are still together, and to leave them be. Learning that Rory is at Sookie’s wedding, Jess says he needs to take a walk. Rory came all the way to New York to see him, and it looks as if Jess has returned the favour by coming all the way to Stars Hollow to see her …

Note that Luke doesn’t seem to have received an invitation to Sookie and Jackson’s wedding. Perhaps Sookie has left him off the guest list in support of her bridesmaid, Lorelai, since he and Lorelai are still in an argument. Or perhaps he turned the invitation down, pleading work as an excuse, since he is running the diner as usual.

Senior Ditch Day

PARIS: Not that the person who actually wins will even know who Hubert Humphrey is, but hey, I bet they’ll organize one boffo senior ditch day.

Ditch Day, previously discussed.

Boffo, US slang meaning “very good”. It originated from the film trade magazine, Variety.

Note that Paris is wearing one of the 400 campaign buttons that Lorelai made for them, showing Rory’s and Paris’ faces, against what looks like the US flag (as if it’s a real presidential election, not just one for school).

Lorelai Invites Christopher to the Wedding

Lorelai invites Christopher (another woman’s boyfriend!) to Sookie and Jackson’s wedding, as her “plus one”. At last her interest is piqued when he casually accepts this invitation, and she asks him if maybe he should run this plan past Sherry.

Christopher tells her that Sherry is out of town (as if that has somehow negated her very existence), and that they haven’t been getting on very well lately. Before she left on a business trip – more evidence that it was Sherry’s business trip they were on before, not Christopher’s, by the way – they agreed that they would take this time apart as an opportunity to do some thinking about their relationship.

This is all Christopher’s narrative of course, we don’t know if all, or any, of this is true, or if Sherry would have a different version of events. However, Christopher says he had already decided that he is going to start looking for an apartment so he can move out. Even though Christopher and Sherry are not actually broken up yet and Christopher has not told Sherry he’s moving out, nor has he made any moves to do so, Lorelai is now perfectly satisfied about taking Christopher to the wedding.

Note that Christopher hands Lorelai his coat to put over her bare shoulders, and that she sits increasingly closer to him during this scene, as he tells her about Sherry. She keeps her leg crossed away from him though, as if not ready to be completely vulnerable to him. We also get another reminder that the wedding is on Sunday, in case we’ve forgotten about it.

Jackson Has to Wear a Kilt to the Wedding

Jackson is dismayed when his father hands him a kilt to wear to his wedding on the weekend. It’s a family tradition, and both Jackson’s father and grandfather were married in kilts, suggesting that the Belleville family have Scottish heritage. (Which made more sense when Jackson’s surname was Melville, which is a Scottish surname, while Belleville is French – although there is a historical relationship between France and Scotland, so it’s not unrealistic either).

I am not able to identify Jackson’s tartan – it looks most like a Buchanan Clan tartan, but I suspect it’s fictional.

Note that Jackson’s father is played by the real life father of Jackson Douglas, the actor who plays Jackson Belleville.

Sookie and Jackson’s Rehearsal Dinner

LORELAI: But if you’re gonna be in the area Thursday night, you can come with us to the dinner.

CHRISTOPHER: But it’s Sookie’s rehearsal dinner.

LORELAI: Oh, she would love it. She’s cooking for a thousand. It’ll be fun.

Sookie and Jackson’s wedding rehearsal dinner is on Thursday, and Lorelai invites Christopher to it, since he already offered to take Lorelai and Rory out to dinner that night. The Gilmore girls are strangely un-curious about how and why Christopher is suddenly so available for outings with them, and neither bothers to ask where Sherry is, or why she isn’t coming too.

Note we get another day of the week reference to keep us on track. The wedding rehearsal is Thursday, the elections are Friday, the wedding is on Sunday. Got it?

Sookie and Jackson’s Wedding

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.