DEAN: Why don’t we just bring [Lorelai] something out?
RORY: No. She and Luke have been in this fight for too long, she’s gotta do this.
DEAN: You’re cruel.
RORY: Tough love, baby.
Tough love is the act of treating a person harshly or sternly with the intent to help them in the long run. It is thought that the phrase originated with the 1968 book Tough Love by Christian community activist Bill Milliken, who worked with at-risk youth to keep them engaged with the education system.
Dean describing Rory as “cruel” seems quite apt, considering the dishonest basis of their relationship at this point.
LORELAI: Anybody not hanging out with Annie Sullivan by the water pump.
Anne Sullivan (1866-1936), the visually impaired teacher and lifelong companion of deaf, blind and mute student Helen Keller (1880-1968). She was the only person able to get through to Keller and help her learn to communicate with the outside world, and a result, both women became inspirational figures.
At first Sullivan made little progress with her student, until a breakthrough occurred when Sullivan held Keller’s hand under the water pump and repeatedly spelled out W-A-T-E-R into her palm. With great effort, Keller hesitantly said, “Wah-wah”, her first spoken word. Keller then touched the earth, asking for its name as well, and by the end of the day she had learned thirty words. It was the beginning of her learning to read, write, and speak.
These events are depicted in the film The Miracle Worker, previously discussed [pictured].
LIZA: Of course, we’re breaking up ’cause we’re transferring to different schools. He’s going to Florida State, I’m going to U. Mass . . . although I’m kinda going to miss this place.
Florida State University [pictured], a public research university in Tallahassee, Florida. Founded in 1851, it is the oldest higher education institution in Florida. It’s student activism in the 1960s and ’70s earned it the epithet, “the Berkeley of the South”.
University of Massachusetts, the only public research university system in Massachusetts. It has five campuses (Amherst, Boston, Dartmouth, Lowell and a medical school in Worcester), a satellite campus in Springfield, and 25 campuses in California and Washington. The campus in Amherst is the largest, and the oldest, dating back to 1863, when it was called Massachusetts Agricultural College. It became Massachusetts State College in 1931, and was granted university status in 1947.
What Color is Your Parachute?, by Richard Nelson Bolles (a classic guide for job-seekers)
The Graduate on DVD, the 1967 film starring Dustin Hoffman
The Portable Nietzsche, by Friedrich Nietzsche, translated by Walter Kauffman
Application to join the army
Disposable camera
Pearl necklace in a velvet box
They are all traditional graduation gifts, and/or joke gifts. The camera actually ends up becoming an essential item. Lorelai never seems to consider how Sherry would feel about her boyfriend sending another woman flowers and jewellery.
MICHEL: It was dignified, as most French ceremonies are. Poetry was read, a string quartet played, a ballerina performed.
LORELAI: You drank some Boone’s Farm out of a bota bag and knocked a beach ball around?
Boone’s Farm, originally an apple wine, now a flavoured malt beverage, due to changes in tax law. It’s made by E&J Gallo in California, one of the biggest wine producers in the world. It’s popular with college students because it’s cheap and sold in convenience stores.
A bota bag is a traditional Spanish wineskin or canteen, often made from goatskin. Modern bota bags have a plastic lining and nozzle.
Beach balls are commonly tossed around by US college students on spring break or at graduation celebrations. Lorelai is teasing Michel by pretending that his graduation in France was the sort of drunken frolic stereotypically enjoyed by American college graduates.
SOOKIE: Filled with two pounds of crushed chocolate-covered espresso beans.
We see another of the cakes that Sookie makes Lorelai – a mocha cake with a “mortarboard” academic cap on it, filled with chocolate-covered espresso beans (one of Lorelai’s favourites candies).
Rory walks through Chilton’s front gates with Paris, Paris doing all the talking. As Paris heads to her locker, Rory looks around apprehensively, then walks back through the gates. She’s not only skipping school but also missing out on a meeting of the school paper which she told Lorelai she had after school, meaning she wouldn’t be at the graduation ceremony until 6 pm. This doesn’t seem like something a really keen journalist would do. Perhaps Rory hopes to make it back to school in time for the meeting.
Skipping school for no reason, especially at this crucial point of the school year, seems like something Chilton wouldn’t be very impressed about (let alone Paris). However, we never see Rory face any consequences for it. Perhaps she made up the work she missed, or Lorelai wrote the school a note or something to explain her absence.
Note that even while approaching the school with Paris, Rory is already looking away as if wishing she was somewhere else, or looking for an escape route.
PARIS: Branch is a graduate of MIT and Henemen went to Berkley. Berkley! I mean, he may have majored in Math but what did he minor in? Bean sprouts? Forget it.
Berkeley, the oldest campus of the University of California, a public research university founded in 1868, previously mentioned. The oldest university in California, Berkeley hosts many leading research institutes, including the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute and the Space Sciences Laboratory. It founded and maintains close relationships with three national laboratories, and has played a prominent role in many scientific advances.
Among its alumni, faculty and researchers, Berkeley has more Nobel laureates, Turing Award winners (25), Fields Medalists (14), and Wolf Prize winners (30) than any other public university in the nation; it is affiliated with 30 Pulitzer Prizes, 19 Academy Awards, and more MacArthur “Genius Grants” (108) and National Medals of Science (68) than any other public institution. The university has produced seven heads of state or government; six chief justices, 22 cabinet-level officials; 11 governors; and 25 living billionaires.
It is also a leading producer of Fulbright Scholars, MacArthur Fellows, and Marshall Scholars. Berkeley alumni, widely recognized for their entrepreneurship, have founded numerous notable companies, including Apple, Tesla, Intel, eBay, SoftBank, AIG, and Morgan Stanley.
The writers seem to love giving supposedly smart Paris silly and ill-informed things to say, and this time it’s that Calculus teacher Heneman can’t be any good because he went to Berkeley – one of the best universities in the world, with a powerhouse record in Mathematics and Science.
Her questionable belief seems to stem from the fact that Berkeley is in California, and therefore “hippie”, and from the the university’s history in the 1960s, when it had a reputation for political activism. I find it hard to believe that an intelligent student in 2002 could be basing her ideas about Berkeley from events which occurred twenty years before she was born!
PARIS: I said, I’m not taking AP Calculus from Henemen.
Calculus, is a branch of mathematics focused on limits, functions, derivatives, integrals, and infinite series. This subject constitutes a major part of contemporary mathematics education. It has widespread applications in science, economics, and engineering.
In Season 1, Rory implied she was studying Trigonometry, usually part of pre-calculus mathematics courses. Most likely, she is now preparing to take AP Calculus in her senior year.
Central Park, a 843 acre park in Upper Manhattan, New York, the fifth-largest park in the city. Opened in 1858, it is the most visited park in the US, and the most filmed location in the world.
Washington Square Park [pictured], a 10 acre park in the Greenwich Village district of Lower Manhattan, New York. One of the best known of the city’s public parks, it is a cultural icon and popular meeting place. It is notable for its arch, modelled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and its fountain. The ground was first made into a park in 1849.
Jess says that Washington Square Park is “cooler” than Central Park. Apart from its location in fashionable Greenwich Village, it has a history of street performers, and protests and demonstrations. It has been a focal point for students, artists, musicians, and writers in the Beat, folk, and hippie movements. Robert Louis Stevenson once met Mark Twain here. Buddy Holly spent time here helping guitarists with their technique, and Barack Obama held a rally here. It’s a popular spot for filming, and Amy Sherman-Palladino’s show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has filmed scenes here.
Washington Square Park, with its Beatnik and counter-cultural heritage, seems like the perfect place for Jess to hang out. I’m not sure if this is meant to suggest that he and Liz live in this area (if so, only with the kind of magical rent control that appears in TV shows like Friends!).
Jess obviously isn’t attending school, because he went back to New York right near the end of semester and its too late to start at a new school. This is breaking the law, but I guess he’s fallen through the cracks in the system as nobody knows where he really lives.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 