The episode title is a reference to the 1996 British drama film Secrets & Lies, directed by Mike Leigh. The film is about an adopted woman who seeks out her birth mother, and the many secrets and lies involved in the process (indeed, one of the biggest questions in the film remains a secret, although with some tragic hints as to its answer).
Secrets & Lies received rave reviews from critics, and is regarded as one of the best British films of all time. It was showered with international awards, including Best Film at the BAFTAs and the Palm d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. It was praised for bringing to light important issues surrounding adoption.
The episode doesn’t have much to do with the film’s subject matter, except that it involves secrets between mothers and daughters.
LORELAI: Hey, you know what? Let’s invite everyone … RORY: And they could even stay in the inn. All those empty rooms, all those uneaten pillow mints. LORELAI: An out of control, over the top slumber party!
A slumber party, pyjama , or sleepover, is a party where everyone sleeps in the same house. Typically people play pranks and games, watch movies, or stay up all night talking and laughing. Usually for children and teenagers, if organised by adults, expect a lot of drinking, just like the Bracebridge Dinner!
Lorelai avoids Sookie’s plan of her having a cosy dinner with Luke by impulsively inviting everyone they know to the cancelled Bracebridge Dinner. It may not be entirely a coincidence that she also avoids Rory and Jess having a cosy dinner together. The idea of spending some quality time with Jess probably doesn’t appeal much to Lorelai.
This episode (like many of the “towny” instalments) is justifiably a fan favourite, and much of the appeal comes from the wish fulfilment of staying in a hotel with all your friends for free, eating a massive fantasy banquet, doing snow-related activities, and drinking until dawn. Who wouldn’t enjoy that?
PROFESSOR ANDERSON: Believe it or not, Shakespeare probably never intended his plays to be read by students sitting at desks more concerned with getting As than with the fate of Macbeth. His plays were meant to be experienced, lived. So with that in mind, together with my third period Shakespeare, you’ll be split up into five groups and each group will assume responsibility for one act of Romeo and Juliet, which will be performed a week from Sunday. You will nominate the director, you will cast the scene, rehearse the scene, and interpret the scene in your own individual manner.
This is the main plot of this episode, revolving around the group project that Rory’s class is doing for English Literature (?). Her new teacher is Professor Anderson, according to the credits, so she no longer has Mr Medina, like at the start of this year. I’m not sure if he’s just conveniently faded out of the picture (like Mr Remmy did), or if Professor Anderson is teaching English instead.
Lorelai finally gets the courage to tell Mia that she and Sookie have a dream of opening their own inn. Mia is very supportive, but also reveals that she receives many lucrative offers to buy the Independence, and the sooner they can strike out on their own, the better, as far as she is concerned.
Lorelai is dismayed to hear this, as buying the Dragonfly seems out of reach while Fran refuses to sell.
In this episode, Lorelai’s plans are upset by two independent-minded old ladies who own inns – one won’t sell her inn to Lorelai, while the other seems likely to sell her inn from under Lorelai.
When Rory and Lane walk past Doose’s Market, there is a chalk outline of a person’s body drawn on the pavement outside the store, marked off with police tape. A crowd has gathered, and Taylor is having a fit, being calmed down by a local policewoman.
What the police officer should have told him is that a chalk outline to show where somebody has died is a trope which mostly exists in film and television (first shown in a 1958 episode of Perry Mason). In real life, police don’t usually draw a chalk outline to mark the place where someone was killed. The trope goes back to the days when police did so – not for the public, but to give crime reporters something they could photograph without showing an actual dead person.
She could have at least told Taylor that, in universe, the police did not draw the chalk outline!
FRAN: But I can’t sell you the property … I just couldn’t. You know, I have no siblings and no children and in a way, that place is really the only family I have. I’m the last Weston left, so I plan to own it forever.
Lorelai and Sookie are sure that sweet old Fran will be happy to sell them The Dragonfly without driving a hard bargain, but although Fran is thrilled at the idea of them starting their own inn, she refuses to sell. She is the last of the Westons, having no siblings or children, and the Dragonfly is the closest thing she has to a family. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, because she has left the property derelict, which isn’t a great way to treat your family. Surely giving it a new lease of life would be better for the Dragonfly? Maybe Lorelai should have just paid for all that cake she ate.
Lorelai and Sookie try to tactfully ask what happens to the property when Fran dies, but she doesn’t take any of their hints, and acts as if she is immortal, so that they reach a frustrating impasse. I feel as if Lorelai and Sookie should have at least made an offer and put it in writing – the temptation of cash might have eventually changed Fran’s mind.
The episode ends with Rory back in the dining hall at Chilton, peacefully reading and listening to her Walkman. She hasn’t been made to socialise after all, and the headmaster has been forced to back down and realise that Gilmore girls have to follow their own rules.
Another girl asks if she can sit with Rory, and she takes her own book out and starts reading in silence. Rory smiles at this confirmation she is not the only person at Chilton who likes to read at lunchtime, and now she isn’t a weird loner any more. She has a lunch friend, just as Mrs Verdinas insisted she find.
According to the credits, this girl is named Lisa. She’s played by Connecticut actress Madeline Zima, who already had quite a lengthy CV at this stage, and was most famous for playing Grace Sheffield in The Nanny.
Lisa was one of the other girls who was going to be inducted by the Puffs at the same time as Rory and Paris, although she is never introduced to the viewer and never speaks to Rory that we see (they might have spoken off-screen). She is the girl wearing blue and yellow checked pyjama pants with a grey tee shirt and a blue cardigan.
Possibly Lisa was also told to find some friends, rather than sit and read at lunchtime – although if so, couldn’t Headmaster Charleston or Mrs Verdinas have simply introduced Rory and Lisa to each other, suggesting that they have something in common? You know, like a normal school? Lisa was never shown eating lunch with the Puffs, so presumably she was recruited some other way, or that occurred after Rory and Paris joined the table, and was therefore offscreen.
Do not expect to ever see Lisa again, or hear her mentioned. Did she and Rory ever speak to each other and become real friends? Did they show each other the books they were reading? Did they have anything else in common? These questions are never answered.
In an episode that doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, it finishes with a character that remains an enigma.
EDIT: This article was heavily edited with the kind assistance of Sarah M, who was able to identify Lisa as one of the girls at the Puffs induction ceremony, something I was unable to do.
FRANCIE: We talked. We find you fascinating. IVY: Like the monkey habitat. FRANCIE: So we’ve decided to extend an invite to you. You can eat here any time you like.
The invitation to Rory from the Puffs comes with a major put-down which likens her to a monkey at a zoo. Clever and amusing, but not quite human, not fully one of them. Even when the Puffs accept you, they don’t really accept you …
AVA: Aubrey here works at Saks. AUBREY: Uh, used to work at Saks.
Saks Fifth Avenue is a luxury department store chain which originated in Washington DC in 1827, and is now headquartered in New York. The closest store to Hartford is in Greenwich, Connecticut, about 90 minutes drive away [pictured].
Aubrey is quick to correct the assumption that she is still working after being married for a month, which would imply her husband couldn’t support her financially. Unlike Lorelai, the Booster Club mothers don’t have to work, underlining that it is much more of a sacrifice for Lorelai to participate.
RORY: It’s just so weird that the one table I sit down at is home to the secret society. LORELAI: I know. It’s like waking up one day and realising that everyone else in your family can pull their face off.
Lorelai references the 1989 horror film Society, directed by Brian Yuzna and starring Billy Warlock. The film is about a teenage boy who lives in a Beverly Hills mansion, but doesn’t trust his high society family. After a series of disturbing and gruesome events, it is revealed that the boy’s family and their high society friends are from a different species. They pull their faces off and begin melding together to begin feeding from a human.
The film was a success in Europe, but wasn’t released in the US until 1992. The film is considered a brilliant satire in the UK, but pretentious and obnoxious in the US. The ending is unforgettable, whichever your opinion, and it is now a cult classic.
Note the tagline of the film, a comment on the theme of this episode.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 