Lorelai’s Shoe Breaks

LORELAI: My heel just broke off. Damn, these are brand new shoes, too.

RORY: They were made in 1943.

In the final hour of the marathon, the heel breaks off one of Lorelai’s vintage shoes. The rules of the contest didn’t require participants to wear shoes, and as they have less than an hour to go, Lorelai and Rory could have kicked their shoes off and finished the marathon in bare feet.

Instead Lorelai uses her yellow emergency card, which allows her a ten minute break to get her shoe repaired. During this time, her partner must stay on the floor and keep moving. However, Rory has been dancing for twenty-three hours, and is far too exhausted to stand upright and keep moving on her own.

Lorelai gets Dean to hold onto Rory and keep her moving until Lorelai returns. We know that Dean doesn’t care for dancing, but this is the third time in three seasons he dances with Rory – the other two times were at her school dance, and for her debutante ball (including the dance practice before the ball). There isn’t much involved this time, all he has to do is keep her upright, and he soon says he’s quite enjoying the experience.

When Taylor announced the rules, he never said it was possible to get someone else to dance with your partner during their break if they were physically incapable of standing without assistance. However, he never says it is actually forbidden, either. As usual, Lorelai is very ready to exploit a loophole in the rules if it is to her advantage. (And Kirk has been shown to be playing dirty as it is).

The Rules

Taylor explains all the rules of the dance marathon just before it starts – important information for the episode ahead.

The marathon starts at 6 am on Saturday, and finishes 24 hours later at 6 am on Sunday.

Any couple without a number will be disqualified.

All couples must be touching at all times.

All couples must remain moving at all times.

The only time couples may stop touching or moving is when Taylor blows an air horn, which allows for a ten-minute rest, snack, drink, bathroom break etc period.

In case of emergency, a contestant may use their yellow card to leave the floor for ten minutes. Their partner must remain on the floor and keep moving throughout this emergency break.

First aid is available at Miss Patty’s.

If you feel unwell or dizzy etc, move to the side so that your medical episode does not impede other dancers.

You can see on the scoreboard behind Taylor that 156 couples signed up for the marathon. That sounds pretty successful!

Jamie and Paris

PARIS: Well, we went for coffee, and he talked about how he had a great time on our date, and how he finds me fascinating, and how he thought about me all the time.

In this episode, Paris gets her first boyfriend, Jamie. She is typically in disbelief as to why Jamie would choose her over “idiot” college girls who are prettier and more (sexually) experienced, but Jamie is never shown to be anything other than adoring of Paris.

Having a boyfriend seems to make Paris instantly more relaxed about her academic life. She turns up late to class the next morning after seeing Jamie, even though they supposedly only had coffee after school (must have been some coffee!), and is happy to postpone the work they were supposed to do on the weekend for the school newspaper. Because of this, Rory is able to be her mother’s partner for the dance marathon in this episode.

“I overslept”

PARIS: Sorry I’m late, Mrs. Savitt.

MRS SAVITT: Is everything okay?

PARIS: Yes. I overslept.

In “The Deer Hunters”, Rory turned up a few minutes late for class after being hit by a deer, and all hell broke loose. There was a serious suggestion made that Rory might not be suitable for such a strict school as Chilton. Now Paris wanders into class late without any reasonable excuse, and it’s no big deal. The show could never really decide if Chilton was a big, scary, super strict school, or just a normal prep school.

Dance Marathon

In this episode, Stars Hollow is holding a dance marathon to raise money. Dance marathons began in the 1920s and were at their peak in the 1930s, with people vying to win the cash prize at the end, that could be for as much as a year’s salary. Today they are generally held as charity fundraisers, and only last for twelve to twenty-four hours, not the thousands of hours they went on for in times past, which sounds like absolute torture (and they were often rigged as well).

We learn that the dance marathon is an annual event, that Lorelai has been close to winning it for four years in a row, since 1998, and that the previous year she only lost at the eleventh hour. It’s possible the one in 2001 took place around the same time as Mia’s visit (she may have come back for it). The one in 2000 presumably took place after Lorelai’s date with Max.

According to the banner in the town square, this is the 50^th annual dance marathon in Stars Hollow, so the first one was held in 1952. In fact, this is around the time dance marathons began to decline in popularity. Could Stars Hollow have really been thirty years behind the trends?

The Town Loner

This episode introduces the character of the Town Loner, a mysterious and eccentric hermit who is thought to live “in the hills” around the town. This has a bit of a “cabin in the woods” vibe, and the show has something of a fascination with eccentric loners, who are depicted as both dangerous and wise.

The Town Loner comes out of isolation to stage a protest in the church tower, but the words that he yells are seemingly meaningless babble, and the banner that he unfurls is backwards, so the words cannot be read. Lorelai (brilliantly?) interprets this as a statement on man’s inability to communicate.

The Town Loner is played by Daniel Palladino, in an uncredited cameo.

Devilled Eggs

LORELAI: “Take the deviled eggs!” How many times did the woman say it? And then her drunken friends hear it and they’re all shouting, “Take the deviled eggs!”

Devilled eggs (also known as stuffed eggs, Russian eggs, salad eggs, or dressed eggs)are hard-boiled eggs that have been shelled, cut in half, and filled with a mixture of the egg yolks, mayonnaise and mustard. They are generally served cold as a side dish, appetiser or a main course at parties. The dish’s origin go as far back as ancient Rome, but the modern version can be found in a 1896 cookery book by Fannie Farmer.

The instruction to “Take the devilled eggs” is where this episode’s title comes from. Lorelai and Rory have a two hour drive to get home, and the eggs have already been out on the table (we see them when Sherry and Lorelai are talking by the cake). Every episode of this show is a salmonella outbreak waiting to happen! Luckily nobody eats these disgusting old eggs – they were only thrown on a car.

Lorelai Apologises to Emily

LORELAI: Sorry about the whole Peyton thing. When I asked you for his number, I didn’t think … Think about what would happen if things didn’t work out with us. I mean, I know his mom is your friend, and I shouldn’t have even gotten mixed up in this whole thing if I wasn’t prepared to remember that what I do will affect you, and to me it’s just a Bowie concert, but to you, it’s not. I was a little thoughtless and I’m sorry, but you have to understand that I was not lying when I said we had a bad time.

Lorelai has listened to her father, and decides she needs to apologise to Emily for putting her social life in jeopardy. She acknowledges that she didn’t think about the consequences might be if she and Peyton didn’t get along, or consider how that might affect Emily. She goes to some lengths to explain to Emily how awful the date with Peyton was, and then says that, even so, she will still go on the date with Peyton if Emily wants her to.

Lorelai is clearly hoping her mother will take mercy on her plight … I ask again, has she actually met her mother before? Naturally, Emily graciously thanks Lorelai for her apology, and tells her to wear blue on her date with Peyton. There’s a real theme of women wearing blue in order to look pretty on this show.

This is another scene where Lorelai and Emily go off to have a private chat in the kitchen, where the maid is mysteriously absent.

Jess to the Rescue

Jess slots into the role of white knight, and comes to Rory’s rescue by switching off the sprinklers for her, getting soaked himself in the process. Again, how fortunate Stars Hollow is having this mini-summer in late October!

This gives Jess and Rory a chance to talk for a minute, and Jess asks her about school and her plans for Harvard – unlike Dean, Jess seems genuinely interested in Rory’s education. However, Rory’s pager goes off, and it’s Dean on his way to help, having just received Rory’s pager message.

Without hesitation, Jess turns the sprinklers back on for Rory, and they share a romantic “moment” together in the water spray before he walks away, Rory gazing after him. Jess knows that Rory is afraid of upsetting Dean, and that Dean will react very badly to Jess having “just happened” to be on her street, and available to help. Rather than cause trouble between them or make things harder for Rory, he chooses to take himself out of the picture – a sign of his growing maturity, and that he cares for Rory.

It is the best moment of a fairly lacklustre episode, although it doesn’t make that much sense that the sprinklers had to be turned back on again. Couldn’t Rory have just told Dean she managed to get the sprinklers off herself? Also, Jess said the spigot had become loose, and needed a harder turn to switch the water off. Now that Jess has tightened the spigot, won’t Dean switch the water off easily, and wonder how on earth Rory had any trouble with it? Or will he just put it down to “girl’s can’t turn off sprinklers, that’s a man’s job?”?

Rory Can’t Turn Off the Sprinklers

After school, Rory heads over to Dwight’s house without even taking off her suspiciously empty looking backpack. She turns on the sprinklers to water the lawn, lets herself in to water the African violets, and then goes outside again.

Unfortunately, she is unable to turn the sprinklers off again, and gets completely soaked. Luckily Stars Hollow is having several days of unseasonably warm sunny weather in late October! At least she won’t catch a chill. She quickly pages Dean, asking him to help her.

Dwight lives right across the street from Lorelai and Rory, yet this scene looks quite different from anything we’ve seen of the street before. Previously when we’ve caught glimpses of Lorelai and Rory’s neighbourhood, it seems very small town, almost semi-rural in character, with houses a fair distance apart and no front fences (there doesn’t even seem to be a fence separating Lorelai’s house from Babette’s). Suddenly it looks as if they live in white-picket suburbia with neat little lawns. It’s quite jarring.

Also, it feels off that when Rory comes out of Dwight’s house, which they live across the street from, Lorelai’s house is nowhere to be seen. This issue with the filming location might well jolt some viewers out of the illusion that Stars Hollow is a real, or even believable, place.

I rarely comment on these kinds of inconsequential technical goofs, but this is one that almost demands to be mentioned. When Dwight showed Lorelai how the sprinkler works, he said that you turn the spigot right to turn it on, and to the left to turn it off, while demonstrating. When Rory goes to water the lawn, she clearly turns it to left – but the water comes on, even though that was the way to turn it off. It’s odd that they make such a point of explaining how the spigot turns off and on, but there’s no effort to make sure the actors stick to that.