RORY: Um, actually, I have to get home. I have to review my campaign platform …
LORELAI: Yes, our little Hillary Clinton here is running for student body vice president.
Hillary Clinton (born Hillary Rodham in 1947), former First Lady of the US from 1993-2001 as the wife of President Bill Clinton. In 2000, she was elected as the first female senator for New York, becoming the first First Lady to hold elected office and the first to serve in the Senate.
In a later season, we learn that Hillary Clinton is one of Rory’s heroines.
LORELAI: Okay, look, nobody wants to say this any less than me, but I – maybe you don’t have a medical condition or a mental problem. Maybe, honey, you are falling for Jess.
In an echo of the end of “Back in the Saddle” when Dean bitterly admits that Rory likes Jess (more than him), Lorelai ends this episode having to be honest with herself and admitting that Rory must be falling for Jess.
There is no such awareness or honesty from Rory, though. She denies it, and says she loves Dean, and he will be her boyfriend forever. Jess is gone, and now all their problems are over. She refuses to talk about it any more, and only talks about her trip to New York as a “horrible, horrible day”. It’s very dishonest, especially to herself, when her day in New York with Jess was an absolutely magical experience until the bus debacle.
It will take just a little while longer for Rory to also realise that she is falling for Jess.
Jess phones Rory out of the blue – conveniently it’s at a time that Lorelai is celebrating the end of her exams and too drunk to notice or care, so they are able to talk privately in Rory’s bedroom. And Lorelai is playing loud music in the living room, so there’s no chance of Lorelai overhearing their conversation. Jess has been extraordinarily lucky in the time he chose to phone up!
It’s now two weeks since Jess left Stars Hollow, and he makes contact with Rory, but neither of them know what to say to each other – and Jess soon says he needs to go when he learns that Lorelai is in the house with Rory. (He’s on a payphone on a pavement, so can’t really talk properly anyway). This intriguing yet unsatisfying phone conversation is what propels Rory into one of her rare, yet surprisingly regular, moments of madness.
Notice that when the phone rings, Lorelai jokes that if it’s Mick Jagger to blow a whistle and hang up. She’s earlier said she wanted to keep her children away from Mick Jagger, and suggests using a whistle to deter him – in other words, activating an anti-rape device designed to raise an alarm and gain people’s attention to your plight. Jess is definitely someone Lorelai wants kept away from her kid, and the suggestion of rape seems like a foreshadowing of later events.
RORY: I’m sick of this. I’m sick of everyone treating me like I’m some kind of mindless idiot being led around by a guy … Everyone in my life, including you, is refusing to believe that I was just as responsible for what happened that night as Jess was.
Rory has always been treated as some sort of perfect girl that all adults love to an almost insane degree. She’s “the sweetest kid in the world“, she’s the Gilmore family’s “great white hope“, she’s the princess of Stars Hollow, daughter of the queen bee.
Now she expresses her resentment at being forced into this stifling role, because it means that she can never be granted agency or bear any consequences for her actions. If she gets into a car accident, then it isn’t Rory’s fault – she’s been led astray by “that boy”. Rory is smart enough to see that it means nobody is actually treating her as a person, that her thoughts and actions don’t matter to them – what matters to them is the imaginary Rory they have in their heads of the perfect girl.
Rory explains to Lorelai that she agreed to go for ice cream with Jess, she let him drive the car, she asked him to keep driving instead of going straight back to the diner. She was having fun with Jess, she enjoyed driving with him until the accident occurred, and she knows that she bears at least some of the responsibility for what happened.
Unfortunately, nobody listens to her at all. Lorelai stills blames Jess. Her grandparents still blame Lorelai and Dean. It’s Rory’s tragedy that she is never brought to account for her mistakes and errors, even when she demands it, and eventually this will have big consequences when she becomes an adult.
KIRK: Don’t get me wrong, I love the blue collar work. I enjoy the plight of the everyman. But as much as the mail letter delivered and the DSL line installed and the latest J. Lo flick rented fills me with a deep sense of pride …
Although something of an inside joke, this does provide confirmation that the “Mick” who was going to install a DSL line for Lorelai was in fact Kirk. Perhaps he got the job using a fake name, or stole/was given someone else’s name tag?
It also confirms that Kirk is doing all his jobs simultaneously, as he refers to delivering mail, installing DSL lines, and working at the video store as all jobs he is currently doing. Although he mentions it now, we don’t see Kirk working as a mailman until a later season.
Kirk’s numerous jobs are a tribute to Amy Sherman-Palladino’s father Don Sherman, who likewise took on a multiplicity of jobs to support his family while working as a comedian.
Albert Einstein (1879-1955), German-born theoretical physicist, widely acknowledged as one of the greatest physicists of all time. Einstein is best known for developing the theory of relativity, but he also made important contributions to the development of the theory of quantum mechanics – relativity and quantum mechanics are the two pillars of modern physics.
His intellectual achievements and originality resulted in the name “Einstein” becoming synonymous with the word “genius”, so that Luke is saying that he is the genius of his family. In fact, Jess looks to be the genius of the family we know so far, and in a future season, Luke will meet a previously unknown relative who appears to be the real family genius.
LORELAI: I don’t understand, Michel. You and your mother seem to have the perfect relationship.
MICHEL: Yes, because I tell her nothing. We keep all subjects light and fluffy. We talk about clothes and food and Posh Spice and David Beckham and that is all. Nothing of value, nothing of substance.
A warning to Lorelai that her “perfect relationship” with Rory likewise only works on the most superficial level. Like Michel and Giselle, their “best friends” act revolves around fashion, food, and pop culture – it’s all getting coffee, watching movies, and eating snacks together. Once anything serious comes up, they can have quite serious arguments, and even fights.
Rory actually keeps a lot from Lorelai – she hasn’t discussed her changing feelings about Dean, or her efforts to understand her feelings about Jess, for example. As Rory gets older, there will be more and more things she keeps to herself, until there is a complete rift between mother and daughter.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 