Footnotes to the TV series
The educational toy shown is a Hugg-a-Planet, a globe of the world made into a soft squashy comfort pillow. They have been manufactured since 1982.
Rory says this is dirty old faded childhood toy has been in the garage for years, but we saw it, looking new and clean, in the living room in “A Tisket-a-Tasket”. I suppose it’s possible she bought a new “Hug-a-World” in the meantime, but then why does she want to wash and keep the old one?
LORELAI: What? It has not been four years since we’ve stepped foot inside our own garage.
RORY: It was when we got the Jeep.
LORELAI: That wasn’t . . . yes, it was.
This is the first scene we’ve ever had of Lorelai’s garage, which has never been mentioned before. The show explains that’s because Lorelai and Rory haven’t been near it since 1999 – and even then they only got in the door, then ran away when a bat flew out. These two really don’t handle nature very well.
Later in this very scene this version of events is contradicted when Rory says that two years ago, in 2001, she boxed up items from the attic and put them in the garage. They were meant to be collected by a charity, but Lorelai couldn’t be bothered waiting for them, so the boxes remain there.
According to their recollection, Lorelai bought the Jeep in 1999. It’s actually a 2000 model.
JACKSON: You cheated on me!
SOOKIE: No.
JACKSON: Oh my God.
SOOKIE: I just flirted accidentally!
Sookie makes Jackson’s favourite meal and puts his favourite album on, so of course he reaches the obvious conclusion – she’s been unfaithful to him. Sookie doesn’t help matters by acting as guilty as if she had been, and says that she “flirted accidentally”, even though Lorelai told her she didn’t. The episode ends miserably for the temporarily feuding couple.
RORY: I can’t believe I was her best friend. I feel awful.
LORELAI: Look, I’ll tell you what. If you wanna make things right, just go back to school tomorrow and let her stab you.
It’s Friday Night Dinner, so why would Rory and Paris go to school the next day, Saturday?
Rory is surprised to discover that Paris considered her her best friend, which seems somewhat oblivious, considering that Paris already told Rory several times that she feels able to ask Rory for help in a way that she can’t with Louise and Madeline. Paris has made it fairly clear that she considers Rory her equal, and relies on her – Rory fulfils a role in her life that nobody else can.
I think Rory is meant to come across as sweet and humble here, but she actually seems too self-absorbed to understand how important she is to Paris.
RORY: I was trying to help you.
PARIS: You were? You mean, in between betraying me and selling me out, you were trying to help me? Gee, you are quite the Renaissance woman, aren’t you?
Embodying a basic tenet of Renaissance humanism that humans are limitless in their capacity for development, the concept led to the notion that people should embrace all knowledge and develop their capacities as fully as possible. This is expressed in the term Renaissance man, often applied to the gifted people of that age who sought to develop their abilities in all areas of accomplishment: intellectual, artistic, social, physical, and spiritual.
Rory is therefore a Renaissance woman.
The thing that Paris finds most unforgiveable is that Rory told Francie about Jamie, but in fact Francie had already noticed for herself that Paris had a boyfriend and brought it up with Rory (no matter how implausibly Paris is wandering around her school with her college-aged boyfriend! Anything to keep Rory innocent).
LOUISE: You’d think the brain trust behind P.E. could come up with some sport that didn’t give you helmet hair all afternoon.
A brain trust is a group of experts appointed to advise a government, leader, or organisation. The concept comes from President F.D.R. Roosevelt. In the UK, the term brains trust is more common. It is often used sarcastically, to imply the people in charge aren’t very intelligent at all.
Louise makes it sound as if they have no choice about doing fencing for Physical Education, yet in Season 1, Rory said that there were numerous sports to choose from at Chilton. She signed up for golf, but is doing fencing now. A lot of fans find that confusing, yet it doesn’t seem that strange that a different sport might be chosen for each year, or each semester.
FRANCIE: Rory came to me and said she wanted to talk about some things . . . you know, policy, the prom, the senior gift, et cetera. So of course I said, “why don’t we talk about them at the student council meeting with Paris?” And she said she wanted to do this without Paris. She said Paris is just too wrapped up in that boyfriend of hers to care about any of this. I didn’t know what to do, so I went, and then I found these, and I’m just so upset. I mean, I would never intentionally do anything behind your back, Paris. And I promise, the next time Rory tries to get me to, I’m just gonna say, ‘Talk to the hand’, you know what I mean?
Talk to the hand, slang from the 1990s, a sarcastic way of saying the person doesn’t want to listen. More or less telling them to shut up. Often accompanied by holding the hand out with the palm towards the speaker, as if physically stopping the person from continuing.
Francie’s story about Rory is fanciful and accompanied by the most flimsy of evidence. Even if it were true, all she is claiming is that Rory spoke about the prom without involving Paris, which already happened at the supplementary meeting, and Paris wasn’t that bothered.
The fact that Paris falls for this farrago of lies tells us that Rory is more important to her than she has let on, and that she is far more insecure than she likes people to know. Also, plot drama!
JOHN: Now this is a lovely property that has just become available right outside of Litchfield.
SOOKIE: It’s a sales pitch?
LORELAI: They spend two hours telling us nothing, then try to sell us lame property?
SOOKIE: We already know the place we’re buying.
LORELAI: I know.
Litchfield, previously discussed.
Lorelai and Sookie say they already know the property they will buy (the Dragonfly Inn), but the owner (Fran Weston) has refused to sell it to them. Is it really such an insane idea that they might look at some available real estate that somebody actually wants to sell, if only to give them some idea of the market? Maybe they could actually use a couple of business classes.
Also, the one day seminar that Lorelai talked about seems to have ended up being the two hour class Michel derided after all. I guess Lorelai meant “one day” as in the entire course takes place on only one day, rather than over several weeks.
LORELAI: We are so in luck. It was international grab bag night at Al’s.
RORY: Cool. Did you peek?
LORELAI: And ruin the whole point of the mystery dinner? I think not. Pick.
Another quirky offering from Al’s Pancake World – on certain nights, how often is a mystery, Al offers an international grab bag, where you apparently receive a randomly assigned dinner from any national cuisine.
Who would be interested in this? Certainly not fussy eaters or people with food allergies, at least. To add to the chaos, diners apparently don’t know when it will be international grab bag night, as Lorelai proclaims that they are “in luck” that they happened to be buying dinner on that night.
Lorelai and Rory love this insane tradition because it is a game as well as food. They each pick one of the bags without looking, smell it, then try to guess what it is. Rory guesses hers is Moroccan, which is what she always says, on the basis that if you say the same thing every time, it will eventually be correct. Lorelai takes a cover-all-bases approach by declaring hers is Pan-Asian, with a hint of English Colonial and touches of South African.
Rory strongly implies that the food is old, suggesting that “grab bag night” might be a way of selling off out of date leftovers. It’s quite stomach-churning.
In the end, neither Gilmore girl can identify what food they have bought, and they end up going to Luke’s for dinner. What a waste of time, money, and food!
PARIS: Wadsworth Mansion is owned by the Connecticut Daughters of the Mayflower. Most of those biddies couldn’t negotiate an icy sidewalk much less a contract. Took me about five minutes on the phone to get them down to half their asking price.
The Connecticut Daughters of the Mayflower is a fictional organisation. The nearest real world equivalent would be the The General Society of Mayflower Descendants, commonly called the Mayflower Society. It is a hereditary organisation of individuals who have documented their descent from at least one of the 102 passengers who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620 at what is now Plymouth, Massachusetts. The Society was founded at Plymouth in 1897, and there is a Connecticut branch in Hartford, which has both male and female members.
In real life, the Wadsworth Mansion is owned by the city of Middletown, and there is no negotiation of fees for the venue.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 