RICHARD: These are our guests, Natalie and Douglas Swope.
EMILY: You two have met.
LORELAI: Yes, at the auction.
NATALIE: Good to see you again.
The show seems to have committed to the new timeline where Lorelai and Natalie Swope first met at the auction in “Eight O’clock at the Oasis”, supposedly about six weeks previously. However, when Natalie was visiting Emily in “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”, she asked after Lorelai, who she remembered very well even though she hadn’t seen her since before she had Rory (as Lorelai is said to have attended the Christmas party at Richard and Emily’s every year, this in itself doesn’t seem very likely – did Natalie never attend one of the parties?).
We meet Natalie’s husband, Douglas, in this episode. Again, surely he and Lorelai would have met in the original timeline, but obviously not in this one, as he wasn’t at the auction. Douglas is played by John Aniston, the father of Jennifer Aniston. He had roles on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and The West Wing, as well as a long-term connection with Days of Our Lives.
RORY: You ready for this? … Even with the Cold War?
LORELAI: That’s been going on for thirty-four years? I can manage.
The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term cold war is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars.
The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from nuclear development and military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.
The end of the Cold War is dated to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. President George H.W. Bush claimed that America therefore “won the Cold War”.
According to Lorelai, the “cold war” between she and her parents began almost at birth!
LORELAI: I hate hiding from people, especially when I don’t wanna hide from them. You were a pal. You were so good to Rory. You were the best first boyfriend a mother could’ve hoped for … It’s okay to keep avoiding me if you want. I just wanted you to know that you don’t need to, okay? Just because you and Rory broke up doesn’t mean we did.
More inappropriate comments from Lorelai to Dean. If Lorelai and Dean “don’t need to break up”, what is it exactly they are not breaking up from? Because if their relationship was Mother of Rory and Rory’s Boyfriend, then yeah, it is going to break up when Rory and Dean do. Otherwise, Lorelai is suggesting that their relationship was something more than this.
It really feels as if Lorelai is trying to keep Dean hanging around for Rory, in hopes that they will get back together. A pretty terrible thing to do to Rory, and certainly unkind to Dean.
LORELAI: Looks like a big scratch. Wow, Bactine, Neosporin, Mercurochrome – what’s with all the pharmacologicals?
Bactine: an antiseptic treatment containing lidocaine anaesthetic, first marketed in 1950.
Neosporin: broad spectrum antibiotic cream containing anaesthetic, approved for use in the US in 1971.
Mercurochrome: a topical antiseptic with a dye which stains the wound bright red. First developed in 1918, its distribution in the US was halted in 1998, due to concerns about it containing mercury. Somehow it is still available for sale in Stars Hollow in 2002! It is now manufactured in the US without any mercury.
JESS: It’s not the first time a couple’s broken up.
RORY: It is for us.
In fact, Rory and Dean broke up before, in “Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers”. However, as they got back together again, Rory might think it doesn’t count, and was only “being on a break”. It’s interesting that she doesn’t share this detail with Jess, as if not wanting to expose the cracks and weaknesses in her prior relationship with Dean.
RORY: But how are we going to go to four Thanksgiving dinners?
LORELAI: It’s not four, is it?
RORY: Lane’s house, Sookie’s, and we always stop by Luke’s . . . that’s three, and Grandma and Grandpa is four.
This episode’s plot is laid out here – the Gilmore girls have to eat four Thanksgiving dinners. Rory’s statement makes it seem as if they usually have three Thanksgiving dinners each year, but somehow a fourth Thanksgiving dinner is a step too far!
LOUISE: I’m having [Thanksgiving] dinner with my dad.
MADELINE: Isn’t he still in jail?
LOUISE: Yes, but his company donated some treadmills for the inmates so he swung a special trailer for dinner that they’re gonna set up for us in the parking lot. We have it for about two hours and then one of the Manson girls gets us.
In the episode “Back in the Saddle”, Louise mentioned that her father was due in court, on mysterious charges (she didn’t bother finding out what he had been arrested for). Now it’s seven months later, and Louise’s father is undertaking his sentence – for whatever it was. Madeline refers to it as “jail”, rather than “prison”, possibly suggesting a shorter, lighter sentence (although sometimes people use the word jail for both jail and prison, so that’s not certain at all).
It does sound as if Louise’s father is in a low or medium security facility, since he is permitted to spend his Thanksgiving dinner in a trailer in the parking lot with his daughter (and possibly other family members, it seems unlikely only Louise would go and see him). These trailers are a reward for good behaviour given to model prisoners, so Louise’s father is clearly well-behaved – even the donation of treadmills to the prison would not be enough on its own. Connecticut is one of only four states that allow extended visits like this (the others are California, New York, and Washington).
Louise says the trailer then goes to “one of the Manson girls”, referring to the female members of the Manson family who were convicted for their crimes. In real life, they were incarcerated in California, and in high security prisons, so this could not have really happened. (Squeaky Fromme was in a high security mental treatment facility in Texas).
Interestingly, there is a state prison in Cheshire, Connecticut called the Manson Youth Institution, for men under the age of 21. Louise can’t be referring to that either, as they are young men, not women, and they are not permitted visits such as she describes.
It is just possible that Louise’s father is being held at the federal correctional facility in Danbury, Connecticut [pictured], a medium and low security prison and satellite prison camp which has facilities for both male and female inmates – so if Louise’s dad’s trailer wasn’t going to a “Manson girl”, it could feasibly be going to a female prisoner, at least. The facility in Danbury has often featured in pop culture, including Orange is the New Black.
EMILY: Your father and I are going out of town the next day and we’ll be gone all of December, including Christmas, so it’s the last chance for the family to be together for the rest of the year.
Emily and Richard supposedly throw a dinner party two weeks before Christmas every year, before they leave for their winter vacation. They seem to have cancelled it this year, leaving for their vacation straight after Thanksgiving, so perhaps they are in bad moods over the Yale incident as well.
EMILY: Well, I certainly hope you’re feeling better now because I want you to come to dinner tomorrow night.
LORELAI: Tomorrow? Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving.
In 2002, Thanksgiving Day was on Thursday 28 November – very close to the original episode broadcast date of 26 November.
There has actually been far too many events for them to have all occurred before the end of November, and by my reckoning it’s almost Christmas. But we’re in TV Land here, where the timeline can be stretched a long way.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 