Tag: Oh Really?

“When I finally went to the doctor”

SHERRY: Well, Christopher and I didn’t exactly plan for this to happen. I thought I had the flu or something. When I finally went to the doctor and he told me, he had to pick me up off the floor.

Christopher told Lorelai that Sherry announced her pregnancy to him over the phone at Sookie’s wedding. That was on a Sunday, so she can’t have been to the doctor that day. Sherry later says she waited some time before telling Christopher she was pregnant. Christopher’s story that Sherry had only just discovered she was pregnant when she phoned him turns out not to be true after all.

Quincy

SHERRY: Didn’t you schedule yours?

LORELAI: Not quite. A half hour before I had Rory, I was eating a pepper sandwich and watching TV. [to Rory] You were almost named Quincy.

Quincy ME, mystery medical drama series which aired from 1976 to 1983 (Lorelai must have been watching a repeat). Jack Klugman stars in the title role as a LA medical examiner who routinely engages in police investigations. The show was inspired by the book Where Death Delights, by Marshall Houts, a former FBI agent. Quincy’s character is loosely modelled on LA “Coroner to the Stars” Thomas Noguchi.

Lorelai said that she spent several hours in labour before having Rory. I presume that when she says she was watching TV half an hour before having Rory, she means that’s what she was doing half an hour before labour started.

“If you say the word baby â€¦”

MAUREEN: It’s a little game. Everyone gets a diaper pin, and if you say the word “baby,” the person catching you saying it gets to keep your pin.

At the baby shower, no one is supposed to say the word “baby”. Yet, during the game where they are shoving cotton balls into the bag, Sherry continually says the word baby and no one takes her pin or corrects her. Either the “baby pin” game only lasted a short time, or Sherry got a free pass because it’s her baby shower.

For Keeps

SHERRY: Well, then where’d you get your information on child raising? Your mom?

LORELAI: No, For Keeps. Uh, Molly Ringwald, Randall Bantikoff, really underrated little post-John Hughes flick. She went to the prom fat. I found it really inspirational.

For Keeps, a 1988 coming of age comedy drama directed by John G. Avildsen and starring Molly Ringwald and Randall Bantikoff as Darcy and Stan, two high school seniors who are in love. Darcy gets pregnant just before graduation and decides to keep the baby. It was Ringwald’s final teen movie, and is considered one of her most mature performances, especially in the scene where Darcy develops postpartum depression. (Like Rory, Darcy works on the school paper and plans to study journalism at college). The film was a box office success, and received mixed reviews, with the positive ones mostly for Ringwald’s performance.

As the film came out in January 1988, when Rory had already turned three, it’s hard to see how it could have “inspired” Lorelai during her pregnancy.

Note that this is another occasion when pregnancy and being “fat” are conflated, which is becoming a rather disturbing trend, and no surprise, this is another Daniel Palladino script.

“I wanted a ballerina”

LORELAI: So it’s a girl?

SHERRY: Yeah. Christopher would’ve been happy with either, but I really wanted a ballerina.

Apparently Sherry thinks any girl is automatically a “ballerina” – perhaps a reflection on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s upbringing by a ballet teacher. Of course, not every girl wants to be a ballerina, and plenty of boys enjoy ballet.

It’s notable that Lorelai also enrolled Rory in ballet classes when she was a little girl, so her views and Sherry’s are not that different here.

“It was so bachelor pad before”

SHERRY: Well, it’s a work-in-progress. It was so bachelor pad before: rock posters, modular furniture, magazines everywhere.

When Sherry leads Lorelai and Rory into the apartment she shares with Christopher, we can see it is the same one they lived in at Christmas 2001, even though Christopher told Emily and Richard he and Sherry were looking to buy a new place of their own. The buying a new place story was another of Christopher’s untruths, because Sherry says nothing about them hoping to buy another home, and talks of this one as a work-in-progress, as if she hopes they will continue improving the one they already have.

The odd thing is that Sherry talks about the apartment as if it was one Christopher lived in alone before he got with Sherry, calling it his “bachelor pad”. That doesn’t fit in with the story we heard from Christopher, which is that he lived in Berkeley until he met Sherry, after which he relocated to Boston to be with her – and would have presumably moved in with her, or they would have moved into a place together.

From what Sherry says, Christopher was already living in Boston by himself, and Sherry moved into his apartment (where did she live before that he didn’t move in with her, when she apparently makes more money than he does? With her parents?). Did Christopher meet Sherry in California, and then move across the country and get an apartment in hopes of being with her? Which is weird and stalkerish, and seems like way more effort than Christopher would put in? Or did he move to Boston independently, and meet Sherry there?

It seems as if Christopher cannot tell people one simple thing which is verified by someone else. It’s as if everything about him is a lie. Christopher as a character barely exists.

“It’s all the way in Boston”

RORY: Yeah, but … it’s all the way in Boston.

LORELAI: I’ll drive you there if you want … Yeah, I’ll do some Boston shopping …

Boston is about two hours drive from the location of Stars Hollow, which is a significant journey, but never made to seem like a big deal in this episode. Lorelai and Rory would have spent four hours getting to and from a baby shower, but Lorelai makes it sound like a fun shopping trip. Mind you, this is the woman who drove to New York to go shopping, and drove home again without getting out of the car.

“I’m still a minor”

JESS: Sign this. [hands him a piece of paper]

LUKE: The registration?

JESS: I’m still a minor.

It’s now late October to early November, and Jess says he still hasn’t turned eighteen yet, which means his birthday must be either in November or December, making him a month or two younger than Rory.

Yet when Jess moved to Stars Hollow in September 2001, Luke said he was seventeen, meaning his birthday had already occurred by then. Either he has a movable birthday (like Rory), or Luke meant that he would turn seventeen within that calendar year. Parental figures love rounding their kids’ ages up on this show.

“Jess, where did you get the money?”

LUKE: Jess, where did you get the money?

JESS: … Remember I work for you?

LUKE: … I don’t pay you enough to buy the car.

JESS: I saved up my pennies and I bought the car from Gypsy. She gave me a good deal. That’s how I got the car.

Luke has trouble understanding how Jess was able to buy a car. Lorelai helpfully suggested that Jess probably stole it, and with the uncanny ability Jess has to mind-meld with Lorelai, he also teases Luke by saying he mugged someone.

I’m not sure why this is all such a mystery. Jess’ car may be roadworthy, but it’s in poor condition otherwise, and Jess says Gypsy sold it to him at a bargain price. That could have been as low as $500, and is unlikely to be more than $1000.

Jess has been working at the diner every day for about a year, which was probably a full-time job over summer vacation, probably getting around $4 an hour. As little as 125 hours work could have paid for the car, and Jess, like Luke, has frugal habits, and is probably a good saver. (He also cleaned Lorelai’s gutters, and may have taken on other chores around town).

Even though there’s nothing at all unbelievable about Jess having an old car, it does get explained later in the episode.