In this episode, Jess gets an old car, which has been kindly identified for me by blog reader John Donaldson as a 1970s AMC Rebel or AMC Ambassador. I like the idea of Jess owning a Rebel, but having examined a few photos, I think it may look more like an Ambassador, as they seemed to more often have a two-toned colour??? Perhaps a 1973 model? More opinions welcomed.
Lorelai is not happy to discover Jess has a car, and refers to him needing to be stopped “before he kills again”. Apparently Rory getting even the tiniest injury needing medical attention is the equivalent of her being killed. However, Lorelai has learned her lesson, because she immediately offers to butt out, leaving Luke to handle the issue for himself.
LORELAI: Hey, what do you know about this town loner guy?
LUKE: Same as everyone. Just kind of skulks around with that backpack, never smiles.
LORELAI: Does he also make cheeseburgers and secretly harbor a desire to wear a backwards baseball cap? … [sings] They’re cousins, identical cousins . . .
Lorelai sings the theme song to The Patty Duke Show, a sitcom which ran from 1963 to 1966, and featured teenage star Patty Duke, previously mentioned, as “identical cousins” Patty and Cathy Lane, who looked the same, but had opposing tastes and personalities – so not really a very good reference if she is trying to imply that Luke and the Town Loner are very similar in their demeanour and habits.
TAYLOR: Well, that’s not indicated here, but it doesn’t matter, because protesting is not allowed in the town square, period. It’s un-American.
LUKE: You mean like the Revolutionary War?
BABETTE: And Rosa Parks?
TAYLOR: That’s different. They were against the British and buses. No one likes the British or buses.
Rosa Parks (1913-2005), an activist in the civil rights movement best known for her pivotal role in the bus boycott in Montgomery, Alabama. In 1955, she refused a bus driver’s order that she vacate her row of seats in the “coloured” section of the bus to make way for white people, once the “white” section was full. Her act of civil disobedience helped inspire the black community to boycott the Montgomery bus company for over a year. In 1956, the courts decided that bus segregation was unconstitutional.
Rosa Parks became an international icon of resistance to segregation, and collaborated with civil rights leaders such as Edgar Nixon and Martin Luther King Jr. Although widely honored in later years, she also suffered for her act; she was fired from her job, and received death threats for years afterwards.
Rosa Parks received the NAACP’s Spingarn Medal, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the Congressional Gold Medal, and a posthumous statue in the United States Capitol’s National Statuary Hall. Upon her death in 2005, she was the first woman to lie in honor in the Capitol Rotunda. California and Missouri commemorate Rosa Parks Day on her birthday, February 4, while Ohio, Oregon, and Texas commemorate the anniversary of her arrest, December 1.
Comically, Taylor thinks that Rosa Parks was protesting buses, which he appears to approve of! Is Taylor against public transport?
LORELAI: But he’s our Boo Radley, and we don’t have a Boo Radley, unless you count the troubadour or Pete the pizza guy or the guy who talks to mailboxes.
We learn here that Lorelai sees Pete the pizza guy as one of the town “outsiders”, along with the town loner, the town troubadour, and the (unknown) guy who talks to mailboxes. This might come as a surprise, since running a pizza restaurant and delivery service does not seem like something that would isolate a person from their town or be a suitable job for a hermit. It does seem very typical of Lorelai to choose someone considered a bit eccentric to be their regular pizza provider though.
In an earlier season, Lorelai nominated Jackson’s cousin Rune as a “Boo Radley”. She doesn’t mention him in this context, and in fact Rune is never seen or mentioned again. He was only meant to be staying in town temporarily, so presumably he left sometime after Christmas of 2001.
Here we are at another town meeting, which used to be on Thursdays, and then mysteriously were held on a Saturday this season. I don’t know what day it is now, but it is neither Thursday nor Saturday. They’re just sticking a town meeting in whenever they feel like it.
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 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?”?
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.
DORIS: [on answering machine] Dwight, hi it’s Doris. Doris, your wife, remember me? The woman who was asleep in bed when you snuck out the window like a spineless little worm!
It turns out that Dwight isn’t in fact separated or divorced from his wife, but climbed out of the window while she was asleep. As he moved to Stars Hollow and bought a house, that’s a very serious escape attempt!
This does raise more questions, such as where did Dwight get the money to buy the house without Doris noticing, how did he manage to get to Stars Hollow to go house hunting without Doris noticing, where did he live during the settlement period (unless he just murdered Beenie Morrison, of course), how did he manage to take all the board games with him when he got out the window, and how has Doris managed to find his phone number? I guess his number is listed, for the last one, which seems stupid if he’s on the run from his wife.
The formidable Doris is voiced by Alex Borstein, who played Drella in Season 1.
RICHARD: Before this unfortunate incident, Sally Wallington always received the first cup of tea. When she was suddenly demoted, your mother moved up to the prime tea spot, and she’s held that spot ever since. Now, she’s very proud of that spot, and now she’s afraid that this little incident may jeopardize it.
When Richard phones Lorelai, it is to tell her that she has to go to the concert with Peyton, because otherwise she may jeopardise Emily’s social standing in the Hartford community ie receiving the first cup of tea at DAR meetings.
Lorelai thinks this sounds ridiculous, and Richard agrees – but he doesn’t care. No matter how silly it may sound, it’s important to Emily to have that first cup of tea, and Richard will do anything he can to help her get it.
This provides Lorelai with another viewpoint on the subject, that Emily’s feelings are more important because a dispute with Peyton’s mother will have long-term effects on Emily’s social standing and happiness. On the other hand, for Lorelai to go on one boring date with Peyton is only a few hours out of her life – and it’s at a David Bowie concert, which Lorelai wants to see anyway, with less chance for listening to Peyton drone on than at dinner.
As Lorelai said Peyton was equally bored and unhappy on their date, I can think of an obvious solution – Peyton and Lorelai could just pretend to go on a date with each other in order to keep everyone happy. Or Lorelai could cancel the date with some polite fiction, such as a sudden illness or urgent situation. Apparently this is too simple a fix.
LORELAI: It seems that Dwight has been checking the weather reports and Stars Hollow is going to be extra sunny for the next few days, so he was wondering if instead of watering the lawn twice a day for fifteen minutes, we could water it three times a day for ten minutes.
It’s now well into October, but somehow Stars Hollow in Connecticut is going to be “extra sunny” for days? So much so that the lawn watering routine needs to be altered? The start of this episode was all grey skies, autumn leaves, pumpkins, and scarecrows … now it’s hot enough to kill a lawn. Climate change, Gilmore Girls style.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 