Tag: Oh Really?

Rory Hears Shane on the Phone to Jess

SHANE: [on phone] Uh huh . . . All I know is I don’t have it, so it’s gotta be at your place . . . You’re not looking for it, you’re watching TV, I can tell . . . Yeah, whatever. I’ll just get a new one. So, what are we doing tonight? . . . I don’t know, I’m sick of eating. I’ve been eating like a pig, I feel all bloaty . . . It is so a word, it’s a word ’cause I said it. That’s how words get invented, ’cause people say them and then other people say them . . . You’re such a jerk sometimes and I’m always nice to you . . .

We have seen Jess and Shane embrace and kiss on the show, but this is the only time we ever hear them communicate, and it’s just one side of a brief telephone conversation. When a jealous Rory overhears it, she seems to use it as ammunition against Shane, as evidence that Shane is not “smart” enough for Jess (like she is).

This is a clear parallel to how Jess feels about Dean – that he’s not smart enough for Rory (like he is). Jess seems to have deliberately chosen a girlfriend who will make Rory feel the way he’s been feeling all along.

What the viewer can pick up from Shane’s side of the conversation is that Jess is not an attentive boyfriend, and Shane is aware of it. She can tell he’s watching television while pretending to be searching for her lost item (we don’t know what it is, but in a later episode she leaves a bra behind, so that could be it). She is also aware that Jess can be a “jerk” to her sometimes, and perhaps Rory should take this as a red flag, because later he isn’t a very attentive boyfriend to her, either.

Whatever Rory thinks of Shane, we can tell that Shane is smart enough to see through Jess to some extent, and is not deluding herself about the relationship. She can also speak up for herself, and lets Jess know how she feels. These are skills that Rory herself will later be lacking in her own relationship with Jess.

Lane’s Purple Hair

Lane’s purple hair is very obviously a cheap wig – it doesn’t fit properly and looks a different style to her real hair. The whole hair dyeing plot in this episode is not possible in real life. You can’t bleach black hair blonde, then dye it purple all in the matter of a couple of hours (it would take days). It also isn’t possible that Mrs Kim wouldn’t have smelled the bleach and hair dye while working in the antiques store on the ground floor.

However, none of this really matters much, as after a very short celebration of her bold new look, Lane has a crisis of confidence, and insists that Rory dye her hair black, so that her mother won’t find out what she did. This is, of course, only adds to the implausibility of the episode.

G.E.D.

LORELAI: No, technically, I didn’t drop out. I, uh, I kept going as long as I could while I got pregnant, which I would recommend to any girl. Not the getting pregnant part, obviously. Um, although, uh, if that happens, um, you know. . . it shouldn’t. I mean, it could but you should try to avoid it. . . um, anyway, uh, I got my GED, yeah.

GED, the General Educational Development tests. These are tests in four different subjects which, when passed, provide certification that the test taker has US or Canadian high school level skills. The subjects are: Mathematical Reasoning, Reasoning Through Language Arts, Social Studies, and Science. It is an alternative to the high school diploma. It is only ever referred to as the GED.

In Connecticut, a person is eligible to register for the GED tests once they are seventeen or older, and have officially withdrawn from school for at least six months. There is a test centre in Hartford (the Adult Education Center), and if the person is under 21, testing is free ($13 if over 21 or not a military veteran).

Lorelai says that she never officially dropped out of school, and kept up her studies as long as she could. However, her former school friend Mitzi said that she hadn’t seen Lorelai since she was seven months pregnant, suggesting Lorelai didn’t return to school for the new academic year in September 1984.

At the time, there was a high school for teen mothers in Hartford that Lorelai could have attended, but I’m sure Emily would never have permitted that (the shame! The social disgrace! Lorelai having to mix with working class girls! The horror, the horror!). Lorelai said that her “conservative high school” wouldn’t let her graduate while nursing a baby, so she doesn’t seem to have found an alternative.

Lorelai was eligible to take the GED in 1985, and it would have been easy for her to access the test when she lived in Hartford. I’m guessing she took the GED while she still lived with her parents.

By the way, Lorelai was far from unusual for being a teenage mother trying to balance motherhood and education. By the early 1990s, one quarter of all births in Hartford were to a teen mother, and in 1991, more girls in the city got pregnant than graduated high school.

Lorelai’s Careers Talk Goes Off Script

Lorelai begins giving her careers talk at Stars Hollow High, but it is almost immediately hijacked by students who are more interested in hearing about when she got pregnant with Rory, and whether she regrets it. You get the distinct impression that for these teens, Lorelai has long been a source of fascination (and probably of gossip), and they have been waiting for an opportunity to ask questions about her decision to keep Rory and commit to being a single mother.

Lorelai looks to Debbie Fincher for help, but receives absolutely none – it’s a supervised event organised by the PTA, and yet nobody steps in to ask the students to keep their questions only on the subject of Lorelai’s career, not her personal life. Lorelai could have said something along these lines herself, but she makes an attempt to answer their questions honestly, to show that she’s not ashamed. Unfortunately, she makes a bit of a mess of it – by the end she is very unwisely offering to take them all out for coffee to discuss her life in more depth. Boundaries, Lorelai!

One of the girls asking questions is Riki Lindhome (she’s the one with blonde pigtails), who would play the role of Juliet in later seasons of Gilmore Girls. At that time she had had a small role in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. She later got her big break in Tim Robbins’ hit play, Embedded, and was then cast in her first film role by Clint Eastwood in Million Dollar Baby (2004). She’s gone on to have a successful career in film and television, and performs in a comedy duo called Garfunkel and Oates with Kate Micucci.

Butch Danes

[Luke walks over to her. His high school picture is hanging in the display case with the caption “State High Hurdles Champion: 1985 – Butch Danes”]

LUKE: For the love of . . . what’s that doing there?

Here we discover Luke’s nickname in high school was “Butch” (a very manly nickname, best known from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid).

If Luke was seventeen in 1985, that would make him the same age as Lorelai, both of them born in 1968. If he was any younger that year, he would be younger than Lorelai, which doesn’t seem likely (it’s a stretch of plausibility that he’s the same age – Scott Patterson is almost a decade older than Lauren Graham). I don’t think he can have been eighteen, because he didn’t do his final year of high school.

Luke said he didn’t have a single positive memory from high school, yet he was a star athlete and a state hurdles champion. It can’t have been all bad. It’s definitely a lot better than what Jess has been through at school.

7 Up, Salad Water

RORY: Oh, a girl told me once that if your scalp is hurting from bleach, drink a 7 Up. It’s something to do with the bubbles.

LANE: The Kim household does not have soft drinks.

RORY: Well, what do you got?

LANE: Something called Salad Water imported from Korea. Believe me, it’s nothing like 7 Up.

7 Up, a lemon-lime flavoured soft drink owned by Dr Pepper, and distributed by Pepsi. It was created by Charles Leiper Grigg in St Louis in 1929, two weeks before the Wall Street stock market crash of that year. Originally called Bib-Label Lithiated Lemon-Lime Soda, it contained lithium citrate, a mood stabiliser used to treat manic states and bipolar disorder. It became 7 Up in 1936, and nobody really knows why that name was chosen – some say that it refers to the seven original ingredients, some that it’s a coded reference to lithium, which has an atomic mass around 7.

7 Up won’t do anything to stop your scalp hurting after bleach (and if it’s the bubbles, wouldn’t any soft drink do the same thing?), but I’ve seen it recommended for stomach ache and the common cold, so there seems to be a lot of belief in it as a folk remedy. I suspect Rory is saying anything to distract Lane, and possibly hoping for a placebo effect.

Salad Water, or Water Salad [pictured], is water flavoured with green salad, produced by Coca-Cola in Japan. I’m not sure why the Kims have imported it from Korea when it’s a Japanese product – perhaps the Korean import-export company imports it from Japan, then exports it to the US.

Vin Diesel

LANE: Thinking about the last movie I saw. Vin Diesel was in it. Thinking about Vin Diesel now. Thinking about where Vin Diesel got the name Vin Diesel. Thinking about Vin Diesel’s mysterious ethnicity.

Vin Diesel, professional name of Mark Sinclair (born 1967), actor and producer. One of the world’s highest-grossing actors, he is best known for his role in the Fast & Furious film franchise, the first one being released in 2001. His professional name is taken from his mother’s maiden name, Vincent, and the fact that he is highly energetic.

His most recent film at this point was XXX, which came out in August 2002. Vin Diesel plays Xander Cage, a thrill-seeking extreme sports enthusiast, stuntman and rebellious athlete, turned reluctant spy for the National Security Agency. Cage is sent on a dangerous mission to infiltrate a group of potential Russian terrorists in Central Europe. It was a commercial success and received mixed reviews. The film’s soundtrack made #9 on the album charts, and #1 on the soundtrack charts, which might have been a reason Lane wanted to see it. She presumably watched it during her summer vacation.

In a 2001 interview, Vin Diesel described himself as being of “ambiguous ethnicity” – Lane seems to be alluding to this statement. He was raised by his white mother and adoptive African-American father, but his biological father’s origins are a mystery, although reported to be part African-American. Vin Diesel has never met him, and says all he knows from his mother is that he “has connections with many cultures”. He added, “Italian, and a whole lot of other stuff”. (Wouldn’t a DNA test provide some answers?).

Diesel considers himself to be a person of colour, and made a film about his ambiguous ethnicity in 1995 called Multi-Facial. On film, he has played characters from a variety of ethnic backgrounds (Italian, Cuban, Jewish etc), and their ethnic background is never essential to the plot.

[Picture shows Vin Diesel in XXX]

Forty Days

This book is on Luke’s book shelf. Forty Days is a 1992 non-fiction book by Bob Simon, an award-winning veteran journalist for CBS News. The book describes the forty days he spent being imprisoned and tortured by the Iraqis after being captured, along with four of his crew, during the Persian Gulf War in 1991.

It’s not clear whether Luke or Jess is reading the book – but like Lorelai and Rory, there is a good chance that they share books anyway. If it’s Luke’s book, it shows that, like Jess, he has an interest in journalism. (It feels as if everyone is interested in journalism on Gilmore Girls!).

“The grunge look is out”

LORELAI: The grunge look is out.

LUKE: Hey, I’m not dressing up for this.

Grunge fashion, the clothing, accessories and hairstyles of the grunge music genre and subculture which emerged in mid-1980s Seattle, and reached wide popularity by the mid-1990s. Grunge fashion is characterised by durable and timeless thrift-store clothing, often worn in a loose, androgynous manner. Flannel shirts over shabby tee shirts, ripped jeans, and Converse sneakers or Doc Marten boots were a classic look for men. The style was popularised by music bands Nirvana, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam.

Despite what Lorelai says, the grunge look has never quite gone away. I’m pretty sure Stars Hollow High wouldn’t have a problem with Luke turning up wearing jeans and a flannel shirt.

[Picture shows Kurt Cobain, from Nirvana]