RORY: So, Grandma, Grandpa is traveling again, huh? … Business must be good … That’s great. Isn’t that great, Mom?
LORELAI: A jig is forthcoming.
A lively folk dance associated with Irish and Scottish music and dance, first popular in 16th century Ireland and Britain, quickly adopted in Continental Europe.
“To do a jig”, means that the person is very happy – joyful enough to perform this bouncy dance.
Richard still needs to travel since starting his own insurance company, which is seeming less and less plausible. I’m starting to wonder if the travel thing was a complete scam right from the beginning.
RICHARD: And I am shocked by your naïveté … Did you really have pictures of Norman Rockwell family Christmases dancing in your head? Lorelai had her chance for a family, she walked away from it. That was her choice.
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), painter and illustrator, most famous for the cover illustrations of idealised or sentimental American life he created for The Saturday Evening Post for five decades. His Christmas illustrations [pictured] are well known as iconic images of the Yuletide season, and still popular.
Richard also references the poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, and previously mentioned as a classic work which has shaped the American view of Christmas. In the poem it says,
The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
Richard mocks Emily’s hopes for Lorelai and Christopher to be together as idealistic and sugary-sweet as Christmas paintings and rhymes. He has never wavered from his position that Lorelai had one chance to have a husband and family, when she was sixteen, with Christopher, and that walking away from it was irresponsible. The idea that not marrying Christopher might have been the responsible thing to do, not to mention that stepping back from Christopher and Sherry now is the more moral choice, is something he cannot fathom.
When Lorelai goes to dinner with her parents, they ask where Christopher is (they have bought him a far better gift than they bought Lorelai, who got scone mix). Lorelai explains that Christopher’s girlfriend is pregnant and he went back to her, and surprise, surprise – it’s all Lorelai’s fault somehow! Emily accuses her of “flitting from man to man” when she only went on one nothingy date since breaking up with Max more than a year ago.
The last time Lorelai had an argument with her parents about Christopher, it was Emily who ran upstairs to cry on her bed. This time it is Richard who specifically blames Lorelai for not being with Christopher, still harping on about not “following the correct procedure” and getting married when she was sixteen. He then goes off to sulk in his den about it.
Emily and Richard never take Lorelai to task for sleeping with someone else’s boyfriend – they regard Christopher as already “hers”, and Sherry as someone he’s known for “two minutes” (it’s actually more than a year now). They don’t blame her for jumping into things too quickly with Christopher and getting Rory’s hopes up, either. In fact, they offer no moral guidance to their daughter at all, only chastise for not getting her hooks into Christopher and ruthlessly refusing to let go. Their lack of concern for Sherry and her unborn child is utterly chilling.
By the way, Emily had a meltdown about Lorelai and Rory eating on the patio (at a barbecue!), because only barbarians eat outdoors. Yet she is serving some sort of cheese and biscuit refreshment on the patio in this scene. For that matter, she has had a tea party on the patio. Apparently it is alright to eat small snack-sized amounts of food outdoors, but not a full meal. The rules of Emily Gilmore are hard to understand.
The viewer is quickly made aware that although Rory hasn’t felt able to write to Jess over the summer, she is hoping to see him at the End of Summer Madness Festival. It is three hours before Dean is due home, and she is apparently planning to make the most of them. She insists on going to the festival in town, even though she’s only just got home from the airport, and changes into a nice dress. Lorelai insists on calling this “changing for Dean”. The Dean who isn’t there.
However, her plans are scuppered when she finally catches a glimpse of Jess – and it turns out that instead of spending the summer pining over her, he’s got a girlfriend (a blonde one, so you just know she’s stupid and awful!). Did he hope that Rory would see them and get the message that Jess Mariano is not some sap you can toy with, then toss aside while you waltz off to Washington for the summer? If so, message received.
Jess is kissing his girlfriend up against a tree, in flagrant view of the whole town. It’s very similar to the way Dean and Rory used to kiss against trees and shelves in the market, which must have been difficult for Jess to witness, so he seems to be getting his own back. Rory is getting a tiny taste of what Jess has been through for the past few months.
Rory and Lorelai almost immediately get into a fight at the festival when Lorelai says it’s lucky she didn’t throw “everything” (ie Dean, he’s everything now) away for Jess. She brushes Rory’s feelings for Jess away as a “little crush”, until Rory tells her mother that she kissed Jess at Sookie’s wedding while there with Dean. Lorelai is indignant on Dean’s behalf, conveniently forgetting that she herself slept with a pregnant woman’s boyfriend at the wedding, and doesn’t really have much high moral ground to stand on.
It is set up in the story, and repeated several times, that Rory went away for the summer, and therefore has had no contact with Jess since the wedding. The trouble is, the wedding wasn’t at the start of summer vacation, Rory still had two or three more weeks of school left. And she didn’t go to Washington for the summer vacation, only for the last six weeks of it. That makes at least eight weeks that she and Jess were in Stars Hollow together and somehow managed not to talk to or even see each other.
It doesn’t seem plausible – Stars Hollow is a small place. Presumably Rory was avoiding Luke’s diner in support of Lorelai, and busy with school, and getting prepared for Washington, but I can’t see how she avoided Jess for six weeks straight unless he was also determinedly avoiding her. If so, suggesting that he was very hurt and confused about being unexpectedly kissed, told to keep quiet about it, and then seeing that Rory and Dean were still together as if nothing had happened.
Lorelai and Rory are going to pick up Sookie and Jackson to go to the festival, which makes no sense. Sookie and Jackson live in the opposite direction to the town square, which Lorelai and Rory live close to. It would make more sense for Sookie and Jackson to walk to Lorelai and Rory’s house, and then onto the festival together. As it is, they would all have a long walk together from Sookie’s house to the town square – but Lorelai and Rory have to do it twice.
As it turns out, Lorelai and Rory have wasted their time, because when they get to Sookie’s, she and Jackson are having a fight, so they quietly walk back into town without them. Sookie has filled the house with tons of “manly” objects from Kim’s Antiques, including a stuffed grizzly bear (this must have all cost a fortune!).
Jackson demands that she get rid of it all and put the house back the way it was. Easier said than done – I can’t imagine Mrs Kim tamely taking everything back and refunding the money! Anyway, however implausibly, we can assume their ridiculous fight is over for this episode.
MRS. KIM: This was Sherman’s shaving table … General Sherman, famous man, burned Atlanta, liked a close shave.
General William Tecumseh Sherman, previously mentioned. A general in the Union Army during the Civil War, he invaded Georgia with three armies in the spring of 1864. His campaign against Atlanta ended successfully in September of that year with the capturing of the city, and he gave orders that all civilians were to evacuate the city before giving instructions that all military and government buildings were to be burned, although many private homes and businesses were too. This victory made him a household name, and ensured the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln in November that year.
RORY: And then, probably when you’re not looking, you’ll find someone who complements you … Someone who likes what you like, someone who reads the same books or listens to the same music or likes to trash the same movies. Someone compatible … But not so compatible that they’re boring … I mean, you respect each other’s opinions and you can laugh at the same jokes, but I don’t know – there’s just something about not quite knowing what the other person’s gonna do at all times that’s just really exciting.
Rory (with her vast experience of dating one boy she doesn’t even love any more) tells Paris how to know when she has found the right person. Except that Rory’s description of the perfect partner – reads the same books, laughs at the same jokes, respects your opinions, is unpredictable and exciting – sounds a lot like Jess, and not at all like Dean, who doesn’t read or joke, doesn’t respect Rory’s opinions, and is predictable and boring. Hmm!
EMILY: Thursday the third. And what was happening Thursday the third, Lorelai? … Your father and I were coming home from Martha’s Vineyard.
In real life, the 3rd of September 2002 was a Sunday, not a Thursday. Apparently Sookie’s wedding being on the right day based on the calendar was a glitch by the props department, and we’re back to an imaginary timeline again.
RORY: Hm, not quite sure. Last time I saw her, she was beating the will to live out of our nation’s representatives.
JAMIE: She is a hammer, isn’t she?
RORY: Actually, she’s the entire toolbox.
In this episode we meet Jamie, who becomes Paris’ boyfriend. Paris thinks of herself as unappealing to the opposite sex, and her crush on former classmate Tristan was not reciprocated. But it is Jamie who pursues Paris, and on paper at least, he looks like her dream man. Attractive, intelligent, ambitious, and sharing her passion for aggressive debating techniques, Jamie isn’t scared off by Paris’ strength and outspokenness – in fact, that’s what draws him to her.
Paris is so unused to anyone being interested to her that she gets asked on her first date by Jamie (a victory dinner after their debate together) and accepts before realising what’s happened when Rory explains it to her. Paris predictably has a meltdown before the date, just like the one she had before her date with Tristan, and becomes so insecure that she makes Rory hide in the closet just in case a glimpse of Rory will make Jamie change his mind. Rory points out that Jamie has already seen her, and isn’t interested, but Paris is in no mood for logic.
Even though Paris only asks Rory to step into the closet for a moment while Jamie is there to pick Paris up, Rory gets in with a flashlight and a book, as if she’s planning to spend the whole evening there!
Jamie is at Princeton, meaning that the Young Leaders program is for college students as well as high school students (something which probably wouldn’t happen in real life). He is presumably two or three years older than Paris, because if he was one year older, he wouldn’t have started at Princeton yet.
Jamie is played by Brandon Barash, in his first television role. He has gone on to have roles in The West Wing, 24, NCIS, Bones, General Hospital, and Days of Our Lives.
TAYLOR: This is gonna be a very exciting day. I’m really gonna go all out for this. I even think you’ll be impressed.
LORELAI: Really, even me?
TAYLOR: Yes-sir-ee, Mini-Me, I did not put the word madness in the title for nothing.
Taylor references comedy spy film Austin Powers in Goldmember, a sequel to Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, previously mentioned. Goldmember had just come out in July 2002, so would be very fresh in their minds (presumably Taylor saw it that summer, which reveals a slightly unexpected side to Taylor).
In the film, spy Austin Powers’ nemesis is Dr Evil, who has a clone of himself at 1/8th size, who he names Mini-Me, played by Verne Troyer. Dr Evil declares Mini-Me his favourite son. Oddly, Taylor seems to be designating himself as Dr Evil??? And Lorelai as his … clone? What? Does Taylor understand how references work? Maybe it’s just as an example of madness at work?
The plot of the film involves more than one example of surprise paternity, which is interesting, given that there is a popular fan theory that Taylor is secretly Kirk’s biological father. He does employ him at Doose’s Market, the video store (which he also seems to own), and has him photograph key events around town. This might explain Kirk’s multiple jobs – they are all, or mostly, given to him by Taylor, who owns a large proportion of Stars Hollow.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 