RORY: Arrived where? [looks up] Aw, you are without shame.
Somehow Lorelai has led Rory all the way to Sookie’s house without Rory having the slightest idea where they are going. This is even less believable than the time Lorelai took her right to the very gates of Harvard before Rory suspected where they were. How can Rory not remember where Sookie lives?
Once again, we see that Sookie seems to live a long walk from Lorelai’s house, yet somehow it is too close to get in the car and drive to it. Rory says they are in the opposite direction to the business district, and even wonders if they are walking to the next town, suggesting that Sookie lives on the outskirts of Stars Hollow. Yet the area doesn’t look any more rural than Lorelai and Rory’s street – which makes sense, because in real life, Sookie’s house was right next to Lorelai’s!
Lorelai cannot go to the diner for breakfast, because she and Luke are still in a fight over Jess. The show doesn’t make it clear whether Lorelai arranged in advance to have breakfast at Sookie’s, or if they have turned up unannounced first thing in the morning expecting to be fed (which would not be out of character). Either way, Sookie is delighted to have extra people to cook for.
Rory returns home from Stars Hollow alone, and is outside the diner when Luke returns from his fishing trip. He offers her a coffee and a doughnut, but he’s been away for a week and only just got home – those surprisingly fresh-looking doughnuts must have been sitting on the counter for a week! There’s so much eating of old and expired food on this show.
RORY: My wrist hurts and I’m grumpy and I just made a total idiot of myself in there so I just wanna go home.
LORELAI: All right, well, I’ll tell Mom, I’ll drive you.
RORY: No, it’s okay. It’s still early. I can catch my regular bus and . . . you go back in.
How can it be early enough that Rory is still able to catch her regular bus home to Stars Hollow? The scene at KC’s Annex showed Rory and Lorelai in Stars Hollow, and dressed for the party. Rory has already taken her regular bus home from school – that’s how she got home in the first place! She can catch a later bus home, maybe one that leaves around 6 or 6.30 pm instead of between 4 and 4.30 pm, but she cannot possibly catch the same bus home.
LORELAI: Dad, I cannot come back here tomorrow … I didn’t mean that to sound so harsh. I just . . . I meant –
RICHARD: I know exactly what you meant to say, Lorelai. I got the message. Well, I won’t keep you any longer, I know how busy you are.
Lorelai only offered to give her father a hand with his office for one Saturday afternoon, but it is now Thursday, and Lorelai is still there. She has helped him buy office supplies, set up the phone system and the heating system, arranged for a DSL line to be installed, got him a tab at the lunch place across the road, and organised interviews for secretarial candidates while filling in as a secretary herself.
Now Karen has come along, who seems like she would make a perfect secretary, and Lorelai’s job is surely done. Yet Richard doesn’t want her to leave. He’s being selfish and completely unreasonable – Lorelai has an actual job to do, for a start – but you can see he is adoring having Lorelai around, and learning to appreciate her briskly efficient head for business. This is the flip-side to “Richard in Stars Hollow” when he did nothing but criticise his daughter. With “Lorelai in Hartford”, suddenly Lorelai has become indispensable to him.
This is the second time in less than a month Lorelai has taken off from her own job in order to work for free for a friend or relative! How is she doing this?
RORY: And even if you do buy a drum set, where are you gonna play it?
LANE: I don’t know, I don’t know any of this. But I will figure something out, because I am Keith Moon, I am Neil Peart, I am Rick Allen, with and without the arm, because I am rock ‘n’ roll, baby!
Keith Moon (1946-1978) [pictured], English drummer for rock band The Who. He was noted for his unique style of playing and his eccentric, often self-destructive behaviour, and addiction to drugs and alcohol. His drumming style emphasised tom-tom drums, cymbal crashes and drum fills, and was one of the earliest rock drummers to use double bass drums. He had a reputation for smashing his drum kit on stage. He was posthumously inducted into the Modern Drummer Hall of Fame in 1982, and is regarded as one of the greatest drummers in history. Keith Moon used a DW drum kit with Zildjian cymbals.
Neil Peart (1952-2020) Canadian musician, songwriter, and author, best known as the drummer and lyricist for the rock band Rush. His drumming was renowned for its technical proficiency and his live performances for their exacting nature and stamina. Initially inspired by rock drummers like Keith Moon, Peart became influenced by jazz and swing bands. He was inducted into the Modern Drummers Hall of Fame in 1983, making him the youngest person to receive this honour. He used a DW drum kit.
Richard “Rick” Allen (born 1963), English drummer for the hard rock band Def Leppard since 1978. In 1984 his left arm was amputated after a car accident but decided to continue drumming, although he didn’t perform live again until 1986. He uses Zildjian cymbals.
Lane had already talked about becoming a drummer, but I think we are meant to assume that this dream has solidified for her – not I’d like to be a drummer, but I am a drummer. It does seem slightly odd that her drummer idols are now from classic rock bands, when previously she looked up to drummers in punk and alternative rock bands. The writer seems to have chosen drummers who used the same equipment Sophie has for sale in her store.
Rory gives Lane very little encouragement in her drumming dreams, although the questions she asks Lane are quite reasonable. It’s disappointing though that she tells Jess he can do anything he wants, and to reach for the stars, while Lane gets cold water poured on her ideas. Either she only encourages boys that she’s attracted to (Dean also got a lot of unwanted encouragement to improve himself), or she only encourages academic goals, not creative ones. Happily, Lane’s mood is not dampened one little bit by Rory’s reality check.
RORY: Right. Um, Taylor, listen, I just wanted to apologize to you … About the other night. You know, my car hit the bench that had your brand new Doose’s Market sign on it and I know how much that sign meant to you and I’m just so, so sorry that it was ruined.
Even though the footage showed Rory and Jess driving around with a lot of traffic on their way back from getting ice cream, we now discover that the actual accident occurred in Stars Hollow, when they were nearly home (where most car accidents are said to happen). We also learn that when Jess swerved to hit the small furry animal, he ended up hitting a bench on the sidewalk, which had an advertisement for Doose’s Market on it.
Despite footage clearly indicating that Rory and Jess were out on a busy road, I think we are supposed to believe that they were only driving around Stars Hollow.
LORELAI: So, let me guess, the Wu-Tang Clan had the office before you?
RICHARD: Yeah, it’s a bit disheveled, I know.
Wu-Tang Clan, a nine-piece hip hop group formed in Staten Island, New York in 1992. Their 1993 debut album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) received widespread critical acclaim and is regarded as one of the greatest hip-hop albums of all time. They are considered one of the most influential hip hop groups, and a key developer of East Coast hip hop and hardcore hip hop.
While recording their 2000 album, The W, the Wu-Tang Clan lived together for three months in a mansion on Mulholland Drive (except for Ol’ Dirty Bastard, who was imprisoned at the time). It was probably about as messy as you’d expect for eight men living together, especially as the Wu-Tang Clan are known for their history of internal tensions. Their own recollection is that they turned it into a personal gambling den.
Rather unbelievably, Richard appears to know who the Wu-Tang clan are, and understands what condition their house is in! For someone who didn’t know who Metallica were a few episodes back, he sure has caught up with contemporary music very quickly.
Rory waits for Dean to come home from Chicago that evening, sitting on the porch, in a mirror image of when Dean waited fruitlessly for Rory to come home from Friday Night Dinner. When his dad brings Dean home, presumably from the airport, Rory hands him a letter where she has written down what happened to the car.
It’s a quick way to avoid lots of superfluous dialogue, but it makes Rory look a little cowardly that she couldn’t talk to Dean directly. Are we meant to think that she was too scared to talk to Dean, or that she didn’t feel confident Dean would listen to her all the way through?
Dean does read the letter all the way through, while yelling and kicking a duffle bag, which seems a bit threatening. However, once he is assured that Jess has really and truly left town, he just asks Rory to join he and his family for dinner. Later they watch TV with Dean’s sister, Clara.
It seems odd that Dean doesn’t have any other questions or comments about the accident or about the car – he seems to think the only thing wrong with his relationship with Rory was Jess, and now he’s gone, they can get back to normal.
Rory didn’t seem to have met Dean’s family in the first six months or so of them dating, but she is obviously very familiar with them now.
SOOKIE: Oh, he’s singing to his persimmons tonight. They’ve been a little sour lately.
Persimmons are the edible fruit of a number of species of tree in the genus Diopyros. Technically the fruit is a berry, although not often thought of that way. The most commonly cultivated is the Oriental persimmon (Diospyros kaki) – one of the most commonly human-grown fruit trees on Earth, and first cultivated in China more than 2000 years ago, then spread to Japan and Korea in the Middle Ages. It was introduced to southern Europe and California in the 1800s.
Jackson may be growing American persimmons (Diospyros virginiana) [pictured], native to the eastern states of the US, and very hardy in cold weather. They’re harvested in the fall, and eaten fresh or used in baked goods and steamed puddings. Jackson’s persimmons are months away from harvest, so no wonder they are sour! The fruit is very astringent or even bitter unless it is fully ripened.
The previous year, Jackson danced to his watermelons and threw his back out.
Lorelai wakes up to find that after their phone call, Christopher drove to Stars Hollow from Boston and let himself in, falling asleep in a chair next to her. Lorelai wonders if driving interstate in the middle of the night is okay with Sherry, but Christopher deflects this by saying that “Rory comes first”. (Lorelai has no hesitation in throwing herself into the arms of another’s woman’s boyfriend).
Hm, maybe Lorelai should have asked a few more questions! She doesn’t, because she’s so relieved to have someone there to share the parenting with in an emergency, for a change. She even calls Christopher a “superhero”, just for showing up. Lorelai’s excitement over this small effort is a sad indictment of how rock bottom her expectations of Christopher are (and with justification).
In their shared relief that Rory is okay, and mutual hatred of Jess, Lorelai and Christopher easily make up their fight from “It Should’ve Been Lorelai”. Lorelai is very forgiving of Christopher – probably too forgiving.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 