“Rory would never steal”

EMILY: Did you ever steal a robe with Rory?

LORELAI: No, Rory would never steal. She’s far too moral for that.

This is a complete, utter, and quite deliberate lie. Rory and Lorelai stole glasses from a Holiday Inn together, she boasted to Lorelai about stealing a towel from the country club she went to with Richard, and in this very episode, she tells Lorelai to steal soap from the spa before she comes home. Apart from trying to make Emily feel special and as if they could have a bond that Lorelai and Rory don’t, Lorelai doesn’t want to tarnish the image Emily has of the perfect angel granddaughter.

“I can’t get into poetry”

JESS: I can’t get into poetry. It’s kind of like, geez, just say it already, we’re dying here.

Jess has actually read Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl more than forty times, so this “I’m too butch for poetry” is nothing but posturing. Maybe he’s trying provoke Rory into saying something, which would reveal to an outsider how they formed an intimate bond over her poetry book. If so, it doesn’t work.

Jane Austen

PARIS: Typical guy response. Worship Kerouac and Bukowski, God forbid you’d pick up anything by Jane Austen.

JESS: Hey, I’ve read Jane Austen … and I think she would’ve liked Bukowski.

Jane Austen (1775-1817), English novelist, previously mentioned as the author of Emma, amongst others.

As previously hinted at, Jess has read some of the English Literature classics, as well as American counter-culture icons. Unlike Dean, he wouldn’t have needed prodding to read Jane Austen.

But in what possible universe would Jane Austen have liked Charles Bukowski, as either a person or a writer? She lived in an era when it was deeply shocking, even violating, for a man to address a woman without an introduction – how would she have coped with Bukowski’s vivid description of his own penis and his offer of it to a female friend, with instructions as to its use?

Jess is saying that a nice, genteel girl like Rory can still appreciate a crude but intelligent bad boy like himself. Rory and Jess? For sure. Jane Austen and Bukowski? Not a chance.

National Enquirer

PARIS: [The Beats] believed in drugs, booze, and petty crime … That was not great writing. That was the National Enquirer of the fifties.

National Enquirer, tabloid newspaper founded in New York in 1926, known for its sensationalist reporting and flimsy journalistic ethics.

The National Enquirer already existed in the 1950s, so I’m not sure how The Beats are “the National Enquirer of the 1950s”. Surely the National Enquirer was the National Enquirer of the 1950s? For a supposedly smart character, Paris says some remarkably silly and ignorant things.

“Hola, es Paris”

PARIS: [on phone] Hola, es Paris. Voy a comer la cena de cas de Rory. Hay mucho mac and cheese!

Paris’ nanny is Portuguese, yet Paris speaks Spanish to her here (is Nanny bilingual? Why can’t she speak English?).

She says, “Hi, it’s Paris. I’m going to eat dinner at Rory’s house. There’s a lot of mac and cheese!”.

She doesn’t translate “mac and cheese” into Spanish, which would be macarrones con queso. Probably because American mac and cheese feels like a completely different dish to what a Spanish-speaker would be expecting, unless she couldn’t think of the right word for it.

“I’m not allowed to have mac and cheese”

PARIS: I’m not allowed to have mac and cheese.

RORY: Splurge.

Paris is allergic to dairy products, which was introduced in the episode, “Concert Interruptus” (Lorelai ordered her a cheese-free pizza). Someone eating something they’re allergic to isn’t a “splurge”, it’s a potential medical emergency!

Paris asks if Stars Hollow, a town of less than 10 000 people, has a 24-hour pharmacy in case she has a severe allergic reaction. Unbelievably, they do! In real life, the nearest 24-hour pharmacy to them would be in Waterbury or Hartford.

Rory may simply be lying, eager to keep Paris there so she is not left alone with Jess. If so, she’s taking a bit of a risk with Paris’ health in the process.

“Just tonight”

JESS: He wasn’t sure how long your mom was gonna be gone for.

RORY: Just tonight.

Emily invited Lorelai to spend the weekend with her, then turned up to collect her on Friday morning (rather than Saturday morning, as a weekend would suggest). Rory indicates that they were only spending Friday night at the spa, yet at the end of the episode, Emily and Lorelai are said to be leaving early when they go home on Saturday morning.

Either Rory is psychic, or she is trying to discourage Jess from thinking he can hang around or pester her all weekend. She may be protecting herself from Jess even more carefully than she protected herself from Dean, out of worry that sex might be on the menu as well as macaroni cheese.

Good thinking, because Jess needs only the slightest encouragement to invite himself to dinner, which was his plan all along.

Dinner at the Spa

EMILY: They certainly do like their tofu here, don’t they?

LORELAI: And the word steamed. Well, they have dessert at least. Cookies sweetened with sprouted mung bean.

Tofu ends up being the villain of the piece, once again. Vegan food nearly always seems to be treated as some sort of disgusting torture on Gilmore Girls! The cookies would be made from sprouted mung bean flour, and I have seen them spruiked as a healthy detox snack. The recipe said they taste like peanut butter cookies without the peanut butter. So um … like nothing???

I don’t actually think it’s very believable that a luxury East Coast spa would serve only this kind of food for dinner. They exist to pamper people, and the ones I saw were handing around cocktails and glasses of wine while people were having pedicures in their robes – exactly the sort of thing Emily and Lorelai would have enjoyed. It seems more like something a Californian health and wellness sort of spa would serve. However, we need an excuse for them to leave to get a steak dinner, so this is it.

“I’m a saint”

DEAN: I’m a saint, but I’m not mad.

RORY: Thank you.

While locking lips with Rory against a tree, Dean suggests that since Lorelai is away, he should come over. It’s possibly code for “let’s get sexy” (and Rory and Dean are more than a year over the age of consent in Connecticut), but to his surprise, Rory explains that she has plans to spend some time alone. She is afraid that Dean will be angry with her – she’s very scared of his temper.

Although disappointed and confused (the idea of a girl deciding to spend time alone for one night is beyond his ken), Dean kindly allows Rory the chance to do laundry in peace, as long as she “makes up for it” by spending all the next day with him. And then declares himself a saint for this outstanding act of munificence. Saint Dean, the patron saint of understanding boyfriends.

Note the touch of red Dean is wearing under his jacket, as if there is actually an underlying anger there.

Paris and her Problems

Paris freaks out when she gets an A- on her Chemistry lab report on electrochemistry. Her parents, who were getting divorced in “Paris is Burning” after a terrible scandal her father was involved in, are back together again once Paris explained to her dad how much money a divorce would cost him. Apparently it was Mr Geller who wanted the divorce, even though he was the one causing scandal, because Mrs Geller doesn’t seem to need convincing.

The terrible scandal, which was implied to involve something sexual and illegal, is never mentioned again, and doesn’t seem to have had any consequences. Mr and Mrs Geller are now fighting with each other, and redecorating. Paris’ mother redecorated when they were first getting a divorce – maybe her husband didn’t like it, and it’s now being re-redecorated back it how it was before.

With all the fighting and redecorating, Paris hasn’t been able to focus on her studies as well as usual. This seems like a re-tread of the “Concert Interruptus” plotline, where Paris and her gang had to study at Rory’s house because of Paris’ issues with fighting parents and redecorating.