JESS: If it’s the most precious thing she owns, why did it take her two weeks to figure out it was gone, huh? You might wanna re-evaluate how madly in love she is. I wouldn’t start calling him ‘son’ yet.
Jess makes a devastatingly accurate comeback to Lorelai. The fact that Rory didn’t notice the bracelet was missing for some time, even needing Dean to point it out for her, is a very clear indication that her interest in Dean has waned. Something that Jess can take cold comfort in.
It is actually three weeks since the Bid-on-a-Basket Fundraiser, not two, even though it was two episodes ago.
RORY: I don’t know where it is! LORELAI: Where what is? RORY: My bracelet – it’s gone.
Rory runs home in a panic to tell Lorelai that her bracelet is missing. Jess is listening in the background, and he now discovers that Rory’s bracelet was made by Dean, and given to Rory as a gift. Jess has a good poker face, but you can tell this does not come as welcome news.
Jess also learns that Rory thinks Dean will be angry when he finds out the bracelet is gone, and she appears frightened of his temper. This seems like such a red flag – why isn’t Lorelai concerned that her teenage daughter is actually scared of her boyfriend? Instead she soothes Rory, reassuring her that Dean won’t be angry, and he can easily make Rory another bracelet.
Despite Dean apparently being so great and understanding, Lorelai never suggests that Rory be honest with him and tell him the bracelet is missing. Why not, if there is nothing to fear from Dean’s temper? And why doesn’t Dean deserve to know the truth?
LORELAI: So, are you a healthy eater like Luke? JESS: No. No one’s a healthy eater like Luke. Euell Gibbons wasn’t a healthy eater like Luke … Many parts of a pine tree are edible.
Euell Gibbons (1911-1975), outdoorsman and early health food advocate. He promoted eating wild food during the 1960s, having begun foraging for food as a teenager to supplement the family diet. His books on wild food were instant successes, and he became a celebrity, appearing on TV shows such as The Sonny & Cher Comedy Hour, and The Carol Burnett Show, often good-naturedly sending himself up by pretending to eat wooden plaques and so on.
A 1974 television commercial for Grape-Nuts cereal featured Gibbons asking viewers “Ever eat a pine tree? Many parts are edible.” While he recommended eating Grape Nuts over eating pine trees (Grape Nuts’ taste “reminds me of wild hickory nuts”), the quote caught the public’s imagination and fuelled his celebrity status.
How Jess knows about Euell Gibbons and the advertisement, which was broadcast ten years before Jess was born, is a mystery. Teenagers seem to have an amazing knowledge of 1960s and 1970s pop culture in the Gilmore Girls world.
DEAN: You go look at the astronomy section, we’ll go see Lord of the Rings, and on the way home we’ll rent Autumn in New York and mock it for the rest of the afternoon.
Autumn in New York is a 2000 romantic drama directed by Joan Chen, and starring Richard Gere as a middle-aged womaniser who falls in love with a sweet young woman who is terminally ill, played by Winona Ryder.
The film received negative reviews, being judged as sappy with no chemistry between the two romantic leads, although Chen’s direction did receive some praise. It was nonetheless a success at the box office. The film was released on DVD in January 2001.
Although I think Rory would mock the film roundly, it has enough parallels with her relationship with Jess to also be uncomfortable viewing for her. The main characters share a love of poetry, just as she and Jess share an interest in literature, and there are references to Rory’s favourite poets, Emily Dickinson, Dorothy Parker, and Edna St. Vincent Millay.
There is a major plot point in the film where the young woman takes her lover’s watch as a keepsake, telling him she will return it when he no longer notices it is gone. This is quite similar to Jess taking Rory’s bracelet, and returning it – except he will return it when Rory notices it is missing.
Dean has proposed what sounds like an exhaustingly lengthy afternoon: hours looking at books, a three hour movie at the cinema, and then a 90 minute video “for the rest of the afternoon”. Just how long is this afternoon? It’s early spring, it gets dark early!
Dean’s plan apparently comes to nothing when he notices that Rory isn’t wearing her bracelet. Instead of simply telling him the truth, that she didn’t notice it had fallen off, she tells him a silly lie about having a rash on her wrist, possibly caused by her Spanish mid-terms (!), and needing to temporarily remove the bracelet.
Even though this version of events wouldn’t stop Rory watching movies, she instead spends the afternoon searching the entire town for her bracelet. Again, it would have made more sense for her to have been honest, said that she lost the bracelet somewhere (for all she and Dean know, it fell off that very day), and needs to look for it.
It’s never said how she managed to cancel all her plans to spend the day with Dean to look for her bracelet without confessing it was lost, or raising his suspicions.
LUKE: I can’t relax. I can’t sleep. I’m having nightmares about being chased around by boxes with arms and they tackle me and pile clothing on top of my face and secure it around my head with packing tape and I’m just lying there choking while you’re sitting in the corner laughing, putting gel in your hair with a switchblade! JESS: Should I be putting a tongue depressor in your mouth right about now?
A tongue depressor is the little spatula that a doctor will use to examine a patient’s mouth and throat. Jess is referring to the fact that they are also used when administering electroconvulsive therapy (ECT). A tongue depressor can be used to keep the mouth slightly open so that the patient doesn’t bite on their tongue during treatment – although mouth guards are more common.
None of the characters in Gilmore Girls seem to have much grasp of modern psychiatry. It’s as if everything they know comes from reading The Bell Jar and watching One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. That could be where the writers are getting their (mis)information from!
This is the music that Jess is sleeping to when Luke wakes him up. Price Yeah!, is by the American indie rock band Pavement, first released on their EP Slay Tracks: 1933-1969 in 1989. The EP was self-recorded, and is experimental hard-core punk.
The band were partly inspired by their home town of Stockton, California, a place they considered flat and boring that they wanted to escape from – something that Jess can probably relate to.
Being an extremely limited release, copies of this EP quickly became collector’s items selling for hundreds of dollars. Jess is most likely listening to Westing (By Mustang and Sextant), a compilation of Pavement’s early EP’s and singles which was released in 1993.
The song begins:
Just cause I’m fakin’ Doesn’t mean I’m wrong Cause I bought my price, yeah, No I got it at cost
And there’s the things I know Wrote them down on your nib Just remember turning It’s a rapid affair
Jess knows that he is faking it – but is he faking by hiding his true level of misery from Luke and the town, or is he faking by pretending to be less interested in Rory than he makes out? He’s aware of the price he is paying, but considers it worthwhile. The “rapid affair” may allude to how quickly he fell for Rory, and the things he wrote down to the annotations he made in Rory’s book.
Jess says he needs loud music on in order to sleep. Possibly he got into that habit needing to block out the sound of his mother partying or entertaining guests. Or even the sound of Liz having sex or fighting with her companion of the moment. Or they just lived in an apartment block where there was a lot of noise from other people, and little insulation against it.
Either way, it’s a sign that he didn’t have the best environment growing up. Unless he simply hasn’t adjusted to the quietness of the country after living in New York?
If Jess always needs loud music in order to sleep, how on earth has poor Luke been able to get any sleep? For that matter, why is he surprised to learn about it now? Has he just been gritting his teeth for six months and working long days on little sleep, and this is the final straw? And why haven’t any of their neighbours complained?
LORELAI: So you and Jess aren’t friends? RORY: Well, yeah, we’re friends … I mean, we’re not good friends but we’re friends. We’re friendly. But that doesn’t mean that we’re friends in the traditional Webster’s dictionary definition of friends … Friendish might be a better term.
Rory struggles to define her relationship with Jess. They get along well (they’ve obviously kept talking since their “friend date” after the Bid-on-a-Basket Fundraiser), bur Rory knows they are not friends the way she is friends with Lane, or even with Paris.
Yes, what is the dictionary definition of a boy you are attracted to who’s also attracted to you and you share a common interest you can talk about and like spending time together, and you’re both flirting with each other behind your boyfriend’s back? The best she can come up with is “friendish” – someone you’re friendly with, without exactly having a friendship.
Someone else might say that Jess is actually Rory’s “crush”, but she is too far in denial to acknowledge that. Lorelai looks sceptical, as well she might.
Lorelai needing her rain gutters cleaned was mentioned in “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” – she was hoping that the “Collins kid” might clean them for her. Luke remembers this, and suggests Jess could clean her gutters instead. Lorelai puts him off by saying she’s already got people lined up for the job.
Rory puts her head down sadly or sullenly when Lorelai balks at Jess coming to their house. Note that Rory is holding the ice creams hugged close to her chest, so her body heat will melt them even faster. I’m pretty sure that’s not ice cream in those cups marked “ice cream”.
LORELAI: Hey, will you go get the ice cream and make sure they give us a ton of maraschino cherries?
A maraschino cherry is one that has been sweetened and preserved, They are preserved in a brine solution containing sulphur dioxide and calcium chloride to bleach them, then soaked in a mixture of red food colouring and sugar syrup.
The name comes from the Marasca cherry from Croatia, a type of Morello cherry; cherries preserved in marasca liqueur were known as “maraschino cherries”. They became popular in Europe in the 19th century, but because the supply of cherries was limited, they were a delicacy reserved for royalty and the very wealthy.
Maraschino cherries were introduced to the US in the late 19th century, where they were served in fine bars and restaurants. Because they were scarce and expensive, by the turn of the century other cherries such as the Royal Anne were substituted, and flavours like almond extract added. Alcohol was already becoming rare as a preserving agent, and when Prohibition arrived, became illegal.
Maraschino cherries are used in certain cocktails, and are used to decorate foods such as cakes, pastries, fruit salad, and baked ham. In the US, they are an essential addition to ice cream sundaes, leading to the expression, “the cherry on top” to mean the finishing touch which makes a good thing perfect.
Another mention of Lorelai’s love of cherries, this is at least the third one. Note that Rory is going to get rocky road ice cream sundaes to take home and eat with the movie, and they are walking. Even on a chilly night, how are the sundaes not going to melt on the way home? Do they live only thirty seconds walk from the centre of town?
A possible slight contradiction – in Season 1, Lorelai says Rory doesn’t like rocky road cookies, but now she’s happily ordering rocky road sundaes. I suppose it’s plausible she doesn’t like rocky road in cookies, but enjoys it in ice cream, although it sounds unlikely to me. She might have changed her mind, also.
RORY: And the past couple of years she hasn’t even dated anyone unless she thought that for sure it could be a lasting relationship, and she’s got some specific goals now concerning children. LORELAI: Oh, here we go. RORY: She wants at least two, and before she met Dad she was seriously considering single parenthood.
Later events will seriously call into question this supposed strong desire Sherry has to have children.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 