“It should’ve been you!”

EMILY: Christopher gets his life together with that woman.
LORELAI: So, that’s good.
EMILY: It should’ve been you!

Emily is extremely upset when Rory doesn’t come to Friday Night Dinner because she’s having a night out with Sherry. She immediately fears that Sherry will “take Rory away” from them, and is terrified that Christopher and Sherry will obtain weekend custody of Rory. She’s slightly on the old side to be a tug-of-love child at seventeen, and I’m pretty sure you have to pay child support to get even part-time custody of your child, which Christopher has never done.

Emily says she is heartbroken, because she always pictured Lorelai and Christopher being together, so that Rory could finally have two parents. Christopher was never ready to commit and was no kind of provider, but now it looks as if he was capable of settling down and working at a steady job, he just needed to find the right woman.

Completely and cruelly unfairly, Emily now blames Christopher’s general uselessness on Lorelai, saying that if she’d really tried, she could have influenced him to become a better man. Really? At the age of only sixteen, frightened, pregnant, and alone, she should have been responsible for Christopher’s life as well? Lorelai had a baby to care for and support, she didn’t need to take care of Christopher as well (and Rory would have suffered horribly if she did).

Emily is no better than Straub, laying all the responsibility for Christopher’s failure at Lorelai’s feet. It’s a horrible thing to say to her daughter.

Lorelai does admit that she has feelings for Christopher and isn’t happy about Sherry either, but she is trying to focus on doing what’s right, and being happy for Christopher. This unselfishness is roundly condemned by Emily, who goes upstairs to cry on her bed. (Later we find out she did eventually come down to dinner, but sulked all the way through it).

The episode’s title comes from Emily’s outburst to Lorelai, that, “It should’ve been you!”. Note that Emily’s outfit is mostly sad black, with touches of angry red. Lorelai is in grey, trying to remain neutral.

L’Oreal

RICHARD: Uh, what does [Sherry] do? Does she work?
CHRISTOPHER: Uh, she’s the East Coast sales rep for L’Oreal Cosmetics.

L’Oreal is a French beauty product company headquartered in Clichy, France, with a registered office in Paris. It is the largest cosmetics company in the world. It was founded in 1919 by chemist Eugène Schueller.

The US headquarters of L’Oreal are in New York City, but they certainly employ sales reps in Boston. Christopher says Sherry is the sales rep for the East Coast, as if they have only one! I’m pretty sure Sherry is only a sales rep for L’Oreal. Christopher loves to talk everything about himself up.

This does bring into question whether this business trip is really for Christopher, or was it for Sherry’s work? It seems like it’s actually her job that would involve travel, not his. Bearing in mind his comment about eating at White Castle (which is in New York), it could be that they were in New York for Sherry’s business, then decided to spend the weekend in Connecticut to see Rory. In which case, they could be staying as close as Woodbury, making their travel time to Stars Hollow even more achievable.

“He and I never met”

CHRISTOPHER: Well, [Max] and I never met. I didn’t even know he existed until late in the game. Hell, I didn’t even know you were engaged until you called me from your bachelorette party. And I wasn’t invited to the wedding – or did my invitation get lost in the mail?
LORELAI: Well, you’ve moved a lot this past year.

Lorelai and Max’s relationship moved extremely quickly and they had a significant break from it. When they got back together, they got engaged almost immediately. In fact, Lorelai only seems to call Christopher from her bachelorette party in hopes of getting talked out of it (in which case, mission accomplished).

It is interesting she never told Christopher though, considering that she was going right through her address book to tell distant relatives and the man who did her shower that she and Max were back together. Maybe she didn’t want to get talked out of it that soon. I suspect if she had sent him an invitation, it would have gone to the wrong address, and he would’ve been a no-show (again).

Christopher is getting awfully huffy about this neglect, but by the time Lorelai phones him to say she is getting married, we find out later he is already with Sherry – something which he hid from Lorelai. It looks very much as if Lorelai’s news pushed him into committing Sherry faster than he otherwise would have.

Handball

LANE: Bible class has been moved an hour later, all to accommodate the reverend’s handball schedule.

In America, handball is a sport where players use their hands to hit a small rubber ball against a wall; it is sometimes called wallball. The idea is to hit the wall with the ball in such a way that your opponent is unable to do the same without hitting the ground twice, or hitting it out of bounds. The game is played on a small court, similar to a squash court. It is possible that the high school gym is used for handball in Stars Hollow.

The first historical record of someone hitting a ball against a wall with their hand is from Scotland in 1427, when King James I was a keen player. The game in America may go back to the American Revolution, but the earliest mention of the modern game is from San Francisco in 1873.

In the next season, we discover the Seventh Day Adventist pastor is named Reverend Melmim, although in real life, Seventh Day Adventist pastors aren’t actually addressed as “Reverend”.

It seems that even though Lane is grounded so badly she isn’t allowed to leave home, even to attend school, she is allowed to go to Bible class with her mother (and presumably, church). Later in the episode, we discover Bible class is on Saturday morning.

As Mrs Kim told Stars Hollow High that Lane had an infectious disease and was too sick to go to school, letting her out to attend Bible class seems like something the school would get to hear about.

White Castle

SHERRY: Great. Oh, of course this does leave you a sad little orphan.
CHRISTOPHER: Oh, that’s okay. I’ll have one of my patented White Castle bachelor dinners.

White Castle, a hamburger restaurant chain in the US operating in 13 states, mostly in New York and the Midwest. It is credited as the world’s first fast-food hamburger chain, founded in Wichita, Kansas, in 1921 by Walt Anderson and Billy Ingram. Anderson is credited as the inventor of the hamburger bun, while Ingram’s business savvy helped popularise the hamburger. The chain is still owned by the Ingram family.

In real life, the nearest White Castle restaurant to Litchfield is in Nanuet, New York, almost two hours drive away. Possibly Christopher is simply using the name to mean he’ll be grabbing a burger somewhere, or eating at a chain restaurant.

Puppy on the Christmas Card

LORELAI: I recognized you from your Christmas card.
CHRISTOPHER: Which I’m sure you mocked mercilessly.
LORELAI: Did not. Others, yes, but not yours. You guys were cute, and the puppy was cute.

Lorelai didn’t mock their card nearly as much as others, although she did say that Sherry looked like Tammy Faye Bakker. She so clearly doesn’t resemble Tammy Faye that I wonder if they had even cast an actress for the role at that point? Perhaps Sherry had a make-over for the photo shoot with a touch of Tammy Faye glamour to it.

The puppy is never seen or referred to again. Did they even have a puppy? Maybe they rented one for the photo shoot. Hopefully they didn’t get a puppy for Christmas and give it away in the New Year.

“Sherry, this is Rory”

CHRISTOPHER: This is Sherry. Sherry, this is Rory.
SHERRY: Oh, finally, finally, finally. I am so beyond thrilled, I can’t tell you. All he does is talk about you. I couldn’t wait to meet this amazing person.

Confirmation that Rory didn’t visit Christopher and Sherry in Boston during her Christmas break, despite being invited.

Goodness knows what Christopher has to say about Rory. He hardly knows her!

All-Boys Private School Uniform and a Yankees Cap

SOOKIE: I’m looking for a guy that looks like a guy that you could be with, only I’m deducting seventeen years off his age and I’m adding an all-boys private school uniform and a Yankees cap.

Sookie is looking around for Christopher, until Lorelai points out Sookie doesn’t know what he looks like. It seems hard to believe Lorelai has never shown Sookie a picture of Christopher, but from the way Rory treasures an old strip of photos of Christopher and Lorelai, it appears they possess no photo of him.

Sookie explains that she’s been looking for someone Lorelai would go out with, but imagining him seventeen years younger and in a private boy’s school uniform. This may suggest that Lorelai and Christopher went to separate single-sex private high schools. In real life, there are no single-sex private schools in Hartford itself, but a few in the nearby surrounding suburbs and towns that Lorelai and Christopher could have easily attended.

I’m not sure why Sookie is mentally making him a teenager in a school uniform when he’s an adult though. Maybe she’s going to then mentally add seventeen years to his age?

She gives him a Yankees cap because that’s what Luke wears!

Amazon.com

RORY: I don’t know if I have time to pick it up.
LANE: What? Rory, do you wanna hear how I used up my five minutes of phone time today? Talking to Amazon.com trying to get them to overnight it to me in a plain package with a return address referencing something Korean and religious.

Amazon, previously discussed as the place Rory buys many of her books. Apparently it’s where Lane buys her new and used music as well.

I’m not sure why Lane couldn’t have just had the CD mailed to Rory’s address, except that I’m starting to think Lane actually enjoys devising zany schemes.

Litchfield

LORELAI: So where’d this business trip take you?
CHRISTOPHER: Your neck of the woods, actually. I’m in the Litchfield area.

Litchfield is a historic town in Connecticut with a population of around 8000 (about the size of Stars Hollow). This comment seems to place Stars Hollow in Litchfield County, the location of Washington Depot, Milford Green, and Woodbury, which can be seen as inspirations for the town and its setting.

What business Christopher could be doing there is a bit of a headscratcher – he works for a Boston company that helps struggling technology companies trim their resources, presumably softening them up for corporate takeovers. Litchfield County is a rural area with a low population density, farmland, and small towns: what tech company could possibly be located there?

I can only think he is actually in Hartford or New York or something, or the whole thing is a lie. Perhaps Christopher has actually lost his job?