Tag: Oh Really?

Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will be, Will Be)

This song plays as Lorelai wakes up happy, gets coffee, goes outside, and falls through the porch. It was written by Jay Livingston and Ray Evans, published in 1955. It was introduced in the 1956 Alfred Hitchcock film, The Man Who Knew Too Much, sung by Doris Day. Her rendition went to #2 in the US and #1 in the UK, and the film received the Academy Award for Best Song. It became Doris Day’s signature song, and is regarded as one of the best songs in cinema history.

The song popularised the phrase que sera sera to indicate a sort of cheery fatalism, although the phrase itself was used as a heraldic motto as early as the 16th century. It is an English mistranslation of “what will be, will be” from the Spanish; in Spanish it would be lo que será, será. No such similar phrase is known of in Spanish or Italian, it has always been an English saying.

In The Man Who Knew Too Much, Doris Day sings the song in the hopes that her kidnapped son will hear it. The song’s message of hope is often used in film and television juxtaposed against disastrous events to create a moment of black comedy, of which we see a very mild version in Gilmore Girls. The joke is that Lorelai has no idea what is coming.

(It might seem unusual to go out on your porch in the your pyjamas early in the morning in the depths of winter to drink your coffee, but Lorelai has that special relationship with snow. And they’re actually in California).

Rory’s PSAT Scores

RORY: I got a 740 Verbal and a 760 Math.

In 2001, the PSAT was split into three sections, not two: Math, Writing, and Critical Reading, and the maxiumum score in each section was 80.

Rory seems to have taken the pre-1997 PSAT, which only had two sections, Math and Verbal, and had a maximum score of 800 in each section. No doubt the writer (Linda Loiselle Guzik) based it on her memories of taking the PSAT in high school, not the PSAT then in use.

Rory’s scores are extremely good in both categories, putting her in the top 1%, and making her a virtual certainty as a Merit Scholarship semi-finalist. Somehow she never seemed to receive a Merit Scholarship to help her pay for her college education, and we never hear of it as a possibility.

PSATs

While Lorelai is doing her homework for business school in the diner, Rory comes in, clutching her PSAT results. It’s four-thirty, but somehow Rory is already back from school, which gets out at 4.05 pm and is forty minutes away, gone home to get their mail, and walked to the diner to meet her mother, all within twenty-five minutes. But let’s ignore yet another time zone issue.

The SAT is a standardised test widely used for college admissions in the US, in use since 1926. Originally the Scholastic Aptitude Test, its name has changed several times, and by now it isn’t an acronym of anything – everyone just knows that SAT means the test to get into college.

The PSAT is the Preliminary SAT, which high school students take in early to mid-October – Rory probably took hers in the period between Presenting Lorelai Gilmore and Like Mother Like Daughter.

Taking the PSAT is said to improve your scores when taking the SAT, and furthermore, the top scorers are rewarded with scholarships, so they are considered to be very important.

Results of the PSAT are usually mailed out perhaps six to eight weeks after the taking the test, so in the real world, Rory would have already had her results by late January.

The Elaborate Snowman is Vandalised

On their way home, Lorelai and Rory notice that the elaborate snowman from the contest has been destroyed, presumably by Jess, who criticised it to Rory as “overdone”, and who wanted Rory’s entry to win. Rory, aka Miss Honesty, claims that she has no idea what happened to the snowman. Really, Rory? No idea at all?

For some reason, Lorelai believes that means she and Rory will win by default, even though there are many other snowmen still in the contest. This seems arrogant to the point of delusion. Their snow-woman was a good entry, but I don’t know if it’s automatically the winner now. The judges could very well take exception to her stroke mouth or even be literal enough to say it’s a snowman contest, not a snow-woman contest. We never do find out if they won the competition or not.

Lorelai Tells Rory About Christopher

LORELAI: Because I have dibs on this time of year with you, not him! Me! And yes, he acknowledged that, and that was cool and all, but still – it stinks! Because he put me in a very difficult position because we were supposed to watch a lot of movies and make fun of Godfather 3, and the thing that I really, really hate about this is … is the idea of you not hanging out with me because you’re hanging out there with your stupid stepmother.

It is now revealed that Lorelai never told Rory that Christopher rang, inviting her to stay in Boston for a couple of days during the Christmas holidays. As is often the case with Lorelai, she’s being quite unreasonable by insisting that she has dibs on Christmas, when Lorelai has dibs on Rory every day of every year! It’s quite normal for children of separated parents to spend major holidays with the parent they don’t live with, and Christopher was only asking for a couple of days out of a school holiday break that lasts for weeks.

The real reason is that she is jealous of Sherrie, and hates the idea of Rory having another mother figure in her life. Rory quite rightly calls her out on it, and teases her about her attitude. It is not revealed at this point whether Rory does spend time with Christopher and Sherrie in her Christmas break, but it is later strongly implied that she didn’t. Knowing of Lorelai’s insecurities, it seems likely that Rory decided not to visit Christopher after all (with homework and the newspaper providing a plausible excuse, as usual).

Charles Bridge

RICHARD: So there we are, it’s a beautiful moonlit Prague night, and we’re strolling across the Charles Bridge when we come across this group of kids blasting this song …

Charles Bridge is a medieval stone arch bridge that crosses the Vltava river in Prague, Czech Republic. Its construction started in 1357 under the auspices of King Charles IV, and finished in the early 15th century. Originally called Stone Bridge, it has been referred to as “Charles Bridge” since 1870. It’s been restricted to pedestrian traffic only since the late 1970s, hence Richard and Emily stroll across it while teenagers could congregate listening to music.

Emily earlier talked about Prague as if she had never been, saying it was “supposed to be lovely”. Now we discover she and Richard had already been there on one of their traditional December trips.

“What’s the white stuff?”

JESS: What’s the white stuff?
LUKE: I think it’s cheese – or cream.
JESS: And the green stuff?
LUKE: I think it’s … best picked off.

This is another “mirroring” scene for Jess and Luke, showing them side by side, dressed alike, and gazing at their soup with the same expression of confusion and distrust. It doesn’t make a lot of sense though. Luke runs a successful diner – surely he can tell the difference between cream cheese and cream? And why is he so horrified by fresh herbs? (I think it’s sage, but I’m not sure).

Luke is always telling Lorelai and Rory off for eating meat and junk food, advocating a healthy plant-based diet. It’s nonsensical that he would be unable to identify a herb and unwilling to eat it, or look disgusted by a bowl of butternut squash soup. I mean, if he hates meat, and he hates vegetarian food, what exactly does Luke eat?

“What do you and Dean talk about?”

JESS: Hey, what do you and Dean talk about? … I mean, does he know Björk?
RORY: I’ve played him some stuff.
JESS: Hm. So you got a teacher-student thing going?

Rory completely throws Dean under the bus at this point. She could have said, “Dean is a fan of Nick Drake, he actually got me into Pink Moon. And he loves Liz Phair and The Sugarplastic”.

She doesn’t mention that Dean likes old movies, and that they originally bonded over Rosemary’s Baby when they met, or watched Willy Wonka on their first date. She doesn’t tell him that Dean recommended Hunter S. Thompson to her.

The fact that she makes no attempt to defend Dean’s intellect, or even to tell Jess to butt out of her relationship with her boyfriend, is extremely telling. She does tell Jess that, despite his scepticism, Dean is exactly her sort of guy, but it doesn’t sound very enthusiastic – especially considering Rory couldn’t think of one thing she and Dean talk about.

Tammy Faye Bakker

RORY (looking at photo of Sherry): Nice looking lady.
LORELAI: Mm hmm. Like a young Tammy Faye Bakker.
RORY: But prettier than that.

Tammy Faye Bakker, born Tamara LaValley (1942-2007) was the ex-wife of television evangelist Jim Bakker (born 1940). She and her husband ran a televangelist program called the PTL Club, founded in 1974; it was dissolved in 1989 when Jim Bakker was convicted and imprisoned on indicted on numerous counts of fraud and conspiracy. Tammy Faye divorced Jim in 1992, and married Roe Messner, a church building contractor (so by this stage she was actually Tammy Faye Messner).

Tammy Faye was known for her eccentric and glamorous image, and her views which often diverged from mainstream evangelical Christianity. For example, she supported the LGBT community, and reached out to HIV positive patients at the height of the AIDS epidemic. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996, so was already terminally ill when this episode aired.

It is unclear what age “young” Tammy Faye Bakker was that Lorelai believes Sherry resembles. Knowing what Sherry actually looks like, perhaps when Tammy Faye’s hair was brown, before she dyed it blonde. That would have been in the 1960s, when Tammy Faye and her husband Jim had a puppet show on a Christian TV network.

The viewer may decide for themselves whether Sherry looks like Tammy Faye Bakker at any age, but I personally cannot see any strong resemblance (I can barely see a weak resemblance). I’m surprised that Rory doesn’t disagree any more strenuously than by saying Sherry is “prettier than that”, and can only think that she walks on eggshells when it comes to her mother’s jealousy over Sherry.

I’m not sure how Lorelai’s frame of reference for picturing a young Tammy Faye Bakker is in the 1960s, before Lorelai was born. I find this whole reference quite confusing.