Second Cousin Stan

RORY: This is one ugly looking baby. Whose baby is this?
LORELAI: That’s your second cousin’s Stan’s. Poor kid.
RORY: Ugh, he got Stan’s everything.

If Stan is Rory’s second cousin, then surely he is the son of Lorelai’s cousin? But where did Lorelai get a cousin from? We’re only told of one aunt, Hopie, who is Emily’s sister and lives in Paris (no husband or children were mentioned). It is implied that Richard is an only child, despite the proliferation of Gilmore aunts and uncles. And could Lorelai’s cousin already be old enough to be a grandfather?

It’s possible that Lorelai (or the writer?) means that Stan is Rory’s cousin twice removed, meaning that he is Richard’s cousin – if so, he’s presumably a lot younger than Richard since he’s just welcomed a new baby. Many people get second cousins and cousins twice removed mixed up.

The baby doesn’t actually seem particularly ugly, to me it just looks like a normal baby.

Ringer

LORELAI: He’s a ringer.
RORY: How do you figure?
LORELAI: Someone recruited him, promised him a handsome sum, financed his theatrical snowman accoutrements, so he could snatch victory away from a deserving local in order to bag the contest prize for himself.

Ringer is slang for a contestant who enters a competition under false pretences, such as a professional entering an amateur contest. It comes from horse racing, where a fast horse was sometimes substituted for a slower one, known as a “ring-in”.

Although Lorelai is being deliberately preposterous, it does seem a little mean for such an experienced competitor to enter a local contest in a small town, especially when there isn’t even a large prize to act as an incentive. He isn’t actually building a snowman anyway – he’s creating an ice/snow sculpture, which is a different entity. I feel as if he should be disqualified.

“A lady never kisses and tells”

DEAN: So, did you and Paris actually kiss or was that like a stage thing?
RORY: A lady never kisses and tells.

Very clever, because Rory is not telling Dean about her kiss with Tristan. (A slight callback to Kiss and Tell, the episode where Rory and Dean first kiss, and everyone knows about it).

It was quite obvious that Paris and Rory didn’t kiss, Paris didn’t even pretend to kiss Rory. I’m actually not convinced they could have got a good mark for the project. Two members of their group dropped out at the last minute, they didn’t offer a unique perspective on the play, Paris as Romeo sounds irritated more than anything else, and there’s no tragically romantic kiss. As it was fifty percent of their grade, that doesn’t sound good for their overall result.

“Don’t you understand that Luke is so into you?”

LORELAI: One minute he’s all sweet and building me a chuppah, and the next he’s being a total jerk for God knows what reason.
SOOKIE: For God knows what reason? Come on Lorelai … Don’t you understand that Luke is so into you?

By this point, it’s pretty unbelievable that Lorelai doesn’t realise that Luke has feelings for her. Does she really need Sookie to spell it out for her yet again?

Altoid

[Paris comes back dressed as Romeo]
PARIS: What are you standing there for? Let’s go. You better start sucking on an Altoid.

Altoids are a brand of mints sold in metal tins. Created by the London business Smith & Company in the late 18^th century, they became part of the Chicago-based firm Callard & Bowser in the 19^th century. Their advertising slogan is “The Original Celebrated Curiously Strong Mints”. They are less widely available in the UK than in the US, although Marks & Spencer has an almost identical product called Curiously Strong Mints.

Why Rory had to suck on a breath mint when Paris didn’t even kiss her, I don’t know. Paris is very keen on hygiene though, and perhaps she wasn’t convinced Rory was clean enough.

(There is an odd sort of logic to Paris taking over as Romeo, because in Romeo and Juliet, Juliet was meant to marry Count Paris).

Military School in North Carolina

TRISTAN: The police are letting our parents handle it, and in my case that means military school in North Carolina.

A meta comment. Chad Michael Murray, who played Tristan, left the show in order to begin filming the teen drama One Tree Hill (2003-2012), shown on the same channel as Gilmore Girls (The WB); Murray had the lead role of Lucas Scott. One Tree Hill is set in the fictional town of Tree Hill in North Carolina, and mostly filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina.

Amy Sherman-Palladino apparently planned for Tristan to become Rory’s boyfriend in high school/college and her “Christopher”, which, because Chad Michael Murray went to another show, was a role filled by the character of Logan Huntzberger instead. In this farewell episode, you can see the faint beginnings of the tenderness between Rory and Tristan which would have blossomed into eventual love. Anyone wishing to see what would have happened if Logan had been Tristan instead must turn to fanfiction.

In real life, there is only one one military school in North Carolina, and it is Oak Ridge Military Academy, so presumably that’s where Tristan is headed. It was originally founded in 1850, and was one of the first military schools to become co-educational, in 1972. It apparently had a reputation at one time of taking troubled youth, which it is working to overcome.

If Tristan turned up to Chilton in order to say he was leaving for military school, couldn’t he also have stayed to do the scene with them? Does everyone transfer schools on a Sunday night in this universe? (Maybe because they’re boarding schools?).

With Tristan out of the picture, the love triangle between Rory, Dean, and Tristan comes to an end, to make way for a new love triangle, which becomes clear in the very next episode.

“What about Brad?”

RORY: What about Brad?
PARIS: Brad transferred schools.

An explanation for why we don’t see Brad again for a while – Paris terrorised him until he had to move to a different school on the day their Shakespeare project was due. How he managed to transfer schools on a weekend, I don’t know. Even if he was starting at a new school on Monday, having secretly applied to another school as soon as he met Paris, couldn’t he at least have done the scene with them on the Sunday so they didn’t fail?

“You might want to hold a phone up to your face”

RORY: I think act three is starting up.

LANE: Henry’s act. Um, how do I look?
RORY: You might want to hold a phone up to your face so he’ll recognize you.
LANE: Okay. [walks away]

Quite a bitchy comment to your best friend from “the sweetest kid in the world“. I think we can now assume that Rory has had enough and isn’t going to be helping Lane and Henry any more.

Monster Truck Rallies

LORELAI: Maybe Dean won’t even come tonight.
RORY: Oh, he’ll be there. There aren’t enough monster truck rallies in the world to keep him away from Miss Patty’s tonight.

A monster truck is a specially modified truck for competition and entertainment, given heavy duty suspension, four-wheel drive, and oversized tyres. Monster trucks developed in the late 1970s, and by the early 1980s were popular side acts at motocross events. Today monster trucks take centre stage at rallies, usually having races and stunt driving. In real life, there are regular monster truck rallies in Hartford and Bridgeport, so Dean wouldn’t have any trouble getting to one.

Somehow Dean has devolved from being a big city boy who liked classic films, Hunter S. Thompson, and Nick Drake into a country boy who likes BattleBots and monster truck rallies. How did he go from seeming pretty perfect for Rory into someone we barely recognise?

“Oh, you have a cooking mom”

LORELAI: Hey Dean. Do you want some fries?
DEAN: No, I’m actually going home for dinner. My mom made fried chicken tonight and she saved me some.
LORELAI: Oh, you have a cooking mom.
RORY: That’s so nice.

That Dean had a mother who enjoyed cooking and cooked every weekend was established months ago during That Damn Donna Reed. Much of the plot hinged upon it. Dean and Rory had a huge fight because of it. Somehow Lorelai and Rory now react as if this is fresh news that they are barely concerned about, although they still do a little passive-aggressive sniping. Perhaps they are demonstrating they have mostly moved on from that.