Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: It was a totally casual date. I am now officially a casual dater.
On her first date with Max, Lorelai told him that until she met him, all her dating life was pretty casual. Now she acts as if this is something new to her. Perhaps she means it’s a skill she’s had to re-learn, or her previous dating life wasn’t quite as casual as she made it sound.
RORY: I know you hate it.
DEAN: Yeah, I hate it. I really hate it.
RORY: But we do the scene on Sunday, and then it’s over.
When Professor Anderson gave them the project, she said it would be performed Sunday week (not the next Sunday, but the one after). Suddenly, the project is due that Sunday – only a few days away. It doesn’t seem like enough time to get everything done. I’ve tried to construct a timeline where most of the first week is skipped over, but it doesn’t quite work, and also runs into Thanksgiving.
RORY: I’m really sorry I didn’t tell you about this before, but Tristan …
DEAN: Is playing Romeo to your Juliet. Yeah, I heard.
RORY: But he wasn’t even in our group at first, but then no one else wanted him, and then Paris moved the rehearsal spot to here, and she did it today and I didn’t have time to tell you.
DEAN: You and Tristan wind up thrown together a lot at that school.
This is exactly the second project Rory has had with Tristan – hardly getting “thrown together a lot”. And it’s the first one where she and Tristan have had any major interaction. Dean is probably thinking of the school dance (which the entire class was eligible for), and Tristan asking Rory to a concert (which is hardly the school’s fault).
Dean is being unreasonable, but Tristan does have a history of making difficulties between he and Rory, and his intuition is probably telling him something doesn’t feel right in this case.
LORELAI: Listen to me. I know you are Miss Honesty. I have seen the banner in the closet. But this is the kind of honesty that will only make you feel less guilty, and it’s going to hurt Dean very much. It’s possibly going to screw up the really good thing you guys have going now. Do you want that?
Mm, is this the same Miss Honesty who’s been concealing multiple things from Mrs Kim for years, or the Miss Honesty who fraudulently ate Fran’s wedding cake samples? Let’s see how long it is before Miss Honesty steals a boat …
Lorelai is correct that telling Dean about Tristan would be an essentially selfish thing to do, designed to assuage Rory’s guilt while hurting Dean for no good reason (as she mentions multiple times, she and Dean were broken up when she and Tristan kissed, it’s not really any of his business).
The fact that Rory is seriously considering doing it might be blind panic, but almost sounds as if she could be subconsciously using this as a way to instigate another break-up, to get away from Dean and his controlling jealousy. (Based on later events, it probably wouldn’t have worked).
SOOKIE: Swear. Raise your right hand and say, ‘May Destiny’s Child break up if I count these blueberries.’
MICHEL: Pick another group.
Destiny’s Child, a girl group founded in Texas in 1990 under the name Girl’s Tyme, with a final and best-known line-up of Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams. They signed to Columbia in 1997 under the name Destiny’s Child, and gained mainstream recognition with the release of their hit song, No, No, No, and their 1999 best-selling album, The Writing’s On the Wall. Their most recent album at this stage was Survivor, which came out in April 2001, apart from their Christmas album in October of that year.
The reason Michel might be particularly concerned that Destiny’s Child could break up is because the band announced they were going on hiatus to pursue solo careers in 2001. They reunited in 2004 for their fourth and final album, Destiny Fulfilled. After their 2005 tour, the group did indeed break up.
Somehow Michel is more worried about eating one or two extra blueberries on his pancakes because of the calories than he is with eating actual pancakes! Michel’s relationship with food is even unhealthier that Lorelai and Rory’s, and is certainly weirder.
PARIS: You’re Juliet. You’re the best public speaker here, you’ve definitely got that waif thing down, and you’ll look great dead.
Paris chooses Rory because of her “waif-like” appearance, and because she’s supposedly the best public speaker out of all of them – which is good, if she’s hoping to be a reporter like Christiane Amanpour. Unfortunately, when we subsequently see Rory speaking in public, she doesn’t quite live up to the hype. As Juliet is lying down and either dead or looking dead in this scene, public speaking ability doesn’t seem greatly needed anyway.
LOUISE: So now Brad can be Friar Tuck and I can be Juliet.
PARIS: Wrong … Juliet’s supposed to be chaste.
Paris ditches Louise (who wants the part of Juliet) in favour of Rory (who desperately doesn’t want the part). Her reasoning is that Juliet is meant to be chaste and pure, and Louise isn’t. Which is strange, because when you act, you literally pretend to be someone you’re not.
Perhaps Paris doesn’t believe Louise has enough acting talent to even pretend to be pure, but knowing Paris, she just loves the idea of forcing Rory into a part she doesn’t want where she has to interact with Tristan.
Amusingly, Madeline seems to think the “chastity” issue doesn’t disqualify her from being Juliet, and it’s only when she learns that Juliet has more than three lines that she gives up the idea. My head canon is that Madeline thought Paris said Juliet was supposed to be chased!
PARIS: Fine, you have four other acts to choose from. Take your pick.
TRISTIN: Yeah, well Summer’s in Act 1, Beth and Jessica are in Act 2, Kate’s in Act 3, and uh, Claire, Kathy, and Mary are in Act 4. So this is the only one free of ex-girlfriends.
Technically yes, but Tristan has been on a date with Paris and kissed her goodnight, and he kissed Rory at Madeline’s party. Louise and Madeline have expressed plenty of interest, and as they are meant to date a new boy every week, it’s not very believable that Tristan wouldn’t have been their boyfriend at some stage, at least briefly.
Note that this is another example of a Beth as an ex-girlfriend – Dean has an ex-girlfriend of this name back in Chicago, who went on to date his cousin. It seems odd to me that Tristan teased Rory by calling her Mary, when he already had an ex-girlfriend named Mary – unless he went out with her after that.
PARIS: We’re doing traditional Elizabethan.
RORY: Elizabethan? But I thought the point of this was to . . .
PARIS: The point is to get an A, not to make Romeo and Juliet into a Vegas lounge act. Besides, we have the death scene. It’s classic, it’s famous.
Surely Rory is right, and the point is to provide your own unique interpretation of the scene? I can’t see how they could get any more than a B+ for the project doing it Paris’ way, and a very strict teacher (which Chilton is meant to have) might even give them a D for not following instructions.
Rory helps Henry organise a three-way or party line conversation so that Lane and Henry can talk, while Mrs Kim believes that Lane is talking to Rory. It was done by calling the first person, then pressing the FLASH button before dialling the next person then pressing FLASH again. It cost extra and showed up on the phone bill. It’s still possible to do on a landline today, as well as a mobile phone.
This is the first thing Rory has done to help Lane and Henry, and it’s pretty minimal. Lorelai seems to be aware of the deception towards Mrs Kim, but doesn’t feel any need to tell her the truth despite her supposed “mom code”. Henry met Lane eight months ago, and must be very keen to be kept interested with occasional five minute phone calls, conducted with some difficulty.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 