RORY: How did [Tristan] fall in with those guys [Duncan and Bowman]? MADELINE: The new year started and there they were, all three of them, side by side. LOUISE: And practically dressing the same. MADELINE: It’s very On the Town.
On the Town, a 1949 musical film directed by Gene Kelly and Stanley Donen, based on the 1944 Broadway musical with music by Leonard Bernstein and Roger Eden. It stars Gene Kelly, Frank Sinatra and Jules Munshin as three sailors with a day’s leave in New York City, and their romantic escapades. An immediate succeess, it won the Oscar for Best Music and is regarded as one of the greatest musicals.
Like the three sailors, Tristan and his new pals all dress the same – although as there’s a school uniform, doesn’t everyone dress the same anyway?
LORELAI: Okay, once again, I bring up the fact that this is a wedding present, and as I am not getting married, neither God’s law nor Emily Post allows me to keep this … SOOKIE: [Martha Stewart] said that if it arrives after ten weeks … RORY: Eight. SOOKIE: …eight weeks, that you don’t have to return it.
Emily Post and Martha Stewart, both previously discussed. The program that Sookie watched was Martha Stewart Living.
There is, of course, no such “wriggle room” rule in etiquette (Sookie and Rory invented it because they want the ice cream maker). If your wedding is cancelled, you return all the gifts, no matter how late they arrive (unless the sender specifically tells you to keep it, which does sometimes happen).
However, if a gift arrives with no name attached to it, then there is little you can do, because it’s considered even ruder to ring around and ask people if they sent such-and-such (it seems like you’re criticising them for not sending it, and assume they are too dim-witted to attach a name to it). You could try to find out the sender by calling the company who delivered it, but after that there’s not much you can do. If conscience smites you, you can always donate it to charity, or sell it and donate the money.
Lorelai must surely suspect her mother of sending it, yet she’s the one person that Lorelai doesn’t ask, as if she doesn’t want to know.
Sookie says it is more than ten weeks since the wedding was cancelled, and Rory corrects her to more than eight weeks. In fact, it is just over twelve weeks since Lorelai and Max’s wedding was meant to take place.
People who eat crunchy food with their mouths open
People who dog-ear library books
People who spit when they talk (Lorelai spits in Rory’s eye while she’s saying this)
Note that Lorelai, who supposedly never eats fresh fruit unless she feels like she’s coming down with an illness of some kind, is eating a bowl of fruit salad for breakfast. Maybe she’s a bit under the weather?
LUKE: I asked [Sookie] how your plans were going with the new inn, and she very awkwardly changed the subject to women’s basketball … She’s never shown much interest in sports before … What’s going on with that? LORELAI: Oh well, you know, women’s basketball is getting super popular. That’s good, I think. The tall girls need an outlet.
Rune thought Lorelai was too tall, even referring to her as a basketball player. Here Lorelai is quick to imply she’s not a “tall girl” who needs the “outlet” of playing basketball. (She’s about an inch shorter than average for a female basketball player).
Luke says that women’s basketball is in season and maybe Lorelai and Sookie could go to a game together. I think he must mean the women’s college basketball tournament (NCAA Division 1), which opens in November, as the professional league, the Women’s National Basketball Association, has a season running from May to September.
Rory’s portrait looks very amateurish, and doesn’t even resemble her. She is staring up above the book as if having a religious epiphany, for some reason. It’s unbelievable that Emily would be happy with this portrait or that she couldn’t afford a better artist.
Lorelai is so disturbed by Mia’s news about selling the Independence that she begins backtracking on her plans to open her own inn, to Sookie’s dismay. Logically, it doesn’t make much sense – if Mia is going to sell, Lorelai and Sookie should be fast-tracking their plans, not shelving them. Mia even said they should make their move sooner rather than later.
A lot of Lorelai’s angst about the Independence being sold is the thought of her home being changed. Her special relationship with Mia would be severed, and the new owners of the inn could very well be faceless corporate types that turn it into a chain (always treated as some sort of ultimate horror on the Gilmore Girls).
For Sookie, who isn’t so emotionally invested in the Independence, the news is positive. Mia won’t be upset about them starting their own inn, and even if the Independence changes, they have their own lives to lead. She’d prefer the inn didn’t lose all its charm, but she’s sensible enough to realise that they can’t control what happens, and to focus on their own plans.
This difference in how they feel is enough for Lorelai to begin passively-aggressively attacking Sookie, and to shoot down any suggestions she has on how to improve things. Sookie wonders why they don’t buy the Independence, and Lorelai says they can’t afford it – even though she never asked Mia what she would sell the inn for.
Sookie asks if they should look for another inn to buy, and Lorelai says she doesn’t have time to look for a new location (because if someone doesn’t just randomly show you an inn, it’s too much hard work? Did either of them even check the real estate guides for the area?).
Finally, Lorelai begins criticising Sookie as a potential business partner. She is unreliable, not punctual, and keeps changing the menu, which would send them broke. Sookie is naturally devastated, but Lorelai’s criticisms seem like valid concerns. Even Sookie doesn’t have any comeback except to say Lorelai already knew all these things before. She doesn’t make any promises to change or improve, or suggest other ways she is going to support Lorelai to offset her flaws. In fact, Sookie’s flakiness is actually a problem when they do become business partners.
Notice that Lorelai tries to back out of their business deal by saying the “timing isn’t good” – the same weak excuse Rory made to Lorelai when she tried to wriggle out of going to Chilton.
RORY: Hey, I’m gonna go check on Dean. He’s been scraping that outline off the cement for two days now.
You might think that chalk would wash straight off pavement, but actually water only removes most of the chalk. Little particles get into all the tiny crevices and pores in the cement that require vigorous scrubbing. Yes, Taylor is that fussy! 99.5% clean is not good enough!
He also seems to be making Dean clean the pavement in the dark and after the store is closed, which surely can’t be legal, and certainly isn’t practical. I can’t help thinking this episode did not endear Jess to Dean even before jealousy entered the picture.
LUKE: Look, I’ve lived in this town my entire life, longer than most everybody here.
Luke’s is presumably only in his early thirties, and yet he’s already lived in Stars Hollow longer than most of the people at the town meeting, a sizeable proportion of whom are fairly elderly. There’s obviously many residents who have moved there from somewhere else. (Bootsy is quick to remind Luke that he’s lived there slightly longer, being five weeks older, and we know Fran Weston has been there all her life).
TAYLOR: The bottom line here is that there is a consensus among townspeople who are in agreement that Stars Hollow was a better place before Jess got here. LUKE: So this half of the room gets the tar, and the other half gets the feathers? TAYLOR: Well, there hasn’t been any talk of tar and feathers. Although …
Tarring and feathering is a form of public torture and punishment handed out as unofficial justice, used in feudal England and colonial America, as well as the early American frontier, as a form of mob or vigilante vengeance. The last known example was in 2007 in Northern Ireland, against someone accused of drug-dealing.
The victim would be stripped naked or stripped to the waist, painted with hot tar, and then rolled in feathers (there were usually other punishments thrown in, such as whipping or scalping). The skin would be burned by the tar, and scraping it off later led to the skin being torn off, so it was extremely painful as well as humiliating. “Tarring and feathering” is now used as a term to denote severe public criticism.
Luke is saying the town meeting is on a par with the brutal mob justice associated with the Wild West, in agreement with Lorelai’s earlier comment. It is actually quite horrifying, because they seem to be saying Jess should be run out of town, even though he’s a high school kid who’s only guilty of petty theft and a few mild pranks.
It’s also baffling, because Jess isn’t exactly a stranger – he’s Luke’s nephew, Liz’s son, and the grandson of the respected William Danes. The town should be prepared to take him in as one of their own, and the fact that they won’t is a deeply troubling sign. Maybe there’s a good reason why Liz took off.
EMILY: Lorelai, your daughter’s being impossible. She won’t pose in an appropriate manner. RORY: I’m trying to, Grandma. It’s just awkward.
Rory goes to her grandmother’s house after school to pose for her portrait, but it turns out this means sitting on a “throne” (a needlework armchair) in a red velvet dress with a hungry honking swan, and her arm raised in an odd pose. The living room portrait is quite normal, so it’s strange that Emily suddenly wants this bizarre “swan princess” picture of Rory. It might explain why Lorelai’s own portrait was never completed. Rory is already looking quite grumpy, just as Lorelai got fed up with being painted.
Lorelai is able to quickly convince Emily that a picture of Rory sitting and reading would be natural and appropriate, saving the day.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 