Tag: Oh Really?

The Franklin Meeting

There is a meeting at the end of the school day for all those students interested in working on Chilton’s magazine, The Franklin, previously discussed.

Paris has been chosen as the editor, and plans to use her position to make Rory’s life miserable. She tells Rory the meeting is at 4 pm, but it actually began at 3:15 pm, so that Rory arrives very late (a handy writing technique, so that we don’t see all the boring part of a meeting where everyone introduces themselves and the teacher makes a welcoming speech).

Paris’ evil yet simple scheme of giving the wrong time is one often utilised in film and television, yet would have trouble working in real life. For one thing, the school day ends at 4.05 pm, so the meeting seems to actually take up class time. Wouldn’t Rory have needed permission from a teacher to attend the meeting, and wouldn’t that be a clue it wasn’t after school?

And Rory is so obsessive about schedules and timetables, is it really possible she had no other way of knowing the time of the meeting? There were no flyers on the wall, she couldn’t check with another student, the teacher in charge didn’t mention it? It’s meant to make Paris look like a villain, but in fact it makes Rory look sloppy and careless, or as if she has been so busy learning her new timetable and locker location that she forgot to make a note of the meeting time. At the very least, she’s dopily naïve to trust someone she knows is working against her.

Paris has been chosen as editor, despite being in her junior year, in the first year she is eligible to work on the magazine at all. Wouldn’t a senior year student be chosen as the editor? Or is there a tradition that only juniors work on The Franklin, as seniors have more important things to do? If so, that’s a lot of responsibility to be given when you have no experience. But that seems to be the Chilton way – throw students into the deep end and watch them either sink or swim.

Paris gives Rory the assignment she threatened to as soon as she was named editor – a story on re-paving a parking lot. How she knew such a story would be available four months later is a mystery. If it’s not a coincidence, perhaps she already knew about the re-paving in advance, and had been given a heads-up it would be one of the first stories covered when the new school year began. That she managed to manipulate the situation so that Rory was the only student possible to do the story is a testament to her genius.

Boy Scouts

The Boy Scouts are an international organisation for young people with an emphasis on practical outdoor activities, founded in the UK in 1907 by Sir Robert Baden-Powell. The Boy Scouts of America were founded in 1910, after Chicago publisher W.D. Boyce encountered a helpful Boy Scout while visiting England. It currently has over a million members.

We discover in this episode that Taylor Doose is the scout leader in Stars Hollow. It’s another perplexing incident in regard to time of day – it can’t be any later than about 7:20 am when Lorelai finishes breakfast and goes to the counter, because she still has to drive Rory to school in Hartford, which starts at 8.05 am, and Rory is getting very agitated about being late, because it’s the first day of the school year.

Yet Taylor has just finished a two hour outdoor survival training session with the Boy Scouts. It seems bizarre to organise this before the school day begins, on the first day of the school year, no less. He also takes the boys to breakfast at Luke’s Diner (which doesn’t seem like a very outdoorsy thing to do), and they choose food such as burgers and fries, grilled cheese, and doughnuts. I guess learning about healthy breakfasts comes later in the boys’ training. You just have to put all this down to the charming eccentricity of Stars Hollow.

Record Breaker Incorporated

LANE: Well, I found the greatest record store in the world. It’s ten minutes from your school and I’m wondering how much you love me.
RORY: Address please.
LANE: Record Breaker Incorporated, 2453 Berlin Turnpike.

The Record Breaker Inc was a real vinyl record store in the Hartford area in 2001, and the address given in the show is genuine. It may have been a store patronised by music obsessed Daniel Palladino.

The address is actually in Newington, a suburb of Hartford, which tells you that Chilton, Rory’s school, must be only ten minutes walk from the store. In real life there are several high schools in Newington, including a private Christian academy, but none fall within this range. As it is in a light industrial area, it seems unlikely to have an exclusive school half a mile from it.

As Rory’s grandparents are said to live five minutes from Chilton, they must also live in the Newington area. Richard may very well play golf at the Farmington Country Club, which is not far from here. Although there are some lovely homes in Newington, there doesn’t seem to be anything quite as luxurious as the Gilmore mansion. I think it is safe to assume this is a quite fictional Newington.

Record Breaker has now been replaced by a video game store called Retro Games Plus.

Erika Hilson Palmer

On her way back from going to the toilet, Lorelai has a poignant moment looking at a display of past valedictorians, and makes a point of gazing longingly at Erika Hilson Palmer, the valedictorian for 1990. This is the year that Lorelai would have graduated from university if she’d gone straight from high school instead of having Rory, and it’s a reminder that Harvard was her dream first, and that she seems to have had high ambitions for herself.

In real life, Harvard University does not have class valedictorians.

Reader Sazz has noted that the surname Palmer seems like a nod to Twin Peaks, the television  show directed by Amy Sherman Palladino’s idol, David Lynch (mentioned a short time earlier in this very episode). Twin Peaks centres around solving the mystery of teenage Laura Palmer’s death.

Existentialists

[Lorelai is reading accomodation notices on a bulletin board]
STUDENT: You looking for a place to live?
LORELAI: Uhh, maybe.
STUDENT: Well there’s a lot of choices. Something for everybody.
LORELAI: Yeah, yeah. Unless you’re one of those existentialists who can’t really figure out what they want.

Existentialism is a philosophical tradition associated with 19th and 20th century European philosophers, valuing the individual, freedom, and personal authenticity. The existentialist attitude is often seen as one of confusion, disorientation and dread in the face of a meaningless or absurd world. Philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre, earlier discussed, spoke of the “agony of decision”, hence Lorelai’s comment. She later says she always wanted to use the word existentialist in a sentence.

In real life, students would not be at Harvard University during mid-August, and already in their regular routines of classes and parties. The semester began in late August in 2001, and the first week would have been orientation activities.

Past Graduates of Harvard

LORELAI: Past graduates. Henry James … isn’t that a beer?
RORY: And a novelist. Go on.
LORELAI: John Adams. That’s a beer!
RORY: Our second president. He’s very in right now.
LORELAI: W.E.B. Du Bois, Yo-Yo Ma. Oh cool! Fred Gwynne.
RORY: Who?
LORELAI: Herman Munster. Now I’m impressed.

Henry James (1943-1916), earlier mentioned, was an American-born British author, often considered one of the greatest novelists of all time. He is best known for his novels and stories depicting interactions between Americans, English people, and Continental Europeans, such The Portrait of a Lady, and The Ambassadors. Henry James’ style closely examines the psychology of his characters in an ambiguous or contradictory way. There is no beer named Henry James that I know of. Henry James attended Harvard Law School in 1862, but soon discovered he had no interest in law, and pursued a literary career instead, so he isn’t actually a graduate.

John Adams (1735-1826) was an American statesman and Founding Father of the United States who served as the Vice-President of the US, and as the second President of the US from 1797 to 1801. Adams tended to be a rather obscure president for many years, with many Americans knowing nothing about him, until the publication of his biography John Adams by popular American historian David McCullough in May 2001. It was very favourably received, and brought about a resurgence in Adams’ reputation. Rory seems to be referring to this book by saying Adams “is very in right now”, and has almost certainly read it. There is actually a beer named John Adams. John Adams entered Harvard in 1751, graduating in 1755 with a Bachelor of Arts degree.

William Edward Burghardt “W.E.B.” Du Bois (1868-1963) was an American sociologist, historian, civil rights activist, and writer. He was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1909, and was the leader of the Niagara Movement who worked for equal rights for blacks. A prolific author, Du Bois’ 1903 essay collection The Souls of Black Folk was a seminal work in African-American literature, and his 1935 Black Reconstruction in America was his greatest work. The Civil Rights Act, embodying many of the reforms for which Du Bois had campaigned, was enacted the year after his death. W.E.B. Du Bois attended Harvard from 1888 to 1890, where he received his second bachelor’s degree, graduating cum laude.

Yo-Yo Ma (born 1955) is a French-born American cellist. A child prodigy, he has performed as a soloist with orchestras around the world, recorded more than 90 albums, and received 18 Grammy Awards. He has received several prestigious awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2011. Yo-Yo Ma received his bachelor’s degree from Harvard in 1976, and in 1991 Harvard awarded him an honorary doctorate.

Frederick “Fred” Gwynne (1926-1993) was an American actor, singer, artist, and author, best-known for his roles in 1960s sitcoms such as The Munsters, where he played Herman Munster, who resembled Frankenstein’s monster. He also sang professionally, painted, and was a successful children’s author. Fred Gwynne graduated from Harvard in 1951, and was highly involved in Harvard life, including as a member of the Hasty Pudding Theatricals.

 

Rory and Lorelai Visit Harvard University

After examining the map, Lorelai surprises Rory by driving her to Harvard University, which is in the city of Cambridge in Massachusetts, part of the Boston metropolitan area. Why Rory didn’t think of it herself is really the big surprise in this scene – surely she knows where Harvard is, and wouldn’t she have been begging her mother to take her there? Apparently not, as they get all the way to the front gates before Rory seems to realise where they are.

Rory wants to get a guide to the university – Harvard offers free one-hour guided group tours of its campus, given by students. Lorelai opts for the self-guided tour: you can navigate yourself around the university with the help of a brochure. Rory already knows the foundation date of Harvard (1636) by heart.

Lorelai reads about important scientific discoveries made at Harvard. The idea for the pacemaker was first originated by John Alexander McWilliam from Aberdeen University in 1889, while the first pacemaker was devised by Mark C. Lidwill from the Royal Prince Alfred Hospital and Edgar H. Booth from the University of Sydney in 1926. The brochure is probably talking about Paul Zoll (1911-1999) from Harvard Medical School, one of many who helped develop and refine the pacemaker during the 1940s and ’50s.

The other scientific advances mentioned seem to be referring to Sheldon Glashow (born 1932), a Nobel Prize-winning physicist who is a Professor of Physics at Harvard University. In 1964, in colloboration with James Bjorken, he was the first to propose the existence of the charm quark, which helped to solve a number of problems in quantum field theory. In 1973, in colloboration with Howard Georgi, he proposed the first grand unifed theory, a model in which the interactions of electromagnetism, radioactivity, and nuclear forces are merged into one single force.

Lorelai is disturbed to see that out of 18 000 applicants to Harvard in the previous year, only 2000 were accepted. It’s a piece of news she should already know by now, and comes as a stiff reality check. Possibly for the first time, Lorelai gets an inkling that Rory’s dream of going to Harvard may be out of reach. The odds are even worse now – although Harvard still accept around 2000 students per year, nearly 40 000 applied to graduate in the year of 2022.

The scenes of Harvard were filmed at the University of California, Los Angeles campus in Westwood, which doesn’t resemble Harvard University. The front gates that Rory and Lorelai enter were made for the show.

Hummingbirds

LORELAI: What are you people doing?
LADAWN: We’re watching hummingbirds.
WOMAN: They’re still out there if you wanna scooch in.
MAN: They’re the darndest things. Flap their wings a hundred times a second. It’s an engineering marvel.

The hummingbirds the B&Bers are watching are most likely Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds (Archilochis colubris), the most common hummingbird in the eastern states of the US, and found during the summer months. Other species of hummingbird have only been rarely sighted in Connecticut. Unfortunately for this episode, Ruby-Throated Hummingbirds are solitary and aggressive towards others of its kind, so there would not be multiple hummingbirds to see all at once.

This species of hummingbird can flap its wings up to eighty times a second – quite close to a hundred times a second.

“I was counting on this!”

RORY: We had plans! We made space in the closet!
LORELAI: Oh Rory, just because we moved a couple of boxes is not reason enough for me to get married!
RORY: Max was counting on this! I was counting on this!

After behaving with callous indifference towards Max and showing a deep cynicism towards his upcoming wedding with Lorelai, Rory is suddenly extremely upset that the whole thing is off. It turns out that she actually cares about Max, and was heavily invested in the relationship, despite zero evidence of that.