Footnotes to the TV series
EMILY: I don’t have any baby pictures of your mother.
RORY: How could you not have any baby pictures of Mom?
EMILY: Because when your mother was seven, I came downstairs and found her burning all of her baby pictures.
Emily already showed Rory a baby picture of Lorelai in the family photo album when she was staying at her grandparents’ house in Love and War and Snow, so this is a retcon.
TRIX: My train leaves tonight and I have a little last minute packing to do.
What train? Surely Trix will need Hartford airport to fly to London, not a train? Or is she seeing her lawyers in New York before flying back to London from there?
The scenes at the tea shop were filmed at the cafeteria at Warner Bros studio, which isn’t open to the public.
TRIX: I’ve ordered a car; women shouldn’t drive. Are you ready? [heads for the door]
Trix told Lorelai that she approved of her working, which she thought was good for a woman. However, she apparently doesn’t think women should drive. I guess they should only get jobs on a public transport route, or within walking distance.
It’s also not clear why Trix needed to order a car – in Love and War and Snow, Emily sent their chauffeur (?) Lance to pick Rory up from school. Did they sack Lance, or is Sunday his day off?
LORELAI: Hey – [looks at Sookie’s watch] Aw! No! I’ve got to go home.
SOOKIE: Why? What are you doing?
LORELAI: I have to change, and go to tea with Gran and the cast of Gaslight.
Gaslight is a 1944 mystery thriller film directed by George Cukor, and adapted from the successful 1938 play Gas Light by British dramatist Patrick Hamilton.
Set mostly in Edwardian London, the film is about a woman named Paula (Ingrid Bergman) whose husband Gregory (Charles Boyer) tries to convince her that she is going insane as part of a fiendish criminal scheme: one of his methods is to contintually turn down the gas lighting in the house and tell her that only she can see it flickering.
Because of the film, the term gaslighting now refers to a form of psychological abuse where the abuser gradually manipulates the victim into doubting their own sanity, thus making them more dependent on the abuser. Lorelai is saying that’s exactly what her mother is doing to her.
Gaslight was the #13 film of 1944 and well-received by critics. It won two Academy Awards, including a Best Actress for Ingrid Bergman.
According to the town clock they walk past, it is around 11.35 am when Lorelai and Sookie leave the flower shop. Lorelai seems to need an inordinate amount of time to get changed so she can be in Hartford for afternoon tea, which is usually somewhere between 4 and 6 pm.
PARIS: I can’t wear your mother’s clothes.
RORY: Yes you can, I do it all the time.
Surely the reason Paris can’t wear Lorelai’s clothes is that they are different heights – Liza Weil is about 5 inches shorter than Lauren Graham. Oddly enough, Rory gives Paris one of Lorelai’s mini dresses to wear, and it is very short on Paris as well, even though when a short person borrows a tall person’s clothes they will inevitably be a lot longer on them.
RORY: [examining Paris’ clothes] This is your entire wardrobe?
PARIS: Yes.
RORY: Nothing’s left at home?
PARIS: Nothing but my Chilton uniform and my bat mitzvah dress which has menorahs on the collar.
The bat mitzvah is the female version of the bar mitzvah, a coming of age ceremony in Judaism, after which the person becomes responsible for their own actions under Jewish law, and can fully participate in Jewish community life.
For boys, the bar mitzvah is age 13, while for girls the bat mitzvah it is age 12 in Orthodox and Conservative Judaism, and age 13 in Reform Judaism.
A menorah [pictured] is a seven lamp, six branch lamp-stand which has been a symbol of Judaism since ancient times; it is the emblem on Israel’s coat of arms. According to the Bible, the instructions for the design of the menorah were handed down to Moses by God. Traditionally lit with oil, modern ones may be candlesticks instead.
Paris wore a nice outfit to Madeline’s party recently, so I’m not sure it’s really believable that she doesn’t have any clothes to wear, and can’t dress herself.
EMILY: Won’t you have dessert?
TRIX: I once travelled to a small village in Cambodia. I did not eat dessert there either.
Cambodia is a country on the Indochina Peninsula in Southeast Asia. It was under the control of France during the 19th century, and became independent in 1953. Cambodian desserts are actually quite famous, but perhaps the small village Trix went to was too poor to have any dessert, or not up to Trix’s standards – as a slam to Emily, most likely the second.
Trix doesn’t like travel, but somehow made it all the way to Cambodia. Possibly her dislike for travel only came on late in life.
RICHARD: This little girl [Rory] is as smart as a whip, Mom. I think she has a great deal of you in her.
TRIX: Really?
No wonder Trix sounds sceptical – it’s hard to see what she and Rory might have in common, apart from Richard adoring both of them.
(They put the hat rack in Emily’s foyer)
EMILY: Watch it, watch your head. Get it over here. Okay yes, yeah, I think that was about – no I think it was maybe a little more on the left. Oh God, I should have put tape down.
LORELAI: Mom, you don’t think that the coat rack could’ve moved a quarter of an inch in five years?
Emily told Lorelai that the hat/coat rack from Richard’s mother had never been used or even taken out of the crate before she regifted it to her, but now it seems that the rack had been in Richard and Emily’s house previously.
For that matter, Richard’s mother hasn’t been to Hartford for over twenty years and has never seen the rack in their house, so why does it need to be placed in a very specific position that she will remember?
LORELAI: I didn’t do anything wrong. I did the same thing I always do when I’m pulling up reservations for the upcoming month, but nothing happened.
MICHEL: You typed in the name?
LORELAI: I typed in the name.
MICHEL: You clicked on the April 5?
If April is the upcoming month, it must still be March. The only way it can still be March is if the month has about six weeks in it, but February seemed to have about seven weeks, so we’re clearly in Gilmore time now and just have to go with it. From Lorelai’s comment, it seems to be Friday March 30.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 