Tag: Oh Really?

Rory’s Birthday Present from Emily

Lorelai claims that she’s helping Emily pick out the “perfect present” for Rory during their joint shopping trip. Given how expensive her own gift to Rory is, does anyone else think that Lorelai is actually (consciously or unconsciously) sabotaging Emily’s gift-buying so that she can’t compete with Lorelai? Instead of something valuable, she ends up with a cheap, tacky name bracelet that doesn’t really seem like something Rory would appreciate.

On the other hand, the bracelet does seem like something Lorelai would have liked as a teenager. The shopping trip becomes the kind of outing that she and her mother might have learned to enjoy together if Lorelai hadn’t got pregnant. Through it she can vicariously experience what it would have been like to have her mother buy her the things that she valued, such as junk jewellery and celebrity tee-shirts, instead of the pearls and cashmere that Emily would have given her as suitable gifts for a young girl of good family.

It is another sign of Lorelai’s immaturity and ego, and also how deep down she still longs for a relationship with her mother. If not deliberate sabotage, it’s a hint that she may not know Rory as well as she thinks she does.

Rory’s Birth Date

When Tristan shows Rory the party invitation he received from Emily, we can see that Rory was born on October 8.

This isn’t possible according to the script – Rory started school late, and she would only have been at Chilton for a short time by October 8, less than two weeks at the absolute maximum. Several weeks have now gone by, where Rory has attended multiple Friday Night Dinners, learned to play golf, helped out at a wedding, got her first D, failed to turn up in time for a big test, attended a cat’s wake, discovered her mother and English Literature teacher made a date, and confessed to Dean that she is interested in him. Furthermore, October 8 was a Sunday, not a Friday, in 2000.

If you carefully follow Rory’s adventures since starting at Chilton, you can see that her birthday would actually be October 27. A birthday in late October is confirmed in future seasons.

If you are in a nit-picky mood, feel free to join me in tut-tutting that the party invitation said that Rory was born in the morning twice in the same sentence, but neglected to mention that it’s her sixteenth birthday – no way would Emily have done such a shoddy job.

One might also wonder how Emily was able to get the names and addresses of all Rory’s classmates to send them invitations – did Headmaster Charleston let her access the school database just for her granddaughter’s birthday party?

Apple

Lorelai eats an apple while she waits for the pizza to arrive. Much later in the series it is established that Lorelai doesn’t like apples, and only craved them when she was pregnant with Rory. Despite this supposed dislike of fruit, there is always a bowl of fresh fruit on the Gilmores’ kitchen table, including apples. Maybe it’s for Rory.

260 Year Old Cat

BABETTE: Oh, Morey, don’t do this to yourself. He thinks it was the clams …
VET: It wasn’t the clams. Morey, in human years this cat was 260 years old.

There are two things wrong with the vet’s statement. First, 260 “human years” is just 260 years – the vet actually means “cat years”. Second, for a cat to be the equivalent of a 260 year old human, it would need to live to 60. There is no way Cinnamon is 60 years old – a cat might survive into its early twenties if kept indoors and well cared for. The oldest cat on record lived to 28.

The vet is confused, exaggerating, not good at mathematics, not good with English, and/or doesn’t understand how long cats live.

Rap Music

LORELAI: Do you like rap music?
MAX: Yeah.
LORELAI: Me too.

Lorelai is often shown listening to music in Gilmore Girls, and talking about her favourite musical artists, yet we never hear any more about her supposed love of rap music. It seems very unlikely that either Max or Lorelai is a big fan of rap music.

Cinnamon

As Lorelai and Rory leave the house to go to work/school, they meet their neighbours Babette and Morey taking their cat Cinnamon for a walk in a covered wagon. We first heard about Cinnamon in Kill Me Now, when Babette identified Cinnamon as male, by saying “he” was stuck under the porch. Since then, Cinnamon has had a sex change, as Babette says that “she” likes to be taken for walks.

“Impossible to get away”

EMILY: Regardless the funeral’s on Thursday. I thought we’d all go together.
LORELAI: Ooh, whoa. Two problems. Impossible to get away from the inn Thursday.

We learned in the Pilot that Lorelai attends business class on Thursdays, so she can certainly get away from the inn on that day. Perhaps she means that because of her class, she has to remain at the inn at other hours to make up for it, and that would clash with the funeral. How she knows it would clash when Emily hasn’t told her the time yet is a mystery. Another mystery is why she doesn’t mention her business class as another reason she is booked up on Thursdays.