Footnotes to the TV series
While staying with Lane for the night, Rory discovers that Lane’s fake boyfriend Young Chui has broken up with his girlfriend Karen, but is resisting breaking up with Lane. With Rory’s help, Lane realises that Young Chui has developed feelings for her. With her fake relationship now real, Lane is unsure what to do next, or how she and Dave can ever be together.
When they get home from the speech contest, they collect the mail and find that Rory has been accepted into Harvard. And Yale. And Princeton. And they all turned up on the same day – although as Kirk is in charge of the mail now, that may not be so surprising. I can only think that’s the reason why the writers made him the mailman for this week, although this job of his was mentioned the previous season. (Planning ahead?).
Fans sometimes think it is unrealistic for Rory to be accepted into three Ivy League universities, but Rory was an excellent student at a good school, a feeder school for Harvard. She was a legacy student at Yale and Princeton, and had assistance from an alumnus when applying to Harvard. She had several extracurricular activities at school, and was a valued contributor to her local community.
Furthermore, her background as the daughter of a single mother who had struggled for many years would have also helped boost her chances – Darren Springsteen said it would work to her advantage.
When Jess finally gets there (he really did get stuck in traffic) he has a black eye, and refuses to say how it happened. Emily only expresses polite concern, and is otherwise perfectly charming to him.
Rory however, absolutely flips. She is convinced that Jess has got into a fight with Dean, because the two of them talked together at Miss Patty’s. This is very unfair of Rory to make such an assumption, when Jess already told her he wasn’t upset about her talking to Dean – only bothered that he had to find it out from town gossip. But she is so angry with Jess for turning up to Emily’s dinner, late and with a black eye, that she is is no mood to be fair.
Rory arrives at her grandmother’s house after school – she seems to have brought a change of clothes with her, as she is not in her uniform. Jess is late to get there, but Emily, ever the gracious hostess, says that Jess probably got into bad traffic on Interstate 84, and professes to find it refreshing that Jess doesn’t have a cell phone, and thus can’t be contacted or call them.
It is Rory who is upset and embarrassed over Jess’ tardiness. You can tell she was hoping Jess would make a good impression on her rather snooty grandmother, which seems extremely unlikely.
They were gone for four hours, from 7.30-11.30 pm, and they both had a good time, even though both of them hated the restaurant that Luke picked out. In other words, it was a successful date. Jess none-too-subtly asks Luke if he’d like the apartment to himself for an hour so he and Nicole can have sex, which results in a comic argument which the viewer can see through the window, but not hear. You can’t help getting the feeling Jess is only too pleased for Luke to pursue any woman who isn’t Lorelai.
SHERRY: Christopher, you’re here! I can’t believe you’re here. I didn’t think you’d make it.
CHRISTOPHER: Are you kidding? You think I’d miss this?
Sherry is being wheeled into the delivery room when Christopher rushes to join her at the last moment. Christopher says he wouldn ‘t miss this, but of course, he already did – he missed Rory’s birth. It must be difficult for Lorelai to witness Christopher showing up for his second daughter’s birth when he wasn’t there for the first. She’s certainly looking rather pouty about it.
Then again, we never see Christopher’s point of view. Did Lorelai tell him she was going into labour and needed to go to hospital, or did she just leave without telling him? Was he given the opportunity to accompany her, or did he simply not know? This is never made clear.
At the eleventh hour, Christopher arrives at the hospital, after being out of town for some mysterious reason, in an area where he couldn’t get cell phone reception for some mysterious reason. Where was he, the middle of the woods? Maybe cell phone coverage was a lot more patchy in the US during the early 2000s?
It is a relief for Rory and Lorelai to see him, because otherwise it would have been them going in with Sherry to watch the birth. It seems almost superhuman of Lorelai to offer to accompany Sherry into the delivery room, when she doesn’t like Sherry, and resents her for being the reason things didn’t work out between she and Christopher.
But as Lorelai told Emily – she wasn’t going to do it for Sherry, but for Rory. Luckily, she never has to do it, but it must bring Rory comfort to know her mother was ready to be there for her is she wanted her.
RICHARD: So, Trix, let’s talk about the Hartford house. Do you have a new tenant lined up yet?
TRIX: Yes, I do … Me.
To Emily’s horror, Trix announces she is moving back home to Hartford. She’s getting older, London is too damp, and she has some vague health problems. The savvy viewer will detect here that the writers are planning to bump Trix off eventually, and making sure that they don’t have to send all the characters off to London for her funeral.
FRANCIE: I saw her walking off with . . . who was that, her brother?
LOUISE: Paris doesn’t have a brother.
FRANCIE: Really? Well, she certainly seemed to know him.
Jamie is hanging around Chilton, being a distraction to Paris again and giving Francie an opportunity to take her down a peg. Princeton doesn’t go back after the Christmas break until mid-January, suggesting this episode takes place in the first half of the month.
However, it’s something of a mystery what he is doing in Hartford, which is a fair distance from Philadelphia. Is he staying with Paris, since she spent Christmas with his family? And why is Chilton letting him turn up during the school day? Don’t they have any security? Why are they letting Paris leave with him? What ever happened to Chilton being a really strict school?
DEAN: I don’t know, Rory. Maybe . . . maybe, um . . . is there a way we could be friends? … If you want to.
RORY: Oh, I want to. I really want to. But –
DEAN: Don’t ask me how I’m gonna deal with him. I have no idea.
Although Rory was initially reluctant to have coffee with Dean, and refused to eat anything, by the end of this scene they are chatting easily, and she is smiling and sharing his custard pie. When Dean asks if they can be friends, she says she really wants to, with Jess being relegated to a “But – “.
Rory was friends with Jess, which gradually damaged her relationship with Dean until they broke up (again). Now she agrees to be friends with Dean while going out with Jess – what could go wrong? Of course, Dean is very much wanting it to go wrong, in order to cause Jess the same sort of problems he believes Jess caused him.
It does feel typically unfair that just as Rory is starting to feel more relaxed and confident with Jess, Dean worms his way back into the picture. Because drama.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 