RORY: Eventually, maybe, but for now – solidarity, sister.
LORELAI: Ya ya!
RORY: You’ve been waiting for six weeks to do that, haven’t you?
A reference to Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood. The 1996 novel by Rebecca Wells has already been discussed as one that Rory (probably) read, but the comedy-drama film came out in June 2002, and it is undoubtedly this version which Lorelai has recently seen and refers to.
Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood is directed by Callie Khouri, and stars Sandra Bullock and Ellen Burstyn as the daughter and mother in conflict. The film was a commercial success, but received mixed reviews, with critics feeling it was overly melodramatic and unoriginal.
The bags that Lorelai has says she bought everything at Hamilton’s Gift Shop at the airport. This is a fictional business, and in real life, there is a Paradies at Bradley International today.
MRS. KIM: This was Sherman’s shaving table … General Sherman, famous man, burned Atlanta, liked a close shave.
General William Tecumseh Sherman, previously mentioned. A general in the Union Army during the Civil War, he invaded Georgia with three armies in the spring of 1864. His campaign against Atlanta ended successfully in September of that year with the capturing of the city, and he gave orders that all civilians were to evacuate the city before giving instructions that all military and government buildings were to be burned, although many private homes and businesses were too. This victory made him a household name, and ensured the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln in November that year.
SOOKIE: What do you think, manly [holding up statue]?
LORELAI: In an Oscar Wilde sort of way, absolutely.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish poet and playwright, and one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. Best remembered for his sparkling comedies, witty epigrams, and his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).
At the height of his fame and success, while his play The Importance of Being Ernest (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry (the father of Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas) for libel, but the trial unearthed evidence that led to Wilde’s arrest for indecency with men and boys. He was convicted and sentenced to two years’ hard labour, and imprisoned from 1895 to 1897. On his release, he left for France, and never returned to Ireland or Britain.
The statue that Sookie holds up appears to be a cherub or some other sort of nude small boy. It certainly doesn’t look butch, but Lorelai seems to be saying, not so much that the statue seems “gay”, as slightly paedophilic, because of the subject matter.
Oscar Wilde did take teenagers as young as fourteen as his lover, although to my knowledge, not small children like the statue seems to be (Wilde’s trial was based on his activities with males because of their gender, not specifically with their ages). The full details of Wilde’s case had been published in 2001, with many people shocked, or at least uncomfortable, with how extensive Wilde’s interest in much younger males had been – something which would have seen Wilde imprisoned in our time as well. This may be what Amy Sherman-Palladino had in mind when she wrote this scene.
EMILY: Thursday the third. And what was happening Thursday the third, Lorelai? … Your father and I were coming home from Martha’s Vineyard.
In real life, the 3rd of September 2002 was a Sunday, not a Thursday. Apparently Sookie’s wedding being on the right day based on the calendar was a glitch by the props department, and we’re back to an imaginary timeline again.
JAMIE: So, in your opinion, how was our nation’s capital?
RORY: Well, I got to see Archie Bunker’s chair at the Smithsonian Museum, so it was a big thumbs up for me.
Archie Bunker, played by Carroll O’Connor, from the popular sitcom All in the Family, previously discussed.
The Smithsonian Institution, a group of museums and education and research centres, the largest such complex in the world. It was founded in 1846 by the US government, named after its founding donor, British scientist James Smithson. Known as “the nation’s attic”, it has 19 museums, 21 libraries, nine research centers, and a zoo, mostly located in the Washington DC area. It receives 30 million visitors each year, and entry is free.
Archie Bunker’s chair really is on display at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History in Washington DC, donated by the makers of the television show in 1978. It was originally bought by the show from a Goodwill thrift store in southern California for $8.
LORELAI: Give me another analysis or I’ll put your Taylor hula-hooping dream into a whole other context.
RORY: I told you, Taylor was supposed to be Dean. I could tell by his freakishly thick head of hair.
Rory had a dream while she was in Washington, apparently sexual in nature, about Taylor hula-hooping. She knows that Taylor was actually a stand-in for Dean, suggesting that she sees Dean as rather boring and irritating, like Taylor. Dreaming of hula-hoops can be indicative of a situation where you keep going around in circles – just as Rory’s relationship with Dean keeps going around the same old circle.
The dream suggests that Rory can’t see any way of breaking free of the dull routine she’s in with Dean. And nothing has changed, because although Rory has a stack of letters from Dean, sent from Chicago, where he’s on vacation, she is trying to write a letter to Jess – having got no further than writing Dear Jess.
We can see Dean’s return address on the envelopes: 106 Don Ridge Drive, Chicago IL 60620. This isn’t a real address – Don Ridge Drive is in Toronto, Ontario, a little nod to Gilmore Girlsfirst being filmed in Canada. The zip code is that of central Chicago – primarily made up of poor African-American neighbourhoods. It seems like an unlikely place for the Forester family to stay with family or friends.
There is a Ridge Drive in Chicago Ridge, a suburban village of around 14 000 people on the outskirts of Chicago. That actually seems far more believable as the area where Dean grew up.
Rory’s address in Washington is 1765 Harring, Washington DC 2005, which is entirely fictional, and doesn’t even look like a proper address, having no building name or street designation. It sounds vaguely like the Hotel Harrington, Washington’s oldest operating hotel, which is centrally located, and within walking distance of landmarks such as the White House, the Capitol, and the Smithsonian. This is certainly the area that Rory would have been staying in.
Rory references the Inferno, the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri’s 14th century epic poem, the Divine Comedy. The Inferno describes Dante’s journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet, Virgil. In the poem, Hell is described as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth.
It is not certain from this whether Rory has actually read the book, although it doesn’t seem unlikely that she has. There are circles of Hell in the poem, not “rungs”, and the fourth circle of Hell is for the miserly, the hoarders of wealth, and those who squandered it – not people gloating over relationship break ups (those are dealt with in the next part, the Purgatorio). However, that could very easily be a bit of artistic licence on Rory’s part.
Lorelai possibly gives away that she hasn’t read the poem when she says her feet won’t get cold. In fact, the final circle of Hell is a huge frozen lake. Hell does actually freeze over. The frozen lake is reserved for the traitors, who remain trapped in the ice, and in the very centre of the lake is Lucifer, who was a traitor to Heaven.
RORY: But if I win then I have to be vice president next year. Plus, I’ll have to spend my summer in Washington for some junior leadership program, which means six straight weeks of me and Paris together in a dorm room.
The program that Rory and Paris will be attending in Washington DC during their summer vacation seems to be similar to the real life Global Young Leaders Conference, where high school students from the US and around the world learn communication, decision-making, and negotiation while interacting with real life leaders, diplomats, lobbyists, and journalists. There are also visits to embassies and cultural landmarks.
Unlike the six weeks Rory has in front of her, the real life program only lasts for ten days, students are housed in a hotel, not a dormitory, and it costs thousands of dollars to attend. Rory never even mentions paying, so perhaps Chilton are footing the bill, or Rory and Paris will be offered scholarships.
When Rory got her cast put on, the doctor said she would need to keep it on for two weeks, but it’s actually been three weeks since the night of the car accident when she gets the cast removed.
Lorelai takes Rory to Dr Ronald Sue, a specialist in orthopaedic medicine – who has an office in Stars Hollow, quite unbelievably. It feels like in Season 1, the writers tried to create a small town in New England that might be a little quirky, or niche, or even slightly magical, but was still a place you could convince yourself might almost exist.
Now it’s only Season 2, but already they are throwing anything into Stars Hollow that suits the plot, so this little town of less than 10 000 people has multiple takeout options which all deliver, a 24-hour pharmacy, a hospital, and an orthopaedic specialist. It feels like very lazy world-building. In this case it seems especially pointless, because there’s no reason Lorelai couldn’t have picked Rory up from school and taken her to an appointment with Dr Sue in Hartford.
Christopher invites himself to the medical appointment, announcing to everyone with self-importance that he’s “the father”, as if Rory has just been born, or like anyone cares. He’s driven from Boston to watch a minor two-minute medical procedure, and now he … drives back again? That makes perfect sense. Is it a hint he isn’t actually in Boston at this point?
Rory wears a red and black tee shirt which says STRANGE 13 to her appointment, as a nice callback to her Emily the Strange sticker.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 