MIA: There was a phony murder? LORELAI: Yeah, the town’s too dull to work up a real murder. RORY: But you’re one ‘beam me up Scotty’ reference away from being the victim of one.
“Beam me up, Scotty” is a catchphrase associated with the original series of Star Trek, from the command Captain Kirk gives chief engineer Montgomery Scott (“Scotty”) when he needs to be transported back to the Enterprise.
In fact, the phrase was never actually used on the show, although similar lines were said, such as, “Scotty, beam us up”, and “Mr Scott, beam us up”.
RORY: You were a Trekkie? LUKE: I was not a Trekkie. LORELAI: Uh uh, I do believe that denying you were a Trekkie is a violation of the Prime Directive. RORY: Indubitably, captain.
Trekkie: a fan of the Star Trek franchise. Many serious fans dislike the term, preferring “Trekker”. Long stereotyped as hyper-obsessive supernerds, and even satirised by Star Trek itself.
Prime Directive: in Star Trek, the Prime Directive is a guiding principle that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilisations.
“Indubitably, captain”: Possibly the sort of thing Rory thinks that Mr Spock would say to Captain Kirk. The closest thing to it is a piece of dialogue from the 1987 series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, when Data says, “Indubitably, sir. Indubitably” to Captain Picard.
Lorelai is an arch-hypocrite to characterise Luke as a Star Trek nerd because he wore a Star Trek tee-shirt, and make fun of him: she is a huge fan of the show herself, and has made numerous references to it, including to Luke. In fact, she uses Star Trek lingo to make fun of Star Trek, something everyone, but most of all Luke, should have picked her up on.
Also note that Rory has done the same thing in regard to Lane’s erstwhile crush, Rich Bloomenfeld – she made a snarky comment about him wearing the same Star Trek tee shirt every day when he was younger. It’s essentially the same joke as this, with Luke wearing a Star Trek tee-shirt when he was younger. Like Lorelai, Rory is a hypocrite; she has made references to watching Star Trek herself.
Fun fact: the name Lorelei appears in the animated series of Star Trek (1971-present). In the 1973 episode, The Lorelei Signal, a compelling musical signal lures the Enterprise to a remote planet, where the female inhabitants drain the male crew of their life force. During the process, the men’s judgement is affected as they experience euphoric hallucinations – rather like the way men behave around the two Lorelais in Gilmore Girls! In the episode, it is up to the female crew members of the ship to take command and rescue the men, so it’s a real girl power instalment.
LORELAI: So, Mia, how’s living in Santa Barbara? MIA: Horrible. Did you know the damn sun shines all the time out there? RORY: They’ve written songs about that.
Santa Barbara is a coastal city in California about ninety miles north of Los Angeles. Situated on the Pacific Ocean with a dry sunny Mediterranean climate, it is promoted as “The American Riviera”. Due to its geographic positioning, it has both cooler summers and warmer winters than surrounding areas, and despite what Mia says, it tends to be wetter in winter than its surrounds too, although rainfall is very variable.
It’s the sort of expensive place that wealthy people retire to, suggesting that Mia has done very well out of the hotel industry. Is it really possible she got that rich just from the Independence Inn? Surely she has other properties or investments as well? Maybe she’s a wealthy widow?
People in Stars Hollow seem to be strangely attracted to distant California. Christopher and Liz ran away to California to start new lives, Fran went on holiday there, Mia retired there. The writers live there, the show’s filmed there …
I’m not aware of any famous songs about the sunshine of Santa Barbara specifically that Rory might be thinking of, but there’s several songs about California.
POLICEWOMAN: Everyone’s accounted for Taylor. It looks like this is just an elaborate prank. TAYLOR: But it looks so real. Where’d they get the police tape? POLICEWOMAN: Kids have their ways.
TAYLOR: Who’d be depraved enough to pull a stupid prank like this? POLICEWOMAN: Hard to say. [Rory sees Jess standing across the street smirking as he watches the crowd]
The police officer reassures Taylor that the chalk outline and police tape is just a prank. Somehow, she knows that a child or teenager is responsible. To be fair, Rory also knows – Jess isn’t exactly being subtle here. The police officer seems to be remarkably blasé about someone stealing police tape from the police station. The bizarre way the police behave makes me think that they were in on the prank with Jess, either overtly or tacitly. It’s actually the only way this scene makes any sense.
Once again, one of Jess’ pranks is connected with Rory – it takes place outside the grocery store where her boyfriend works, at a time when he’s doing a shift, so that there’s a good chance of her seeing it. It seems to be a calculated move to get her attention and show off to her, as well as encroaching on her boyfriend’s territory.
In line with the autumnal colours of this episode, Jess wears a dark red tee shirt – Dean is also wearing a red sweater in a bright tone, as if Dean and Jess are the light and dark attractants for Rory (or the public and the private). Red is love and passion, but also aggression and danger, like a red rag to a bull. Both Jess and Dean wear grey sleeveless jackets over their red tops, as if in partial concealment of their feelings. There is nothing on their sleeves – yet.
Jess’s top is a vintage 1980s tee shirt with a Tasman Empire Airways Ltd logo on it – the former name of New Zealand’s flag carrier airline (since 1965, Air New Zealand Ltd). The show keeps connecting Jess with travel, journeys, and flight.
The fire truck going past is also bright red; in fact notice how many things in this scene bear the colour red. It’s a callback to when Rachel was telling Lorelai about her distress in discovering Luke’s romantic preference for Lorelai with the fire department in the background. It’s another painful love triangle situation marked with sinful scarlet, bloody red.
The poster in the background announces another Autumn Festival, nearing the anniversary of Rory and Dean’s first kiss. This suggests that the date is Tuesday 30th October, the day before Halloween. Yes, I know it looks bright and sunny, but that’s because we’re in TV Land, not the real Connecticut!
Does the big number 7 on the fire truck mean that Jess is blessed with luck in his endeavour? Or does it represent the seven days of the week, and the great wheel of time?. It might be a sign that Jess’ time has come. So much can change in just one year.
NOTE: Thank you to reader M for pointing out that the red vehicle is a fire truck or fire engine, not a bus as I incorrectly stated!
When Rory and Lane walk past Doose’s Market, there is a chalk outline of a person’s body drawn on the pavement outside the store, marked off with police tape. A crowd has gathered, and Taylor is having a fit, being calmed down by a local policewoman.
What the police officer should have told him is that a chalk outline to show where somebody has died is a trope which mostly exists in film and television (first shown in a 1958 episode of Perry Mason). In real life, police don’t usually draw a chalk outline to mark the place where someone was killed. The trope goes back to the days when police did so – not for the public, but to give crime reporters something they could photograph without showing an actual dead person.
She could have at least told Taylor that, in universe, the police did not draw the chalk outline!
FRAN: Oh, I don’t enjoy vacations. I toured the California Gold Country ten years ago. It was hot and the bus smelled.
The Gold Country (also known as Mother Lode Country) is a historic region in northern California, mostly around the Sierra Nevada and into the Sacramento Valley. It’s famous for the gold mines which attracted immigrants, known as the ’49ers, during the 1849 California Gold Rush. Most of the mines were shut down in 1942 because of World War II, but several gold rush towns are still popular tourist attractions.
Fran would have taken her bus tour around the Gold Country in 1991, presumably in summer since she says it was hot. Summers are hot and dry in this region.
LORELAI: It’s the title search for the Rachel property. And guess who owns it. SOOKIE: Tell me it’s not that bastard Donald Trump.
Donald Trump (born 1946), American businessman, media personality, and politician. He became president of his father’s real estate business in 1971 and renamed it The Trump Organisation. Trump expanded the company’s operations to building and renovating skyscrapers, hotels, casinos, and golf courses. He later started various side ventures, mostly by licensing his name. Trump and his businesses have been involved in more than 4,000 state and federal legal actions, including six bankruptcies. He owned the Miss Universe brand of beauty pageants from 1996 to 2015.
Sookie seems to think of Donald Trump as someone who owns so much real estate, any random property could very well be his. Although it seems comically unlikely he would own a rundown inn in rural Connecticut, he did have a history of buying derelict hotels and doing them up.
It’s probably best that Sookie doesn’t know that Donald Trump will later become the President of the United States (2017-2021).
EMILY: The [painter] from Italy had some sort of breakdown. RORY: Oh my God. LORELAI: Hey, it didn’t hurt van Gogh, the guy should thank me.
Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), Dutch post-impressionist painter who posthumously became one of the most famous and influential figures in the history of western art. In only a decade, he created more than two thousand oil paintings, most of them in the last two years of his life, his work becoming brighter, bolder, and more dramatic as his style developed.
Van Gogh suffered from psychotic episodes and delusions, and neglected his physical health, drinking heavily and not eating properly. His friendship with the painter Paul Gauguin ended with a confrontation during which van Gogh partially severed his own ear in a fit of rage. He spent time in psychiatric hospitals, but after being discharged, his depression continued. He is believed to have shot himself in the chest with a revolver, dying two days later.
Van Gogh was commercially unsuccessful during his lifetime, but attained widespread success over the ensuing decades, and today his works are among the world’s most expensive paintings to have ever sold. His legacy is honoured by the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.
Although van Gogh suffered lifelong mental health issues, it is thought he may have had an acute breakdown when he severed his ear, as he had no memory of the event. It certainly did hurt him – he ultimately killed himself. But Lorelai probably means it didn’t do his career any harm, as the mental illness and suicide have only given him an aura of tortured, misunderstood genius in the public imagination. [picture shows a Van Gogh self-portrait].
It’s clear the Italian painter’s Lorelai-caused breakdown also hurt him – a year later, he was apparently homeless or destitute, found rummaging through Emily and Richard’s recyclables. It was typical of Emily not to check that he was okay, or offer him help – after all, it was her daughter that supposedly drove him to madness! Hopefully he was just working on an art installation and looking for materials, or something.
LUKE: I was giving her directions for the quickest way back to Hartford. It was very romantic. I said you take a right at Deerfield, and you catch the I-5 and you take it south. Oh man, hot stuff. LORELAI: That is so typical of you. LUKE: What? LORELAI: That is not the quickest way back to Hartford. Everybody knows that you take Main to Cherry to Lynwood and then grab the I-11. Everybody knows that Luke. Everybody, apparently, but you!
Neither of these directions are realistic. The I-5 is the main interstate highway on the west coast of the US, running along the Pacific coast between Mexico and Canada. Luke also says that you travel south to Hartford from Stars Hollow, even though everything in the show suggests that you would travel north-east to reach Hartford from the town. The I-11 is a highway in Nevada, running from the Arizona state line to the city of Henderson.
At least you learn a few street names in Stars Hollow. Main (presumably the main street of town they show all the time), Deerfield, Cherry, and Lynwood.
RORY: And the next thing I know, I’m being pulled out of my bed in the middle of the night and I’m blindfolded and then before I know it, I end up here with the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, reciting poetry and lighting candles, and now I’m gonna be suspended because I was trying to do what you told me?
Rory is referring to the 1996 novel, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, by American author Rebecca Wells, the sequel to a 1992 short story collection, Little Altars Everywhere. The story is about the disintegrating relationship between an unusual mother and daughter named Vivi and Sidda.
While Sidda is holed up in a cabin the woods to think things through, Vivi’s childhood friends intervene to bring the pair back together by convincing Vivi to mail Sidda her childhood scrapbook, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood – the Ya-Ya Sisterhood being the secret society Vivi and her friends formed in 1930s Louisiana, in rebellion against Southern social codes of the times. The Ya-Ya Sisterhood devised its own bizarre initiation rites, based on an imaginary Native American mythos.
The novel was well reviewed and reached #1 on the New York Times Best Seller List. It was famous enough that Rory doesn’t need to have read it to know about it, but I can’t see any reason why she wouldn’t have. The focus on a powerful but flawed mother-daughter relationship would surely have attracted both Lorelai and Rory to the novel. Rory’s derogatory comment might suggest that if she did read it, she didn’t think much of it.
The book was made into a film starring Sandra Bullock which was released in June 2002, but Rory can’t be referring to that, because it hasn’t happened yet.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 