EMILY: You spend five seconds with a person and if they say one wrong thing, you turn on them and never give them a second chance … You are extremely judgmental, Lorelai.
Hmm … I wonder where Lorelai gets that from, Emily?
Emily is incensed that Lorelai cancelled her date to the concert with Peyton, since she had a terrible time on their dinner date, and they were obviously unsuited to each other. However, Emily doesn’t care about any of this, she cares that Lorelai rejected her friend’s son, therefore making Emily look bad by association (somehow). I feel as if Lorelai should have seen this coming … has she never met her mother before?
NATALIE: There she is, the Cobra … This woman gets her way or she squeezes ’til you comply.
Emily’s friend is Natalie Swope, played by Judy Geeson. You may remember her as one of the ladies from Emily’s tea party on the patio in “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”. Emily introduces Natalie and Lorelai as if they are strangers, even though Natalie asked after Lorelai and seemed to remember her quite well in the previous season, despite not seeing Lorelai since she was a teenager (although, as Lorelai and Rory attended Emily’s Christmas party each year, this doesn’t seem plausible).
Natalie refers to Emily as “the Cobra”, because she squeezes people (puts pressure on them) until she gets what she wants from them. There are various snakes called cobra, but only those in the genus Naja from Asia are true cobras. They are notable for being able to rear up off the ground and flatten their necks to appear larger. They don’t attack prey by squeezing them, however – that’s pythons and boa constrictors. Cobras have highly venomous fangs instead, and all species are capable of delivering a fatal bite to a human.
Lorelai sometimes seems selfish and unreasonable in the way that she instinctively refuses her mother’s requests, but Emily’s reputation as domineering and manipulative, determined to get her own way at no matter what cost to the other party (the auctioneer is actually ill in this episode, but Emily has forced him to turn up and work) provides a good reason for that. She has no wish to be one of the Cobra’s many victims, and what seems like a reasonable request may well turn out to be something more sinister.
LORELAI: Uh, well, I guess, I could water your lawn, Dwight – sure.
DWIGHT: Boy, that is something. If I would have asked somebody back where I used to live to water my lawn, I would’ve gotten a much more HBO kind of answer.
Home Box Office (HBO), a pay television channel, owned by Warner Bros. Discovery (Gilmore Girls was on the Warner Bros. TV channel, the WB). First launched in 1972, it was the first pay TV network in the US, and the first in the world to begin transmitting via satellite.
HBO, as a channel available to subscribers, was able to broadcast programs without having to edit them to remove adult or objectionable material, and its sister channel Cinemax even broadcast softcore pornography until 2018. Dwight is saying that he would have received a much more adult-oriented answer in his previous neighbourhood (presumably in a city) if he asked someone to water his lawn for a few days.
Lorelai has always been shown to be pretty good at shutting down anyone who asks her to do anything for them she doesn’t want to, yet somehow, she is unable to resist Dwight’s plea. I guess she doesn’t want to get on the bad side of a new neighbour, or she doesn’t want him to think Stars Hollow isn’t a nice place, when he seems so excited to have moved there. Possibly her fight with Pete, which she later learned she’d been unreasonable about, has taken up all her energy. Or Dwight just has some mystical power over her. Maybe the same mind control that he used to get Beenie Morrison’s house!
LUKE: Why, why do they do this? This is a public place, people are eating here … This cannot be sanitary … When did that become acceptable? In the old days, a woman would never consider doing that in public. They’d go find a barn or a cave or something. I mean, it’s indecent. This is a diner not a peep show!
Luke is horrified when a woman nurses her baby in the diner. I have trouble accepting this “caveman” version of Luke, when he was depicted as intelligent and progressive in Season 1 – sometimes it feels as if the show couldn’t decide whether Luke was smart or stupid, progressive or reactionary.
He did tell Lorelai that he didn’t like small children very much, especially their messy, sticky side, and perhaps this is why he is having problems with seeing a baby fed, but it ends up being a judgement on the mother for putting on a “peep show” – therefore sexualising her need to feed her child, which is pretty creepy of Luke.
In Connecticut, women have been legally entitled to breastfeed in public since 1997, and it is prohibited for anyone to restrict or limit their right to do so. This includes restaurants and diners, so Luke has had five years to adjust to the law. As a responsible business owner, Luke would know of his legal obligations, and I don’t think he would behave like this, even if he did secretly feel a little uncomfortable.
As another mirroring scene, Jess is also shown being unable to handle seeing a woman breastfeed her baby. It’s not like this entire scene didn’t age well – it was outdated and unfunny at the time of first broadcast.
Shane manages to give Rory the same insult Lorelai said about Shane, which is either quite a coincidence, or Shane heard Lorelai and has been waiting for a chance to get her own back.
Jess has presumably just met Shane as she got off work at the beauty store. They are both wearing matching outfits – brown jackets over brown shirts – as if to underline that they go together. However, note that Jess doesn’t walk alongside Shane, he walks ahead of her. He couldn’t be making it clearer that he doesn’t see Shane as his equal, but as someone who’s “tagging along” with him. He is the leader and the dominant person in the relationship.
Also note that Jess only has eyes for Rory, and although they are currently on bad terms, he cannot stop himself from giving a faint smile as he walks past. Shane turns around to look at Rory, and I think her intuition is telling her that she is someone that Jess likes, or someone that could be a threat.
The show, like Lorelai, Rory and Jess, is not very kind to Shane, a girl who actually doesn’t do anything wrong except be pretty, blonde, and go out with Jess. Although the title of this episode is ostensibly about the two different plots – Lorelai has to give a talk to a “class” while Lane “dyes” her hair – it can be read another way. Rory is the girl with “class”, while Shane is the one who dyes her hair platinum blonde, meaning that she can’t be “classy” like Rory.
JESS: I’m not playing Golden Retriever, hoping one day she’ll turn around and fall in my arms. If she doesn’t wanna be with me, then fine.
The Golden Retriever is a dog breed which originated in Scotland in the late 19th century. They are known for their thick, golden coat, and their gentle, affectionate nature. They are extremely popular pets, because of their calm, biddable temperament, which makes them easy to train and eager to please. Jess must see Luke as being like a sweet, snuggly Golden Retriever, adoringly waiting for Lorelai to give him tasks to perform.
JESS: Hey, the girls that I like don’t give a damn about me! And unlike some other people I know, I’m not gonna sit around hoping that they change their minds and suddenly notice me.
LUKE: What’s that supposed to mean?
JESS: You fixed any neighbor’s porches lately? Or you go on a picnic or you get rooked into giving a ridiculous speech at a high school?
Jess tells Luke that his cynical view of relationships has partly been formed by watching Luke pine for Lorelai. He seems to have become indignant at the way Lorelai talks Luke into things, and the way Luke offers her free handyman work around the house. Jess seems to have decided that whatever else he might be, he’s not some sap who’s going to make a fool of himself over a girl.
Jess mentions Luke fixing Lorelai’s porch, which happened before Jess moved to Stars Hollow. Either he’s fixed it again recently, or someone told Jess about Luke fixing the porch. I presume that it was Luke himself, because Rory didn’t seem to know about it – it was early in the morning, and she blamed Lorelai for the noise that Luke made, before going back to bed. I suppose Rory might have accepted Lorelai’s explanation afterwards, and later told Jess about Luke fixing the porch – she may have thought it was a funny story.
Luke tries to give some Jess some guidance in regard to girls, and how they should be treated if you care about them. His lecture is thrown off the rails almost at once when Jess bluntly says that he doesn’t care about Shane. In fact, he can’t even remember her last name! If we needed any confirmation that Jess is just using Shane for physical pleasure and to make Rory jealous, here it is.
Hopefully Luke would have gone on to say that girls still deserve to be treated with decency and respect even when you don’t care about them, but he seems to be too shocked to continue further.
SHANE: [on phone] Uh huh . . . All I know is I don’t have it, so it’s gotta be at your place . . . You’re not looking for it, you’re watching TV, I can tell . . . Yeah, whatever. I’ll just get a new one. So, what are we doing tonight? . . . I don’t know, I’m sick of eating. I’ve been eating like a pig, I feel all bloaty . . . It is so a word, it’s a word ’cause I said it. That’s how words get invented, ’cause people say them and then other people say them . . . You’re such a jerk sometimes and I’m always nice to you . . .
We have seen Jess and Shane embrace and kiss on the show, but this is the only time we ever hear them communicate, and it’s just one side of a brief telephone conversation. When a jealous Rory overhears it, she seems to use it as ammunition against Shane, as evidence that Shane is not “smart” enough for Jess (like she is).
This is a clear parallel to how Jess feels about Dean – that he’s not smart enough for Rory (like he is). Jess seems to have deliberately chosen a girlfriend who will make Rory feel the way he’s been feeling all along.
What the viewer can pick up from Shane’s side of the conversation is that Jess is not an attentive boyfriend, and Shane is aware of it. She can tell he’s watching television while pretending to be searching for her lost item (we don’t know what it is, but in a later episode she leaves a bra behind, so that could be it). She is also aware that Jess can be a “jerk” to her sometimes, and perhaps Rory should take this as a red flag, because later he isn’t a very attentive boyfriend to her, either.
Whatever Rory thinks of Shane, we can tell that Shane is smart enough to see through Jess to some extent, and is not deluding herself about the relationship. She can also speak up for herself, and lets Jess know how she feels. These are skills that Rory herself will later be lacking in her own relationship with Jess.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 