JESS: Plus, the two of you walking around the other day like some damn Andy Hardy movie.
Andy Hardy, previously discussed. This is the second time that Rory and Dean have been compared to an Andy Hardy movie – the first time it was by Lorelai, showing how spookily in tune Lorelai and Jess’ opinions are.
Jess gives away here that he was watching Rory with Dean just as hard as she was watching him with Shane. He’s angry with Rory, and hurt at how she has treated him, but by no means indifferent to her or over her.
JESS: I’m sorry, did I hear from you at all this summer? Did I just happen to miss the thousands of phone calls you made to me, or did the postman happen to lose all those letters you wrote to me? You kiss me, you tell me not to say anything . . . very flattering, by the way. You go off to Washington . . . then nothing. Then you come back here all put out because I didn’t just sit around and wait for you like Dean would’ve done? And yeah, what about Dean? Are you still with him? ‘Cause last time I checked, you were, and I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.
While popping into Doose’s Market to buy food for a second dinner after Friday Night Dinner (because the meal Emily provided was either insubstantial, or they were too upset to eat very much), Rory runs into Jess while shopping (he’s apparently buying one can of something). She lets him know she’s surprised and not exactly thrilled he found a girlfriend over the summer vacation, and Jess absolutely lets her have it.
Jess makes it clear he’s not going to put up with being badly treated, the way Dean often seems to allow. Rory kissed him, told him to keep quiet about it – as he says, not exactly flattering – then goes to Washington, not calling or writing to him in the interim (again, there seems to be some sort of fiction that Rory went straight to Washington from the wedding, which definitely didn’t happen, and couldn’t have happened). Then she comes back to Stars Hollow, clearly still with her boyfriend, Dean.
Jess doesn’t know that Rory tried to write to him while she was away, but didn’t know what to say, and that she tried to come to the festival in town without Dean, all dressed up, hoping to see him. But even if he did, I’m not sure it would radically alter his position. Rory still didn’t contact him, and she didn’t break up with her boyfriend – I think Jess is making it clear that he doesn’t want to keep flirting with Rory until she ditches Dean. Which is pretty honourable, considering how much cheating goes on in this show, with very little angst over committing it.
Note that Rory and Jess in this scene mirror Christopher and Lorelai earlier in the episode, with Rory taking the same position as her father – she wishes things could be different, but isn’t willing to do the work necessary to get there. Like Lorelai, Jess says that until things change, he’s not interested. Unfortunately, Rory resembles her father emotionally far too much at times.
When Rory comes out of the supermarket, Lorelai asks if she’s done (shopping), and Rory says angrily, “Oh, I’m done”. Needless to say, she is very far from being done with Jess!
LORELAI: You know, you need a mask and a horse when you do that.
Lorelai refers to masked heroes who ride a horse, such as The Lone Ranger, previously discussed, who rides a white horse named Silver.
Emily redeems herself in this episode when she orders Christopher to leave her house. She may have been pushing Lorelai to get back with Christopher by any means, but when she sees that Lorelai and Rory really don’t want Christopher there, she does her best to protect them from him (she’s good at setting boundaries when she wants to, the way she wishes Lorelai had done for her when she needed rescuing from a man).
Lorelai doesn’t often call Emily her hero, but this is a rare example when she does.
While Lorelai and Rory are having Friday Night Dinner with Emily, Christopher decides to show up – no doubt encouraged by Emily, who has had a cosy little chat with him over the phone, and tried to make Lorelai get back with him.
Christopher doesn’t actually have any ideas on how to change the situation – he just wants Lorelai (and to a lesser extent, Rory) back in his life. He makes it clear that he wants Lorelai, not Sherry, but isn’t willing to break up with Sherry. In fact, he tells Lorelai he plans to marry her. I feel as if Sherry deserves to know all this before she commits to marriage and motherhood with Christopher!
I’m not completely sure what Christopher hopes to gain by seeing Lorelai – presumably to make friends again, with the hopes of one day persuading Lorelai to become his mistress, bed buddy, or booty call.
LORELAI: My life stinks. Hey, let’s look into each other’s eyes and say “I wish I were you” at exactly the same time – maybe we’ll pull a Freaky Friday!
Freaky Friday, previously mentioned, and referenced to indicate Lorelai and Rory swapping places.
Lorelai has been through a lot of relationship angst lately, and the show now gives her a bit of comic relief in this area when Kirk asks her for a date while delivering a package to the inn. We know that Kirk is very lonely, and has been actively seeking a girlfriend at least since Sookie’s wedding (he is delivering her wedding photos, as a little reminder). It’s a chance for Lorelai and Rory to later joke about Kirk being Rory’s stepfather – this is the second time Rory jokes about Lorelai marrying Kirk.
However, despite plenty of humour at the expense of Kirk’s awkwardness, the situation is handled quite sensitively. Lorelai turns him down kindly, saying that she’s not ready to date anyone at the moment, and would prefer to keep Kirk as a friend. Kirk on his part takes the rejection gracefully, and without resentment. He tells Lorelai that she is the prettiest girl he has ever seen, except for models in pornographic magazines – and although this is a weird compliment from a rather strange person, I think at this point, Lorelai is quite flattered to receive it. She does seem willing to accept compliments from strange quarters when her ego has taken a bruising.
When Lorelai refers to Kirk as her friend, this seems to be the first time she has openly acknowledged him as such, and is a bit of a turning point in their relationship. From now on, Kirk feels less like the town weirdo, and more like Lorelai’s eccentric friend.
This is the book Jess is reading when his girlfriend arrives to meet him.
A Confederacy of Dunces is a picaresque novel by John Kennedy Toole, written in 1963 but published in 1980, eleven years after Toole’s death by suicide. It became a cult classic, then a mainstream success, winning the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction in 1981. The title refers to an epigram from Jonathan Swift’s essay, Thoughts on Various Subjects, Moral and Diverting: “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him.”
The protagonist of the novel is Ignatius J. Reilly, an educated but lazy thirty-year-old man living with his mother in the Uptown district of New Orleans in the early 1960s. He has been called a modern Don Quixote, an eccentric and idealistic slob who disdains pop culture, and believes that his numerous failings are the working of a higher power. Due to a car accident his mother gets in, Ignatius must work for the first time in many years to pay off her damages bill, moving from one low-paid job to another and having various adventures with colourful characters in the French Quarter of the city.
The novel is famous for its rich depiction of New Orleans and its dialects, many locals seeing it as the best and most accurate fictional depiction of the city. A bronze statue of Ignatius J. Reilly is on Canal Street in New Orleans. It has been adapted for the stage, including as a musical comedy, and has often been planned as a film. These various attempts to adapt it for the screen have come to nothing (often with the slated lead actor dying, and once with a studio head being murdered, not to mention Hurricane Katrina devastating New Orleans in 2005), leading to the belief there is a “curse” on it as a film project.
The novel’s title is a comment on how Rory and Lorelai see Jess and his girlfriend in this scene, as a pair of “dunces” who can barely hold a conversation together. However, it is also believable as a modern American classic that Jess might read, complete with a male protagonist who is an intelligent failure railing against the world, his fate, and modern life. This seems to be the sort of hero that Jess can relate to. Note that it’s also set in the American South – a literary setting which Rory is also drawn to, underlining how much they have in common.
LORELAI: Well, apparently this lovely girl came home to find her husband giving the nanny a nice little bonus package … The man was shot thirty-five times. He looks like a sprinkler system.
EMILY: I can’t believe this. Shauna was always such a nice girl. She was bright, cultured, well-spoken.
EMILY: Your father and I were shocked and upset … You didn’t give us five minutes to digest the news … You simply dumped it on us and walked out. I hardly think that’s fair.
In fact, Lorelai attempted to give them the news about Christopher briefly and undramatically. Emily insisted on dragging all the details out of Lorelai so that she and Richard could attack her, then Richard went off in a sulk. You can’t really blame Lorelai for not sticking around for any more.
RORY: All I did was think about what you said, that’s all. Then I analyzed the situation.
LORELAI: And then you made a pro and con list.
RORY: You’re mocking me, but yes, I did. And after all of this, I came to the conclusion that I want to make things good with Dean, and he deserves my undivided attention.
After spending the evening with her boyfriend, Rory does some hard thinking alone, and decides that she wants to stick with Dean, and give their relationship the best shot possible. The fact that she had to make a pro and con list doesn’t sound as if she’s exactly carried away with passion by this point.
The question is, would she have reached this decision without Lorelai’s input, knowing she would have earned her mother’s disapproval if she’d chosen to break up with Dean? More importantly, would she have reached this decision if Jess had still been available? My guess is, no, and hell no.
This leaves Rory’s relationship with Dean on a pretty precarious footing.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 