LORELAI: And, by the way, I got you out of dinner with the Gilmores tonight. I thought you and Dean might enjoy a little Peaches and Herb time together.
Peaches and Herb, vocal duo created in 1966. Herb Fame (born Herbert Feemster in 1942) is the “Herb”, and seven different women have filled the role of “Peaches”. The most famous ones are the first Peaches, Francina “Peaches” Barker (1947-2005), and the third one, Linda Greene, who appeared on their biggest hits, “Shake Your Groove Thing” (1978) and “Reunited” (1979).
It is the song “Reunited” that Lorelai is referring to, with its line Reunited, and it feels so good. The song went to #1 in the US, and was popular around the world. It is unlikely that Rory is quite as excited about her reunion with Dean as Lorelai seems to want her to be.
RORY: And then, probably when you’re not looking, you’ll find someone who complements you … Someone who likes what you like, someone who reads the same books or listens to the same music or likes to trash the same movies. Someone compatible … But not so compatible that they’re boring … I mean, you respect each other’s opinions and you can laugh at the same jokes, but I don’t know – there’s just something about not quite knowing what the other person’s gonna do at all times that’s just really exciting.
Rory (with her vast experience of dating one boy she doesn’t even love any more) tells Paris how to know when she has found the right person. Except that Rory’s description of the perfect partner – reads the same books, laughs at the same jokes, respects your opinions, is unpredictable and exciting – sounds a lot like Jess, and not at all like Dean, who doesn’t read or joke, doesn’t respect Rory’s opinions, and is predictable and boring. Hmm!
Dean phones Rory, arranging to see her Friday evening when they both get home from their respective vacations. Rory’s plane gets in at 3 pm, while Dean won’t be getting in until 6 pm. Lorelai has lied to Emily, saying Rory won’t be home until Saturday, in order to allow Rory and Dean some couple time.
How blissful that the reunion will be is in some doubt already, because while Dean says goodbye by saying “I love you”, Rory just says she has to go, and hangs up on him. Are we back to the start, where Rory can’t tell Dean that she loves him? Or is this the end, where Rory realises that she no longer loves Dean?
RORY: Hm, not quite sure. Last time I saw her, she was beating the will to live out of our nation’s representatives.
JAMIE: She is a hammer, isn’t she?
RORY: Actually, she’s the entire toolbox.
In this episode we meet Jamie, who becomes Paris’ boyfriend. Paris thinks of herself as unappealing to the opposite sex, and her crush on former classmate Tristan was not reciprocated. But it is Jamie who pursues Paris, and on paper at least, he looks like her dream man. Attractive, intelligent, ambitious, and sharing her passion for aggressive debating techniques, Jamie isn’t scared off by Paris’ strength and outspokenness – in fact, that’s what draws him to her.
Paris is so unused to anyone being interested to her that she gets asked on her first date by Jamie (a victory dinner after their debate together) and accepts before realising what’s happened when Rory explains it to her. Paris predictably has a meltdown before the date, just like the one she had before her date with Tristan, and becomes so insecure that she makes Rory hide in the closet just in case a glimpse of Rory will make Jamie change his mind. Rory points out that Jamie has already seen her, and isn’t interested, but Paris is in no mood for logic.
Even though Paris only asks Rory to step into the closet for a moment while Jamie is there to pick Paris up, Rory gets in with a flashlight and a book, as if she’s planning to spend the whole evening there!
Jamie is at Princeton, meaning that the Young Leaders program is for college students as well as high school students (something which probably wouldn’t happen in real life). He is presumably two or three years older than Paris, because if he was one year older, he wouldn’t have started at Princeton yet.
Jamie is played by Brandon Barash, in his first television role. He has gone on to have roles in The West Wing, 24, NCIS, Bones, General Hospital, and Days of Our Lives.
TAYLOR: This is gonna be a very exciting day. I’m really gonna go all out for this. I even think you’ll be impressed.
LORELAI: Really, even me?
TAYLOR: Yes-sir-ee, Mini-Me, I did not put the word madness in the title for nothing.
Taylor references comedy spy film Austin Powers in Goldmember, a sequel to Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, previously mentioned. Goldmember had just come out in July 2002, so would be very fresh in their minds (presumably Taylor saw it that summer, which reveals a slightly unexpected side to Taylor).
In the film, spy Austin Powers’ nemesis is Dr Evil, who has a clone of himself at 1/8th size, who he names Mini-Me, played by Verne Troyer. Dr Evil declares Mini-Me his favourite son. Oddly, Taylor seems to be designating himself as Dr Evil??? And Lorelai as his … clone? What? Does Taylor understand how references work? Maybe it’s just as an example of madness at work?
The plot of the film involves more than one example of surprise paternity, which is interesting, given that there is a popular fan theory that Taylor is secretly Kirk’s biological father. He does employ him at Doose’s Market, the video store (which he also seems to own), and has him photograph key events around town. This might explain Kirk’s multiple jobs – they are all, or mostly, given to him by Taylor, who owns a large proportion of Stars Hollow.
TAYLOR: This, young lady, is for the first annual Stars Hollow End of Summer Madness Festival.
LORELAI: You finally found a way to fill September, didn’t ya?
The previous season, there was some sort of Harvest Festival in early September, with scenes of happy people bringing sheaves of wheat to the centre of town, and hanging autumn leaf decorations on lamp posts. The season before that, there was a Teen Hayride in mid-September. It seems like September was getting filled with activities already.
Note that after Lorelai finishes talking to Taylor, she takes a wistful look at Luke, working in his diner, to remind us that she and Luke still aren’t speaking to one another.
Jackson is referring to actress and singer Judy Garland, previously discussed and frequently mentioned, and her husband Vincente Minnelli, born Lester Minnelli (1903-1986). A director of theatre and film, he directed famous films such as Meet Me in St. Louis (1944), An American in Paris (1951), and Gigi (1958). He was married to Judy Garland from 1945 to 1951, and they are the parents of actress and singer Liza Minnelli.
Despite Vincente being married to three other women during his life, and having affairs with women, for years there was speculation that he was gay or bisexual. His biographer, Emanuel Levy, claims that Vincente Minnelli was openly gay in New York, according to stories from people such as Dorothy Parker. However, if so, he seems to have gone back in the closet when he went to Hollywood.
One of the subplots of this episode is Sookie suddenly deciding that her house is too “feminine” for a man to live in now that she is married – even though Jackson was already living with her before their wedding, and has said again and again that he likes the house the way it is. Also, Sookie’s house is warm, cosy, and practical, rather than fussy and frilly.
The same thing happened during the wedding planning, when Sookie unilaterally decided that pink wedding decorations were some sort of hostile message to Jackson that his opinions weren’t important. (We only see a bit of the wedding decorations, but there seems to be some pink, among many other colours, so I’m not sure if she changed her mind or not).
Sookie and Jackson were a very cute couple for most of their courtship, but, as happened many other times in Gilmore Girls, they became almost instantly annoying once they got married. This is the first of several tiresome marital issues (or non-issues?) that they have.
Note that once again, a man liking curtains is linked to him being considered “unmanly” – Luke refused to get curtains for the diner because they were too feminine, but when Lorelai went to his apartment, she is amused to discover he had picked out floral curtains for himself. Oddly enough, the diner already has checked curtains …?
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.
Season 3 begins with one of the most teasing, and notorious cold opens in the show. Lorelai is shown being woken up by a barrage of alarm clocks, wandering downstairs in a pretty pink nightgown, to find that Luke is making her breakfast, and trying to force her to drink decaf coffee.
At first the viewer might think that Lorelai and Luke somehow got together during the offscreen summer break, or that at least their friendship has got back on track and blossomed to the point that Luke is now cooking her breakfast in her kitchen, and offering to pick up household supplies for her.
But then Luke starts talking to Lorelai’s belly, because she’s pregnant! And she and Luke are having twins, no less. We know she can’t possibly be that far into a pregnancy after only a few weeks, and sure enough, not long afterwards she wakes up in the middle of the night with a start.
Lorelai immediately phones Rory to discuss her dream, and Rory gives the most obvious explanation: Lorelai wants to be with Luke and have his babies. But as Rory goes on to say, the dream is linked to Lorelai being upset about Sherry being pregnant with Christopher’s child, and Lorelai being lonely for Luke’s company (and missing his food!). The dream puts all these things together, and suggests a way to resolve all this tension – have Luke’s babies!
The (joke?) names Luke and Lorelai have for their unborn twins in the dream is darkly amusing. First, they were Sid and Nancy, a reference to the year-ago episode when Luke and Lorelai got into another terrible fight. Lorelai’s subconscious may be saying, “You got into a bad fight with Luke before and you worked it out, so you can do it again this time”.
Even darker, Lorelai says in the dream that the twins are named after child murderers Leopold and Loeb. Could this be an unconscious wish for Sherry’s baby to not exist, as if Lorelai’s pregnancy could cancel it out? Leopold and Loeb were the names of the Rottweilers owned by the parents of Lorelai’s repellant date chosen by her mother, Chase Bradford from Hartford. Just as Sid and Nancy link the twins to Luke, Leopold and Loeb seem to link them with Christopher, as if Lorelai’s unconscious has made her pregnant to both men at once.
At any rate, dreaming of being pregnant with twins suggests a conflict between Lorelai’s conscious and unconscious, and that she has two separate but related sources of stress in her life: the failure of her relationship with Christopher to get off the ground because of Sherry’s pregnancy, and the failure of her friendship with Luke. The twins may symbolise that on an unconscious level Lorelai is attracted to both Christopher and Luke, and at this point, deep down wants both of them.
And one final thing: dreaming about being pregnant is also due to the stress of not having Rory there, her “baby”. The dream overcompensates by giving her two babies to replace Rory. Lorelai is missing Rory even more than she misses either Christopher or Luke.
At the end of the episode, Sookie and Jackson’s wedding is about to begin, as we hear the strains of their wedding song, “I Can’t Get Started”, previously discussed.
The episode nears it conclusion with a shot of Rory and Lorelai, locked in their own secret relationship difficulties, neither sharing them with the other, as they have to focus on the wedding. Rory has secretly kissed another boy while on a date with her boyfriend, and still looks shellshocked by her own action. Lorelai is heartbroken over being dumped by another woman’s boyfriend, who is going back to be a father to their unborn child – something he could never muster the energy for when it came to Lorelai’s daughter.
The song “I Can’t Get Started” is written from the perspective of someone who is successful in every possible outward way, yet they don’t have a hope of beginning the relationship that they want. In the same way, Lorelai is a successful mother, homeowner, community participant, and businesswoman; Rory is a successful student, journalist, debater, and now Vice-President elect at a prestigious private school. However, success in romance is eluding them. It’s the complete opposite to the end of Season 1, which concluded with both Lorelai and Rory infatuated with their respective partners, and bubbling over with happiness and excitement.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 