Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: Oh, hey, look, new bag boy.
RORY: Oh yeah, that’s Marty. He’s subbing for Dean while he’s out of town.
Dean is suddenly visiting his grandmother out of town in this episode – doesn’t he have to attend school? Considering how upset Dean was at the end of the last episode, it’s possible he has gone to stay with his grandmother to have a break from Stars Hollow and Rory, or to think things through.
[Lorelai pulls up to the house and finds Dean sitting on her front porch]
LORELAI: Dean.
DEAN: She likes Jess, doesn’t she?
Dean has done what Lorelai suggested, and only sent Rory one pager message in two days – presumably the one she gets as they drive into Stars Hollow is to ask how the Business Fair went, and he is considerate enough to wait until Rory is likely back from her grandparents’ place.
Lorelai suggests that Rory should call Dean back, as a tacit reward for his “good behaviour”, but Rory says she’ll call him the next day. She’s heading over to spend time with Lane, and they might even sneak out to Luke’s. Mrs Kim is away at an antiques fair, and Lane’s grandmother, who must be Mrs Kim senior, her father’s mother, is babysitting, but conveniently goes to bed at 6 pm – this might explain other times Lane has mysteriously been able to go out late at night, such as Madeline’s party.
Lorelai returns home alone to find Dean sitting on their porch, waiting for Rory. (So much for not turning up uninvited any more!). Seeing that Rory isn’t with her mother, a depressed Dean gives voice to his worst fears as he says, “She likes Jess, doesn’t she?”.
He understands what Rory has not given herself permission to feel. And yet, despite knowing that Rory’s affections are now otherwise engaged, he continues to try to hold onto her, in exactly the same way that Lorelai told him he shouldn’t.
MICHEL: Now she knows I’ve been hiding something from her. Suddenly she’s asking questions. Why did I leave France at eighteen? Where do I go at night? Who are my friends? What do they do? Where do they live? Why have I chosen this career? On and on and on and on – it never ends! I can’t stand it, she’s a complete pain. She won’t stop. I took a six hour bath last night just to escape the incessant nagging. You did this to me! You turned my Giselle into a mother, and I hate you for it! I hate you very, very much! [leaves]
SOOKIE: So, feel better now?
LORELAI: Yeah, I do, thanks.
Lorelai is jealous of Michel and Giselle’s relationship as both a daughter, unable to spend time with Emily as Michel does with his mother, but more importantly, jealous and possessive as a parent. She has to ruin things for Michel because only Lorelai and Rory can have the “perfect” mother-and-child-yet-best-friends relationship. Sookie’s question suggests that she understands Lorelai’s feelings (although perhaps doesn’t approve of them), and has seen this coming.
LORELAI: I don’t understand, Michel. You and your mother seem to have the perfect relationship.
MICHEL: Yes, because I tell her nothing. We keep all subjects light and fluffy. We talk about clothes and food and Posh Spice and David Beckham and that is all. Nothing of value, nothing of substance.
A warning to Lorelai that her “perfect relationship” with Rory likewise only works on the most superficial level. Like Michel and Giselle, their “best friends” act revolves around fashion, food, and pop culture – it’s all getting coffee, watching movies, and eating snacks together. Once anything serious comes up, they can have quite serious arguments, and even fights.
Rory actually keeps a lot from Lorelai – she hasn’t discussed her changing feelings about Dean, or her efforts to understand her feelings about Jess, for example. As Rory gets older, there will be more and more things she keeps to herself, until there is a complete rift between mother and daughter.
Lorelai gets home from work and finds Dean washing Rory’s car while he waits for her to come home from school (he forgot that she had to stay late again). Lorelai takes Dean into the kitchen, and suggests that he give Rory a bit more space, advice which he promises to take. This is the second relationship Lorelai meddles in, within a single afternoon, and yet another scene of Lorelai looking inappropriately flirty with Dean, rather than maternal.
Rory is amazed that when she and the other students arrive at the Gilmore home in Hartford, Paris is already there, and greeting them as if it is her house. She and Richard clearly hit it off, and she seems to easily fit in with his plans and expectations, taking a prominent role as if she has indeed usurped Rory’s position as both group leader and granddaughter – although Richard is quick to remind everyone of Rory’s status.
This is an early hint that Paris has an affinity with older men – something which will become apparent later.
Rory says that the meeting takes place soon after 3.10 pm, but the school day doesn’t finish until 4.05 pm. This suggests that they are working during class time, even though they are meeting at Richard’s house. I’m not sure how they got permission for that, or if they even bothered to get permission. Maybe Emily fixed it up, since she is friends with Headmaster Charleston’s wife, Bitty.
GISELLE: I am. I will miss him so much when I go home, but thank goodness, he will have an extra five pounds to remember me by after eating all my pasta today, that dirty thieving boy.
LORELAI: Michel ate pasta?
GISELLE: Well, yes. Michel loves pasta, he eats it all the time.
LORELAI: Not around us. Here it’s all no-carb, low-cal, let me see if I can eat less than the lab rats do.
Michel and his mother Giselle are having a wonderful time together treating themselves to luxurious meals, and there must surely be some malice involved when Lorelai decides to “out” Michel as a fad dieter to his mother (it feels like a subtitute for a different kind of “outing”, and just as much of a betrayal).
When Michel and his mother leave together laughing and joking over coffee, Lorelai looks utterly disgusted by them, and mutters, “That is so wrong”. It seems that it’s wrong for any other mother to befriend her child and joke with them while pigging out and drinking coffee!
LORELAI: Honey, you gotta ease up on that love potion you’ve been giving him or he’s gonna start showing up at David Letterman’s house soon.
In May 1988, David Letterman was stalked by a mentally ill woman named Margaret “Peggy” Ray, who stole his car, camped on his tennis court, and repeatedly broke into his house. Her exploits gained national attention, and Letterman joked about her on his show sometimes, but without ever naming her. Ray served 34 months in prison and psychiatric hospitals for stalking Letterman, but refused to continue her medication upon her release, and went on to stalk astronaut Story Musgrove. She killed herself in 1998. Both Letterman and Musgrove expressed sympathy for her – “A sad ending to a confused life”, said a spokesman for Letterman.
Another rather distasteful joke about mental illness and suicide, and the implication that it is somehow Rory’s “fault” that Dean is behaving so obsessively. There does seem to be a slight acknowledgement here from Lorelai that Dean’s behaviour is abnormal and unhealthy.
DEAN [on answering machine]: Hey, it’s me. Uh, it’s four o’clock, call me when you get home. [beep] Hey, uh, it’s four thirty. I’m home, call me. [beep] It’s quarter to five – where are you? I’ll try paging you. [beep] It’s five-thirty. Did you get my page? Call with the answer … Hey, I totally forgot you were getting home at six …Hey, it’s five forty-five and I just thought I’d see if you got home early.
Dean has always had an obsessive streak and a trigger-finger when using the phone – something which Rory originally found endearing, and accepted with complacence. But now that four calls during a study session while she’s home alone has ballooned into fourteen calls while she’s staying late at school to work on a group project, she’s starting to see that Dean is not so much clingy as stifling. Even after he remembers Rory is staying back until 6 pm, he still calls her, on the off-chance she got home early!
LORELAI: Dean the determined.
An obvious play on epithets historically given to royalty – Ivan the Terrible, James the Just, Alfred the Great, Gerald the Fearless, Philip the Handsome, and so on.
There was a real royal with this epithet – Antonio the Determined [pictured], who managed to rule Portugal as Antony I for at least twenty days during a succession crisis. Although Philip II of Spain prevailed, Antonio did not gracefully admit defeat, but attempted to rule Portugal from the Azores, where he established an opposition government that clung on for three more years. He went into exile in France and England, taking the crown jewels with him.
In Antonio’s case, “determined” seems to be a polite word for “desperate”, or even “delusional”. Dean will likewise do his darnedest to grimly hang onto Rory, even when he knows he’s lost.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 