While Lorelai is helping Luke to organise his uncle’s funeral, Emily meanwhile decides to get involved in Sookie’s wedding. She begins by making a couple of suggestions, with Sookie clearly not wanting to offend her best friend’s mother and a major client. What with Emily’s strong personality and Sookie’s tendency to go along with things to be nice, this escalates, until very soon, Lorelai takes enough interest in non-diner related activities to discover that Sookie is getting samples from celebrity wedding planners.
TROUBADOUR #2: Don’t like to be touched, that’s cool. Got a little David and Lisa thing happening?
David and Lisa, 1962 drama film directed by Frank Perry. It is based on the second story in the 1961 novella Lisa and David by a psychiatrist named Theodore Isaac Rubin; the screenplay is written by Rubin’s wife, Eleanor Katz. The story is about a bright young man named David (played by Keir Dullea) who cannot bear to be touched; while in a mental health treatment facility, he befriends a girl named Lisa (played by Janet Margolin) who has a split personality.
David and Lisa received positive reviews from critics. It was made into a stage play in 1967, and into a television film in 1998, produced by Oprah Winfrey.
Note the implication from the Second Town Troubadour/Second Market Guy that Taylor must have serious mental health problems if he doesn’t want to be hugged. It’s just the start of the trolling that Taylor is about to be subjected to!
LORELAI: If you had your way, Mother, you’d lock us up like veal. That’s what she wants, veal children.
Veal is the meat of calves, rather than beef, which comes from adult cattle. In the past, many calves raised for veal in North America were raised in small crates, often tethered, which is what I think Lorelai means by keeping them locked up like veal. In the 2000s, this cruel practice began gradually to be abandoned in favour of slightly less cruel practices, and by 2017, all members of the American Veal Association raised their veal calves untethered in pens, not crates.
Note that Lorelai implies that both herself and Rory are Emily’s children, as if they are sisters, rather than mother and daughter, and as if Lorelai is still a child.
(Lorelai enjoyed a meal of ossobucco made by Max, a veal dish).
LORELAI: She had nothing to do with Jess coming over. Believe me, she did not want him there.
DEAN: That’s what she told me. And Rory wouldn’t lie, right?
As Lorelai and Dean assure each other that good, honest, pure Rory (the sweetest kid in the world) would never lie about wanting Jess, they watch through the window as Rory giggles and flirts with him while paying for breakfast.
Rory was certainly being truthful about not inviting Jess to the house, or even inviting him to dinner – he invited himself, and manipulated the situation so he could stay. But as for not wanting him there, actively wishing he hadn’t come? Well … if that wasn’t a lie to Dean, then she is definitely lying to herself.
And it’s going around, because Dean and Lorelai are desperately lying to themselves as well.
RORY: I don’t think Luke knew anything about the food last night … Which means you lied about why you came over.
Rory is positively delighted to discover that Jess came over with the food just because he wanted to. In her mind, she is only enjoying catching him out in a lie and watching him squirm, but on some level she must also be happy to know that Jess actively sought out her company for an evening.
LORELAI: Wow, he must’ve been crazy mad last night.
RORY: I’d say that was a fair assessment.
Apparently knowing that her daughter’s boyfriend was in an insane rage the night before isn’t something Lorelai feels she needs to worry about! And now Dean has taken Rory hostage for the entire day, and she has to have dinner with his family as well. Doesn’t she look thrilled about it?
RORY: You actually got Grandma to steal a bathrobe?
LORELAI: Although I did catch her trying to return it while I was getting the car.
What car? They went to the spa in a hired limo. Perhaps Lorelai means while she was phoning for a car to collect them, or meeting the car? Or she meant to say while she was getting in the car?
Emily panicked and tried not to go through with stealing the bathrobe, but Lorelai seems to have stopped her. That seems to be enough to satisfy Lorelai, who actually appears pretty pleased with how her time at the spa with her mother turned out (probably because they came home early).
This episode is another one where we see Lorelai and Rory in parallel situations. In “There’s the Rub”, both Lorelai and Rory have their personal boundaries disrespected.
Lorelai thinks she is being offered free vouchers to a luxury spa, only to discover what she’s really getting is a weekend away with her mother – who books every single activity for them at the same time, even a couples massage!
Meanwhile, Rory thinks she’s getting the house to herself for an evening. Paris tries to guilt trip Rory into letting her come over to study by reminding her how lonely and neglected she is. When Rory sensibly but kindly resists, Paris just turns up anyway. Then Jess arrives with food, unbidden, and invites himself to dinner, so that Rory has to ask Paris to stay the night as a chaperone. Then Dean decides to stick his nose in, despite being explicitly told to stay away. (Dean is the only character who doesn’t manipulate his way in, because he already feels entitled to Rory’s company).
If everyone had respected Lorelai and Rory’s boundaries, Lorelai would have received two vouchers for a spa weekend, and taken Sookie, and Rory would have been free to do laundry, eat Indian food, and fall asleep in front of the TV in her pyjamas. Which would be nice for them, but not exactly compelling television.
Luckily, both Gilmore girls end up gaining something by allowing others to force their way into their lives – if only the knowledge that people really do want to be closer to them.
(Note that the boundary-pushing continues even in the penultimate scene, when Kirk tries to take their table from them in the diner before they are ready to leave. After everything they’ve been through, the Gilmore girls are hogging that table, no matter what!).
LORELAI: No, Rory would never steal. She’s far too moral for that.
This is a complete, utter, and quite deliberate lie. Rory and Lorelai stole glasses from a Holiday Inn together, she boasted to Lorelai about stealing a towel from the country club she went to with Richard, and in this very episode, she tells Lorelai to steal soap from the spa before she comes home. Apart from trying to make Emily feel special and as if they could have a bond that Lorelai and Rory don’t, Lorelai doesn’t want to tarnish the image Emily has of the perfect angel granddaughter.
EMILY: I wasn’t taught to be best friends with my daughter … I was taught to be a role model for my daughter … I did what I thought was right. I did what I thought I had to do to protect you, and because of this we have no relationship.
And “there’s the rub” – Emily wants to have a good relationship with Lorelai, the kind of friendship she thinks Lorelai has with Rory. And yet she was taught that mothers and daughters aren’t friends, and that she has to set an example for Lorelai, not relax and have fun with her. And even though Lorelai is in her thirties and a mother herself, Emily doesn’t know how to stop being a mother, and start being a friend to her daughter. Lorelai being stuck as a perpetual teenager means that Emily can’t grow and develop either.
It’s frustrating, because clearly they are capable of having a good time together. Chad said they were the two people having the most fun at the bar. However, Lorelai has a plan for them to do a bonding activity together – steal the bathrobes from the spa. That’s her idea of a mother-daughter bonding baby step. Hm, speaking of being a role model for your daughter …
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 