JESS: He wasn’t sure how long your mom was gonna be gone for.
RORY: Just tonight.
Emily invited Lorelai to spend the weekend with her, then turned up to collect her on Friday morning (rather than Saturday morning, as a weekend would suggest). Rory indicates that they were only spending Friday night at the spa, yet at the end of the episode, Emily and Lorelai are said to be leaving early when they go home on Saturday morning.
Either Rory is psychic, or she is trying to discourage Jess from thinking he can hang around or pester her all weekend. She may be protecting herself from Jess even more carefully than she protected herself from Dean, out of worry that sex might be on the menu as well as macaroni cheese.
Good thinking, because Jess needs only the slightest encouragement to invite himself to dinner, which was his plan all along.
This is the song which is playing at the spa while Lorelai is having her facial alone, and when Emily goes to her room and begins chatting.
“Deora Ar Mo Croi” is a song by Irish singer Enya, from her 2000 album, A Day Without Rain. The lyrics were adapted by Enya into Irish Gaelic from a poem by Roma Ryan, written in English. Roma Ryan is Enya’s chief lyricist.
A Day Without Rain was hugely successful internationally, selling 7 times platinum in the US and reaching #2 in the charts. Its popularity surged after 9/11, when Enya’s soulful laments seemed to perfectly capture the nation’s mood. The album was #6 in the UK and #7 in Ireland, and was most successful in Germany and Australia, where it went to #1.
The song’s title can be understood as “Tears In My Heart”, and its lyrics can be roughly translated into English thus:
How wonderful, from morning to night
the sweet voices beside me
and happiness everywhere, without sorrow,
joy in my heart forever.
If I walk away from life,
the sun and the moon at my back
I lack nothing but memories of my own world
Tears in my heart, sadly.
Apart from being believable as the sort of relaxing music that might be played at a spa, the song touches on the emotion behind Emily and Lorelai’s relationship, and that it is hard for Lorelai to simply “walk away” from her life and her memories without losing an awful lot in the process.
While locking lips with Rory against a tree, Dean suggests that since Lorelai is away, he should come over. It’s possibly code for “let’s get sexy” (and Rory and Dean are more than a year over the age of consent in Connecticut), but to his surprise, Rory explains that she has plans to spend some time alone. She is afraid that Dean will be angry with her – she’s very scared of his temper.
Although disappointed and confused (the idea of a girl deciding to spend time alone for one night is beyond his ken), Dean kindly allows Rory the chance to do laundry in peace, as long as she “makes up for it” by spending all the next day with him. And then declares himself a saint for this outstanding act of munificence. Saint Dean, the patron saint of understanding boyfriends.
Note the touch of red Dean is wearing under his jacket, as if there is actually an underlying anger there.
Paris freaks out when she gets an A- on her Chemistry lab report on electrochemistry. Her parents, who were getting divorced in “Paris is Burning” after a terrible scandal her father was involved in, are back together again once Paris explained to her dad how much money a divorce would cost him. Apparently it was Mr Geller who wanted the divorce, even though he was the one causing scandal, because Mrs Geller doesn’t seem to need convincing.
The terrible scandal, which was implied to involve something sexual and illegal, is never mentioned again, and doesn’t seem to have had any consequences. Mr and Mrs Geller are now fighting with each other, and redecorating. Paris’ mother redecorated when they were first getting a divorce – maybe her husband didn’t like it, and it’s now being re-redecorated back it how it was before.
With all the fighting and redecorating, Paris hasn’t been able to focus on her studies as well as usual. This seems like a re-tread of the “Concert Interruptus” plotline, where Paris and her gang had to study at Rory’s house because of Paris’ issues with fighting parents and redecorating.
We open with the diner in disarray, because Luke’s apartment that he bought in the previous episode is still under construction. In real life, it usually takes months for the sale of a property to go through so you can begin work on it, but this is television, and Luke is already in the middle of renovations.
Jess, wearing a construction helmet, chivalrously brings Rory an umbrella to shield her from the mess. Although Luke gets cranky about Jess making fun of the situation, the umbrella saves Rory from being hit by debris just a minute or so later.
This is the first official sighting of Tom the Contractor, although it is the same actor (Biff Yeager) who played Tom who was the foreman at Rebuilding Together in Hartford where Rory did volunteer work. They have the same name and personality, and obviously look the same, so it seems perfectly possible that they are actually the same character. This is never confirmed, however.
It’s not clear how much time has passed since the previous episode, but Luke complains to Tom about the renovation taking another week, and in 2002 Easter was at the end of March, so perhaps three weeks have gone by and it’s now early April (Thursday 4th April). I won’t be able to keep blog entries in step with events in the show, or I will run out of time. Time gets very stretchy in the last few episodes of the season!
After losing her temper with Jess and letting him know she doesn’t trust him one bit around her daughter, Lorelai tries to find out from Luke if there is anything going on between Jess and Rory. Luke says that Jess doesn’t confide in him, but he thinks it would be great if they got together, because Rory would be good for Jess.
Lorelai is much more concerned about whether Jess would be good for Rory, and she now knows that Luke may be her friend, but he is not her ally when it comes to keeping Jess and Rory apart. This is no doubt painful to learn, and it also means that her distrust and resentment towards Jess begins to spread to Luke. Again, this will lead to a major break between Lorelai and Luke later down the track.
Jess was brought in by the writers to drive a wedge between Lorelai and Luke and keep them apart, and their plan is working.
(Note that the canisters behind Luke read SUGAR CAFE!).
JESS: If it’s the most precious thing she owns, why did it take her two weeks to figure out it was gone, huh? You might wanna re-evaluate how madly in love she is. I wouldn’t start calling him ‘son’ yet.
Jess makes a devastatingly accurate comeback to Lorelai. The fact that Rory didn’t notice the bracelet was missing for some time, even needing Dean to point it out for her, is a very clear indication that her interest in Dean has waned. Something that Jess can take cold comfort in.
It is actually three weeks since the Bid-on-a-Basket Fundraiser, not two, even though it was two episodes ago.
After catching Jess coming out of Rory’s bedroom, and Rory’s bracelet coincidentally turning up under her bed when she’d already looked there numerous times, Lorelai puts one and one together and draws the obvious conclusion that Jess had Rory’s bracelet and had secretly returned it.
She immediately accuses Jess of stealing Rory’s bracelet and keeping it out of jealousy towards Dean, not caring that he was upsetting Rory in the process. Lorelai doesn’t bother trying to get all the facts, because Jess didn’t deliberately steal Rory’s bracelet, but held onto it after she lost it. He didn’t know it was from Dean, and was not trying to cause trouble between Rory and her boyfriend by keeping the bracelet.
She makes the mistake of attacking Jess as if she is a teenager herself, calling him a “little jerk”, rather than behaving like a concerned parent. This mother-daughter relationship where Lorelai tries to be both a mom and a best friend often goes wrong when she tries to be a friend when she should be a mother, and vice versa.
Lorelai has a temper and tends to go off halfcocked, especially when it comes to safeguarding Rory. Jess has no hesitation in talking back to her, and this episode will leave Lorelai with deep distrust and a simmering resentment against Jess which will explode later in the season.
JESS: It’s really that big a deal? RORY: What do you mean? JESS: I mean, I know it’s got an ‘I’ve been pinned’ Bye Bye Birdie kind of implication to it, but it was just a bracelet.
Bye Bye Birdie, 1963 musical comedy film directed by George Sidney, based on the award winning 1960 Broadway musical of the same name, with music by Charles Crouse, lyrics by Lee Adams, and book by Michael Stewart.
Set in 1958, the story was inspired by Elvis Presley’s draft into the US army in 1957. Jesse Pearson plays Conrad Birdie, a teen idol based on Elvis, his name a play on Conway Twitty, Presley’s rival at the time.
Conrad Birdie is giving a farewell performance in Columbus, Ohio, to end with his song, “One Last Kiss”. It is arranged for him to kiss a randomly chosen high school girl at the end of the song before going into the army. The teenager chosen is Kim MacAfee (played by Ann-Margret) from the town of Sweet Apple, but Kim’s boyfriend Hugo Peabody (played by Bobby Rydell) isn’t thrilled, as he and Kim have got “pinned” – he’s given her his fraternity pin to wear, indicating a serious commitment between them. When Birdie kisses Kim in a rehearsal, she swoons.
Elvis Presley himself was the first choice for the role of Birdie, but his manager Colonel Tom Parker wouldn’t allow it. The film helped make Ann-Margret such a star that in 1964 she appeared with Elvis himself in Viva Las Vegas.
Jess is saying that Rory and Dean are the small-town teenage sweethearts, and he is the sexy outsider. It seems slightly egotistical, and a bit demeaning to Rory, as if he has randomly chosen her for a meaningless encounter; it strongly suggests Jess doesn’t intend to stick around.
The film ends with Hugo knocking Birdie out before he can kiss Kim on stage, which might be what Jess is expecting from Dean – that he’ll punch Jess before he gets a chance with Rory. In the stage musical, the story continues with Kim going off to hang out with Birdie, and he is arrested for attempted statutory rape. Kim claims to have been intimidated by Birdie, and gladly returns to Hugo.
Quite a few warnings for Rory in this apparently casual reference! Foreshadowing, on multiple levels.
The reference to Birdie being about to go into the army makes me wonder if this reference was originally meant for Tristan, who went off to military school. Jess is much more of a Birdie than Tristan, however.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 