Tag: Relationship Insight

Andy Hardy

LORELAI: Ugh, every great relationship has its obstacles. You’d know that if you weren’t dating Andy Hardy.

Andrew “Andy” Hardy, fictional character played by Mickey Rooney in 16 films made by Metro-Goldwyn between 1937 and 1946 (and another in 1958, trying unsuccessfully to continue the series). The Hardy films, enormously popular in their day, were sentimental comedies set in a Midwestern town, celebrating ordinary American life.

The Hardy family first appeared in the 1928 play Skidding by Aurania Rouverol, with Charles Eaton as Andy. The first film was A Family Affair, based on the play, with Mickey Rooney as Andy, and he continued in the role from the ages of 16 to 25.

Andy Hardy soon became the central character, with the films focusing on the relationship between he and his father, Judge Hardy (a bit like Gilmore Girls focusing on Rory and Lorelai). The plot typically involved Andy getting in trouble with money or girls because of selfishness or trying to fudge the truth. He would then have a man-to-man talk with his father, a man of absolute integrity, and end up doing the right thing (very different to Gilmore Girls).

Lorelai seems to be teasing Rory about Dean, suggesting that she’s dating a wholesome, inexperienced teenage boy from the Midwest, like Andy Hardy. Meanwhile, Lorelai is looking for a real man, like William Holden.

Interestingly, the cast of A Family Affair were plucked straight from the 1935 comedy, Ah, Wilderness! The plot involves a well-read teenage boy named Richard (played by Eric Linden) from a Connecticut town, graduating as valedictorian and going to Yale, just like Rory. The film also features a box social!

[Picture shows Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland in Love Finds Andy Hardy, 1938].

Richard’s Criticisms of Lorelai

She drinks too much coffee

She doesn’t eat grapefruit with breakfast (she has a banana instead)

She doesn’t wear sensible shoes to work

She doesn’t dress appropriately for work (how does Lorelai not have a jacket? It’s winter!)

She didn’t have any tablecloths in the dining room due to an issue with her linen delivery

She spoke flirtatiously to her linen delivery guy in order to get better service

She got out of the car before it had completely come to a stop

She ordered Chinese food that wasn’t authentically Chinese

She buys more food for dinner than she can eat in one sitting (they eat leftovers)

She pushed Rory into wanting to go to Harvard without even investigating Yale

She allowed Rory’s seventeen-year-old boyfriend to rebuild her an old car

A few of Richard’s criticisms are reasonable. The ones about Rory are instigated by genuine concern for his granddaughter, and wanting her to be safe. Many of them are based on an old-fashioned view of the workplace, and a complete lack of understanding of the hospitality industry and female management styles. Some of his criticisms are ridiculous and extremely petty.

None of them are appropriate for him to share with Lorelai on a day that he is coming to visit her home and workplace as her guest. She is a woman in her thirties with a teenage daughter, her own home and car, and a good job. No matter what Richard’s opinions are, he shouldn’t berate Lorelai for her lifestyle choices, and especially not in front of her colleague, Michel.

The show focuses especially on Lorelai’s fraught relationship with Emily, but Richard and Lorelai certainly have their issues.

“Nice picture”

[Rory walks past the video store, which her picture is in the window. As she stares at it, Jess walks over to her.]
JESS: Nice picture.

Oh, very smooth. We already know how much you like Rory’s pictures, Jess!

Rory has been named Citizen of the Month in Stars Hollow, which is why her photo is up in the window of the video store. It shows her in her Chilton uniform against a blank background, and may be from school photo day.

Rory wonders where Taylor and Kirk got the photo from. Good question!

“Suddenly I realize what it feels like to be obsolete”

RICHARD: I am an annoyance to my wife and a burden to my daughter. Suddenly I realize what it feels like to be obsolete. I hope that you never have to learn what that feels like.

Richard has always been so focused on his job and career, he never thought about what would happen when he retired. And he’s rather young to retire as well, making it even harder for him. Just as Emily’s visit to Stars Hollow is soured by her discovery that Lorelai was so unhappy she preferred to live in a shed rather than at home, Richard is left with the unhappy realisation that Lorelai has only bothered to see him as a favour to Emily, to get him off her hands for one day.

Rory’s Car

DEAN: Your car.
RORY: No!
DEAN: Finished it yesterday.

The car that Dean rebuilds and gives to Rory is a pale blue 1961 Dodge Lancer sedan. A rebuilt Dodge Lancer would cost around $10 000 today, so it’s a significant gift, quite apart from all the work he’s put into it.

We now discover that even though they broke up on the night he told Rory he was giving her a car, Dean has continued to work on it. It seems that Rory and Lorelai have been kept informed about his progress, because they seem excited, but not surprised about it, and Lorelai seems to have already given permission for it to go ahead.

Richard’s unease with Dean giving Rory the car is probably not only the safety issue (and no car from 1961 is going to be as safe as a modern one), but because it is inappropriate as a gift from a teenage boyfriend that Rory has only been seeing for about a year (and was broken up with for three months). He may have handled it badly, but Richard has a point.

The day with Richard now becomes an unmitigated disaster, and it’s all thanks to Dean. He just shows up with the car, rather than call ahead and make sure that it’s alright. He also ignores the fact that when he arrives, Richard’s car is out the front, so he knows that they have a guest, and can probably guess who it is. Does Dean actually deliver the car that night on purpose, as a way to show Richard that he isn’t a useless waste of space, and to rub it in how special he is to Rory and Lorelai?

It’s a real slap in the face to Richard and Emily, who wanted to buy Rory a new car, but were not given permission to do so by Lorelai. It must hurt Richard that she instead gave permission for an unsafe old car, built by a teenage boy, and this no doubt informs a lot of his behaviour.

Harvard vs Yale

LORELAI: Dad, she wants to go to Harvard.
RICHARD: Well yes, because she thinks you want her to go to Harvard.

Richard hits it right on the head – where did Rory’s obsession with going to Harvard come from, except from Lorelai? Lorelai bought Rory a Harvard sweater when she was only four: not the usual clothing a toddler asks for on their own.

Richard is also correct that she’s too young to have set her heart on one specific college to attend. There are other good options available, and as Gilmores traditionally go to Yale, he would be able to help Rory get in as a legacy student. He does know more about the Ivy League system than Lorelai, who, despite being determined to have her daughter fulfil her dream of going to Harvard, has seemingly done little to educate herself about the process of being accepted there.

Harvard and Yale are traditional rivals, and it can’t have escaped Richard’s attention that Lorelai has rebelled against him by choosing his own alma mater’s main competition as her preferred university. He is tactful enough not to say that to her, though.

Richard is actually giving Lorelai good advice here. He probably shouldn’t have brought it up while he’s a guest, but at least he makes sure he doesn’t do it in front of Rory.

“You owe me!”

EMILY: You owe me! … I pay for Rory’s school! …And I co-signed your loan! You still have a house because of me!
LORELAI: Are you hearing yourself?
EMILY: I’m sorry but I’m desperate. I just need one day of peace and I will do anything to get it, anything.

Lorelai always feared that allowing her parents to help her would give them the opportunity to emotionally blackmail her later. Now her fear comes true – but it isn’t some cunningly-planned scheme of Emily’s. She’s stressed and desperate, and says anything she can think of to get Lorelai’s assistance.

“A lot of coffee”

RICHARD: Interesting. I just realised you have three cups of coffee in the morning …
EMILY: Well, so what?
RICHARD: Nothing. Just an observation, that’s all. That’s a lot of coffee to drink early in the morning.

It seems that Lorelai and Emily have something else in common – they both need their coffee to get through the day. This feels like a callback to the beginning of the Pilot, where Luke asks Lorelai how many coffees she’s had. It’s first thing in the morning, but she’s already had five, and is ordering her sixth.

“No more room”

EMILY: So I went inside and looked around and it occurred to me that there’s a very limited space there … Now of course there’s a slot open for me and Richard and you and Rory, but after the two of you – that’s it. No more room for anyone else.

Apparently the Gilmore family mausoleum is now almost full, and only has four spaces left. Emily is very concerned about Lorelai getting married, because there would be nowhere for her husband, but she never seems to consider that Rory could very well marry one day, and married or not, both of them are capable of having children (or further children, in Lorelai’s case). Where they are meant to go is never even discussed, and it really sounds as if the Gilmores’ mausoleum has pretty much seen its quota filled by now.

Lorelai suggests that she and Rory could be buried in the same space – a callback to them sharing a bed in the potting shed, and a sign that she really sees Rory as an extension of herself. Rory pleads for more boundaries by saying she’d prefer her own space. Even in death, Lorelai wants to keep Rory enmeshed with her, rather gruesomely.

Emily says the cemetery offered them the opportunity to buy an “annex” for extra family members. I don’t think this is an option in real life, although they have two public mausoleums at Cedar Hill where future generations of dead Gilmores could be stashed. Richard’s mother Trix dies during the series run, and surely other elderly Gilmores as well – how long are those extra four spaces going to last, and how long can they keep kicking existing Gilmores into the annex, which is also of finite space?

In A Year in the Life, Richard Gilmore dies and is buried in a plot with a headstone, not in a mausoleum. Maybe they really did run out of space?