Luke unexpectedly finds his broken toaster at the diner has been fixed. (He was shown trying to mend it himself when Mia arrived, so it was out of action for nearly a week). Jess denies that he had anything to do with it, but Rory gives him an approving smile as he leaves for school.
Jess’ actions symbolise that he is capable of working to fix his relationship with Luke, just as Luke mended and waterproofed Lorelai’s chuppah. It’s yet another scene where Jess is depicted as the mirror image of Luke, and shows he is also good at practical things – he’s not just book smart.
There’s nothing like the thrill of reforming a bad boy, so no wonder Rory looked so pleased with herself. Jess is very careful to look back at her to watch her reaction as well. It’s something else he’s done to make an impression on Rory, and it feels like another piece of his plan falling into place.
MIA: When Lorelai showed up on my porch that day with a tiny baby in her arms, I thought to myself, what if this were my daughter, and she was cold and scared and needed a place to live? What would I want for her? And then I thought, I’d want her to find somebody to take her in and make her safe and help her find her way. EMILY: That’s funny. I would’ve wanted her to find someone who would send her home.
Clearly shaken by the news that Mia is visiting Stars Hollow, Emily goes to see her at the Independence. Somehow, in all the years Lorelai and Rory lived at the inn, Emily and Richard never crossed paths with Mia. Perhaps they didn’t visit very often, or perhaps Mia tactfully made herself scarce whenever they came to see their daughter.
To Emily, Mia is the woman who stole her family and stuck them in a potting shed. It’s hard not to have some sympathy for her feelings, but by the time Lorelai left, she was eighteen and a half, and an adult. A young adult, for sure, but still legally capable of making her own decisions and living where she pleased.
Mia would have had no authority to send her back to Emily, and if she had refused to take Lorelai in, she would have gone somewhere else – perhaps somewhere far more hazardous. The truth is, Emily owes Mia for keeping her daughter and granddaughter safe, but she is too angry and proud to ever thank her.
Mia promises to send Emily a box of photos from when Rory was young, but never asks for her address (nor does Emily offer it). Perhaps Lorelai already gave Mia her parents’ address at some time?
Note that Emily wears deep red, with an artificial black rose on her lapel, as a symbol of her rage and mourning. Mia wears funereal black with a circle of pearls in the same position, as if in sympathy with Emily’s feelings (pearls are often a symbol of tears). Mia wears the colours of bereavement that Emily is not quite ready to admit to; she understands the depth of her loss.
LORELAI: Thanks for doing this. I didn’t want the rain to destroy your beautiful chuppah. And I looked and looked in the yellow pages and I didn’t see a chuppah waterproofer listing anywhere.
Luke comes over because Lorelai is worried the chuppah Luke made for her wedding to Max might get damaged by rain – apparently this is the first time heavy rain has been expected since August? Or else there’s been so much successive rain that Lorelai is worried about its cumulative effect.
I’m not sure how Luke saved the chuppah from getting wet, possibly some sort of oil or coating to protect it from the elements (there’s a bottle of something in his bucket, but you can’t see the label). He also has to superglue the head of a wooden goat decorating the chuppah back on. It’s a nice symbol of how Luke is willing to maintain and protect his relationship with Lorelai.
As part of that, he asks Lorelai about her fight with Sookie, and listens to her fears about starting her own business, and her grief at losing her connection to the Independence. She speaks of the inn as her “memory home”, where both she and Rory took their first steps, saying it means more to her than her parents’ home (what a kick in the teeth for Emily and Richard!).
EMILY: You can be so harsh sometimes, and I just don’t know where it comes from or what I’ve done to deserve it. LORELAI: You did nothing … Mia showed up for a visit and I told her about our plans and she’s talking about selling the Independence Inn and it just wigged me out a little. It’s stupid, I don’t know, but that was our home for so long, mine and Rory’s.
During a pretty standard Friday night argument, Emily and Lorelai actually reach out and express their feelings to each other. (It’s interesting that Emily’s perception that Lorelai can be very harsh is exactly how Lorelai must often feel about Emily).
Unfortunately, whenever Lorelai is honest about how she feels, it often has the effect of hurting Emily. In this case, she has to hear that Lorelai thinks of the Independence Inn as she and Rory’s “home”, and is reminded that it’s the place where Rory grew up. Although she forgives Lorelai for her outburst, and says she understands, she is clearly hurt to hear the emotional attachment Lorelai still has to Mia and the Independence.
In this scene, Lorelai makes it sound as if the Independence was their home for many years, even though they only spent two or three years in the potting shed (as Lorelai said it’s where they lived when Rory was a baby). Possibly as Lorelai proved her worth, Mia was able to move she and Rory into more suitable accommodation in the inn, such as staff quarters. It may be that Richard and Emily only began visiting them at the inn after this point, which is why they never knew about the potting shed days.
RORY: Um Dean, I don’t think you two have met. This is Jess. This is Dean. JESS: Boyfriend? RORY: Of course. JESS: Sorry, you didn’t say.
Naturally Jess knows that Dean is Rory’s boyfriend – he must have seen them walking around town together and smooching outside the market numerous times. He probably targeted a prank at the market because he knows Dean works there.
Jess does enjoy letting Dean know that in the two months since he and Rory met, she never bothered to mention Dean’s name or said she had a boyfriend. If Dean doesn’t treat this as a red flag, then he’s not very bright.
RORY: And now Luke’s a pariah and it’s all because of you! What a shock, you don’t care about any of this. JESS: I didn’t say that. RORY: Go. I’m tired of talking to you.
The day after the town meeting which seems to have arranged specifically for everyone to dump on Jess, Rory talks to Jess about it. But instead of expressing sympathy for how unfairly the town has treated Jess, she attacks Jess for making Luke’s life more difficult.
Jess does seem to listen to her, but appears mostly interested in whether Rory was secretly amused by his pranks. If his plan was to get attention, then it worked spectacularly. The town had a meeting about him, and Rory has been forced to take notice of his behaviour. His plan is working!
Rory’s advice to Jess is basically the same as Lorelai’s on the evening of the dinner party: he’s got a good thing going with Luke, and he shouldn’t mess it up. Somehow, Jess is far more receptive to hearing it from Rory.
Rory’s “Go. I’m tired of talking to you”, is pure Emily Gilmore. It’s the usual way she ends an argument with Lorelai.
Lorelai is so disturbed by Mia’s news about selling the Independence that she begins backtracking on her plans to open her own inn, to Sookie’s dismay. Logically, it doesn’t make much sense – if Mia is going to sell, Lorelai and Sookie should be fast-tracking their plans, not shelving them. Mia even said they should make their move sooner rather than later.
A lot of Lorelai’s angst about the Independence being sold is the thought of her home being changed. Her special relationship with Mia would be severed, and the new owners of the inn could very well be faceless corporate types that turn it into a chain (always treated as some sort of ultimate horror on the Gilmore Girls).
For Sookie, who isn’t so emotionally invested in the Independence, the news is positive. Mia won’t be upset about them starting their own inn, and even if the Independence changes, they have their own lives to lead. She’d prefer the inn didn’t lose all its charm, but she’s sensible enough to realise that they can’t control what happens, and to focus on their own plans.
This difference in how they feel is enough for Lorelai to begin passively-aggressively attacking Sookie, and to shoot down any suggestions she has on how to improve things. Sookie wonders why they don’t buy the Independence, and Lorelai says they can’t afford it – even though she never asked Mia what she would sell the inn for.
Sookie asks if they should look for another inn to buy, and Lorelai says she doesn’t have time to look for a new location (because if someone doesn’t just randomly show you an inn, it’s too much hard work? Did either of them even check the real estate guides for the area?).
Finally, Lorelai begins criticising Sookie as a potential business partner. She is unreliable, not punctual, and keeps changing the menu, which would send them broke. Sookie is naturally devastated, but Lorelai’s criticisms seem like valid concerns. Even Sookie doesn’t have any comeback except to say Lorelai already knew all these things before. She doesn’t make any promises to change or improve, or suggest other ways she is going to support Lorelai to offset her flaws. In fact, Sookie’s flakiness is actually a problem when they do become business partners.
Notice that Lorelai tries to back out of their business deal by saying the “timing isn’t good” – the same weak excuse Rory made to Lorelai when she tried to wriggle out of going to Chilton.
RORY: Hey, I’m gonna go check on Dean. He’s been scraping that outline off the cement for two days now.
You might think that chalk would wash straight off pavement, but actually water only removes most of the chalk. Little particles get into all the tiny crevices and pores in the cement that require vigorous scrubbing. Yes, Taylor is that fussy! 99.5% clean is not good enough!
He also seems to be making Dean clean the pavement in the dark and after the store is closed, which surely can’t be legal, and certainly isn’t practical. I can’t help thinking this episode did not endear Jess to Dean even before jealousy entered the picture.
MIA: Well, I must say that was quite exciting. LORELAI: A little disturbing. I think the whole town needs a field trip.
A field trip is an excursion by a group of people away from their normal environment, most usually used in the context of education (what might be called a school trip or school tour in other countries).
Lorelai seems to be saying the whole town needs to get out of town, so they can learn how other people live. It’s the closest she gets to saying they should try to see things from Jess’ point of view, and she does seem to be bothered by how the town reacted to him.
Taylor and the rest of the town don’t seem able to understand what Luke is saying (he is slightly incoherent with rage), so Lorelai “translates” for him, standing shoulder to shoulder with Luke to signify her support of him. She asks the town to let Luke handle any problems he might be having – if there is actually a problem, which Luke isn’t willing to acknowledge even exists.
She could have asked the town to be more understanding and accepting of Jess, and give him a chance, but I don’t think Luke would have appreciated that.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 