BOOTSY: This goes way beyond the Jess matter, Taylor. Luke’s been on my case since the first grade when he wrongfully accused me of sabotaging a clay imprint that he made of his hand. LORELAI: Ooh! Think hard, was he dressed like Sulu?
Lieutenant Hikaro Sulu is a character in Star Trek, played by George Takei in the original series. He is the ship’s physicist, third officer, and senior helmsman. He wears the same uniform as everyone else, so I’m not sure what Lorelai means about “dressed like Sulu”, unless she means “dressed like a Star Trek crew member”.
We now learn that as well as having an antagonistic relationship with Taylor, Luke also has a long-standing problem with Bootsy, his former classmate, going back to first grade. How many enemies does Luke really need?
LORELAI: I heard [Jess] controls the weather and wrote the screenplay to Glitter.
Glitter is a 2001 romantic drama musical film directed by Vondie Curtis Hall, and starring Mariah Carey, previously discussed. The screenplay was written by Kate Lanier. The film is about a club dancer who aspires to be a professional singer, and falls in love with a nightclub DJ who helps her in her career.
The film came out on September 21, so Lorelai would have seen it in the cinema only recently. It was heavily panned by critics, with Mariah Carey’s acting efforts considered amateurish, and it failed at the box office. It has been called the worst film ever made. Even before the film was released, Mariah Carey was hospitalised with a breakdown, much later revealed to be bipolar disorder. Carey herself expressed a lot of regret over, and disappointment in, the film.
Amy Sherman-Palladino was one of the many people who hated Glitter, which is probably why it gets mentioned here as Lorelai’s joke about the “evil crimes” of Jess. Lorelai doesn’t like Jess, but even she thinks the town is going too far in their treatment of him. She has the good sense not to offer her own issues with Jess (stole beer, talked back to her, prowled around her daughter), as grist for the mill at the meeting.
MIA: Not one thing to recommend hiring her. Just that … how do I put it and remain a lady? … that ‘who cares’ look in her eyes, so I gave her any job. The other maids hated you. LORELAI: Yeah, well they were all so slow. MIA: You were special.
This helps explain why Mia hired Lorelai, even though she had no experience or references. Not only a vulnerable figure, a teenaged mother with a baby, but one who didn’t want to be pitied or beg for help: only to be given the chance to earn enough for herself and her daughter.
Lorelai repaid Mia by being a hard-working and enthusiastic employee – so much so that the other maids were resentful of her. I suspect that years spent watching Emily’s maids get castigated and fired for minor errors gave Lorelai the motivation to pay attention to detail. This good attitude and work ethic no doubt soon led to promotions, raises, and bonuses at the Independence.
MIA: I miss you. Hey, do you realize it was fifteen years ago almost to the day? LORELAI: Yes it was. RORY: What was? MIA: To the day when this skinny little teenage girl showed up at the inn. She had this tiny little thing in her arms. LORELAI: A little thing named Rory.
The date appears to be 31st October 2001, although there is no mention of it being Halloween. Presumably the parties and celebrations will be in the evening, offscreen. If it is fifteen years, almost to the day, since Lorelai and Rory arrived in Stars Hollow, then it would have been in late October or early November 1986, when Rory was two, and Lorelai eighteen and a half.
In 1986, Halloween was a Friday. If Lorelai arrived in Stars Hollow that weekend, then she could have arrived on Saturday the 1st of November. The connection with Halloween gives Lorelai’s entrance into Stars Hollow a magical feel, as if forces beyond our ken were at work to bring the Gilmore girls to this starlit little town. That weekend would have also been the Autumn Festival, which remains a touchstone for the Gilmore girls throughout the original series and into the revival.
Perhaps more interestingly, they came to Stars Hollow just days after Rory’s second birthday. It makes you wonder what occurred to drive Lorelai to flee her parents’ home, because she doesn’t seem to have made a planned, measured, or calculated approach to running away. The show makes it sound as if she grabbed Rory and a few essentials, jumped in the car and drove at random until she found somewhere that would take her in.
Although I think it is safe to assume that things had always been fraught with her parents, there must have been a final straw around the time of Rory’s birthday which triggered her sudden flight. Did Richard and Emily shower Rory with luxurious gifts, so that Lorelai began to fear they might buy Rory’s love or make her spoiled?
Was there an extravagant party (shades of Rory’s sweet sixteen), where even a baby Rory was being pressured to perform to exacting Gilmore standards, did Emily become so demanding that every detail of the party be perfect until Rory was stressed and crying?
All just speculation, but fascinating to imagine. The seeds of Lorelai’s mistrust of allowing her parents near Rory must have sprouted somewhere, and we know it began early.
In this episode, we meet Mia Halloway, the never-before-seen-or-heard-about owner of the Independence Inn, and therefore Lorelai, Sookie, and Michel’s boss. Her unannounced appearance leads to a certain amount of flustered rushing about, but Mia hasn’t come to inspect them – this is more of a social visit.
Mia is cast in the role of fairy godmother and kindly innkeeper, the woman who rescued Lorelai and Rory when they ran away from Richard and Emily’s house. It is clear that the Gilmore girls love her, and see her as a substitute mother/grandmother. They seem much closer to her than they are to Emily, their actual mother/grandmother, and feel freer in the way they express themselves and joke around. Mia conveniently faded out of the picture before Lorelai and Rory became a regular part of Emily’s life again … there would probably have been some friction otherwise.
We’re meant to see Mia as a sort of fantasy mother figure (Mama Mia!), with all the loving fun stuff, and none of the difficult painful stuff attached. The trouble is, I can’t help thinking that this is the woman who put teenaged Lorelai and her baby to live in the potting shed, when we now know they arrived in the depths of autumn, already very cold in Connecticut!
I think the issue is that the scriptwriters (including Amy Sherman-Palladino) wrote the potting shed as some quaint, adorable little wooden cottage with rosebud wallpaper and curtains at the window, and the scenery people produced … well, a pretty standard corrugated metal garden shed, not possible to put wallpaper on, and obviously utterly freezing in winter, particularly at night (and very hot in summer).
It seems more like something the wicked stepmother would have come up with for Cinderella, not the fairy godmother. Another issue is that Gilmore Girls appears to be set in a fantasy TV Connecticut where it never gets any colder than southern California.
We only learn that Mia’s surname is Halloway from the credits. Given the time of year Lorelai and Rory first arrived in Stars Hollow, the connection with Halloween is made very clear, as if Mia herself is the embodiment of supernatural forces bringing them to their correct destination.
A fun connection is that actress Elizabeth Franz was born in Akron, Ohio, the same place Richard Gilmore is sent to for work in this episode.
POLICEWOMAN: Everyone’s accounted for Taylor. It looks like this is just an elaborate prank. TAYLOR: But it looks so real. Where’d they get the police tape? POLICEWOMAN: Kids have their ways.
TAYLOR: Who’d be depraved enough to pull a stupid prank like this? POLICEWOMAN: Hard to say. [Rory sees Jess standing across the street smirking as he watches the crowd]
The police officer reassures Taylor that the chalk outline and police tape is just a prank. Somehow, she knows that a child or teenager is responsible. To be fair, Rory also knows – Jess isn’t exactly being subtle here. The police officer seems to be remarkably blasé about someone stealing police tape from the police station. The bizarre way the police behave makes me think that they were in on the prank with Jess, either overtly or tacitly. It’s actually the only way this scene makes any sense.
Once again, one of Jess’ pranks is connected with Rory – it takes place outside the grocery store where her boyfriend works, at a time when he’s doing a shift, so that there’s a good chance of her seeing it. It seems to be a calculated move to get her attention and show off to her, as well as encroaching on her boyfriend’s territory.
In line with the autumnal colours of this episode, Jess wears a dark red tee shirt – Dean is also wearing a red sweater in a bright tone, as if Dean and Jess are the light and dark attractants for Rory (or the public and the private). Red is love and passion, but also aggression and danger, like a red rag to a bull. Both Jess and Dean wear grey sleeveless jackets over their red tops, as if in partial concealment of their feelings. There is nothing on their sleeves – yet.
Jess’s top is a vintage 1980s tee shirt with a Tasman Empire Airways Ltd logo on it – the former name of New Zealand’s flag carrier airline (since 1965, Air New Zealand Ltd). The show keeps connecting Jess with travel, journeys, and flight.
The fire truck going past is also bright red; in fact notice how many things in this scene bear the colour red. It’s a callback to when Rachel was telling Lorelai about her distress in discovering Luke’s romantic preference for Lorelai with the fire department in the background. It’s another painful love triangle situation marked with sinful scarlet, bloody red.
The poster in the background announces another Autumn Festival, nearing the anniversary of Rory and Dean’s first kiss. This suggests that the date is Tuesday 30th October, the day before Halloween. Yes, I know it looks bright and sunny, but that’s because we’re in TV Land, not the real Connecticut!
Does the big number 7 on the fire truck mean that Jess is blessed with luck in his endeavour? Or does it represent the seven days of the week, and the great wheel of time?. It might be a sign that Jess’ time has come. So much can change in just one year.
NOTE: Thank you to reader M for pointing out that the red vehicle is a fire truck or fire engine, not a bus as I incorrectly stated!
Worried about the interest Ava showed in Luke at the fashion show, Lorelai tells Luke the next day that she’d prefer he didn’t date Ava, because it would interfere with their friendship, and any possible relationship she might have with Ava via the Booster Club. It’s an almost exact swap for the time Luke advised Lorelai not to date Ian Jack, the Chilton dad she met on the first day she took Rory to school, both taking place over the diner counter. (Ava and Ian even have the same number of letters!).
Luke, quite rightly, tells Lorelai to butt out, because he can date whoever he likes. He then explains that he wasn’t arranging a date with Ava anyway, just giving her directions back to Hartford.
Although both wind up indignant at the other, they must also feel relieved. Lorelai that Luke wasn’t interested in Ava after all, and Luke having been given confirmation that Lorelai does have some feelings for him.
RORY: This is the headmaster’s office. How did she get the keys? I’m sure he didn’t give them to her. PARIS: Stop it. We are making very important social contacts here. RORY: Hey, I’m not looking for social contacts. I have friends. I’m fine. PARIS: Well, how nice it must be to be you. Maybe someday I’ll stumble into a Disney movie and suddenly be transported into your body, and after living there awhile, I’ll finally realise the beauty of myself. But until that moment, I’m going to go in there and I’m going to become a Puff. Now get out of my way.
During the show, Paris several times refers to Rory being like a Disney princess – something which has surely helped fuel all that Rory/Paris fanfiction! Rory is also referred to as another Disney character a few times – Bambi.
It is at this point that Rory, who seems to be joining the Puffs almost by default, good-naturedly but without being particularly interested (like playing golf or making her debut), has her first serious doubts about what she’s let herself in for. She knows the Puffs are doing something wrong, but is unable to stand up for herself against Paris and the other girls.
Rory doesn’t have many options to escape at this point. She’s half an hour from home, in the middle of the night, in her pyjamas, with no transport, and no money for a payphone. There was no Plan B in case things went wrong. Rory seems to be hoping Paris, who at least lives in Hartford, will be equally horrified and take charge of the situation. Unfortunately, Paris is determined to be Puffed.
This is the book Rory is reading on the couch when Lorelai gets home from the fashion show.
Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter is a 1958 memoir by French author, existentialist philosopher, and feminist, Simone de Beauvoir, previously mentioned. It’s a beautifully-written, intimate portrait of her life growing up in a privileged, sheltered, upper middle class French family, rebelling as an adolescent against their conventions, and striking out on her own with intellectual ambition and a ceaselessly questioning, philosophical mind.
Rory often reads Lorelai’s books (they both have an interest in female biography and memoir), and this feels like one Lorelai would have been drawn to. She and de Beauvoir both had the same urge to escape a wealthy, claustrophobic background (Lorelai had Rory as part of her escape, while de Beauvoir had Sartre), and Lorelai spoke of always wishing she could use the word existentialist in a sentence.
The title of the memoir is ironic, but Rory really is a very dutiful daughter to Lorelai. Later on, she too will rebel against her mother.
EMILY: Funny isn’t it? LORELAI: What’s funny? EMILY: How nicely you seem to be fitting into the world that you ran away from. Well, goodnight Lorelai. Congratulations.
Emily is given a glimpse into the type of life Lorelai might have had, if she hadn’t had Rory at such a young age. She was a popular teenager, and is capable of making herself popular in the world of Hartford society as a grown woman. Emily’s efforts to make Lorelai and Rory fit in with her own world are often surprisingly successful, which makes it harder for her to comprehend why they don’t really want that life for themselves.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 