Howl and Other Poems

The book which Jess secretly took from Rory’s bookshelves, even though she had earlier offered to lend it to him.

It’s a poetry collection by American Beat poet Allen Ginsberg, first published in 1956. It contains his most famous poem, “Howl”, a biographical poem originally inspired by a terrifying peyote vision. The publisher of the book, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, another Beat poet, was subsequently arrested and charged with obscenity, but found not guilty at his 1957 trial.

Jess now reveals that even though he said he didn’t read “much”, he has read Howl and Other Poems about forty times. He smoothly implies that “much” is a relative term, after all.

He has also written notes in the margin for Rory to read. The viewer will now either a) be horrified that he took her book without asking and defaced it, or b) sigh over the fact that he took the opportunity to bond with Rory over literature, sharing his innermost thoughts. It is definitely intended as an intimate, seductive move.

It’s interesting to wonder what thoughts Jess had about “Howl”. It’s an intense poem about madness, rebellion, drug-taking, and sex, which could lead to some interesting observations. If Jess knew a lot about the Beats, he might also be able to pick out those parts of the poem which were taken from real life experiences.

Then again, much of the poem is set in New York, and possibly Jess simply compared his own experiences in the locations mentioned. I can definitely imagine Jess taking a day or a weekend to visit all the places around New York in the poem.

Luke Freaks Out to Lorelai About Jess

After pushing Jess into a lake, Luke goes straight to Lorelai and admits she was right – he is completely out of his depth, and has no idea has to raise a troubled teenage boy. Lorelai immediately assures Luke that he can do it, but it’s going to take more than buying some new sheets to make it work. Luke did act as though just providing Jess with a safe and stable home environment was going to be enough to change his attitude.

Lorelai doesn’t tell Luke what to do, so she has learned one valuable lesson from their fight. Instead she asks Luke what he is going to do about Jess. It is his choice how he raises Jess. Their fight is made up when they both acknowledge they were wrong, and the end is signalled when Luke tells Lorelai she is allowed back at the diner.

Jess the Thief

In this episode, Luke is dismayed to learn Jess has been indulging in petty theft. Is this the “trouble” he was headed for in New York, or is this something Jess is doing for attention, in defiance of being sent to Stars Hollow, or out of boredom?

Or is it a sort of one-sided joke or prank, where he fulfils the image the town has of him as a criminal by performing mildly illegal acts that do little harm, just to see how upset the townsfolk will become?

Another possibility: Jess only seems to start stealing after he meets Rory. Is he trying to make himself a notorious figure, spoken of everywhere, so she cannot ignore or forget him? After all, there’s no such thing as bad publicity …

It’s also interesting to see where Jess steals from in this episode. He is first caught stealing beer from Lorelai’s fridge. Next he steals a few coins from the bridge repair fund – the same community project that Lorelai and Rory worked on (in a town as gossipy as Stars Hollow, it wouldn’t be hard for the quiet, watchful Jess to learn of that). Then he steals a garden gnome from Babette, Lorelai and Rory’s next door neighbour. Later it transpires that the first thing he took without asking was one of Rory’s books.

The thefts don’t seem to have random victims – they are all connected with Lorelai and Rory. Are they a bit of payback for Lorelai, for trying to give him advice, or are they are an attempt to keep himself within Rory’s orbit, by fair means or foul?

Max and Rory

RORY: Do you ever regret the fact that you didn’t become a clown?
MAX: I don’t really believe in regrets. All my experiences, even the ones that didn’t turn out the way I wanted them to, I firmly believe they were all worth it.
[Rory turns off the tape recorder]
RORY: I just want you to know, I really wanted you to be my stepfather.
MAX: I just want you to know, I really wanted to be your stepfather.
[They’re silent for a few seconds, then Rory turns the tape recorder back on]

This scene allows Rory and Max to get the closure they need, because Lorelai’s method of dumping her groom by running away days before the wedding didn’t allow for any. With typical self-centredness, Lorelai never seemed to have considered how awkward she would make that for Max and Rory, who have to continue seeing each other and working together at Chilton. Perhaps Headmaster Charleston isn’t so unreasonable for frowning on teacher-parent relationships.

It’s believable that Max wanted to be Rory’s stepfather – he had a big fight with Lorelai when he thought she was shutting him out of Rory’s life, and was quick to offer Rory comfort and advice when he knew she was going through a breakup with her boyfriend. It’s less convincing that Rory particularly wanted Max as her stepfather though, as she showed little sign of that when he was spending the weekend with she and Lorelai. It was only after Lorelai dumped Max that she was suddenly upset about it. Perhaps she came to realise what she was missing out on.

Max’s statement that he doesn’t regret any life experience, even those which didn’t work out, is a very graceful way to let Rory (and the viewer) know that he bears no ill will towards Lorelai, and that he will essentially be alright.

Nick and Nora, Sid and Nancy

LORELAI: Rory, this was a bad one, okay? This was not Nick and Nora, this was Sid and Nancy, and I’m not going in there.

Nick and Nora Charles (William Powell and Myrna Loy) are the protagonists of the 1934 comedy-mystery film, The Thin Man, based on the 1934 novel of the same name by Dashiell Hammett. They’re a wealthy married couple who enjoy drinking and flirtatious banter, with plenty of free time to solve mysteries. It was the first time in a Hollywood film a married couple were shown still able to enjoy sex, romance, and adventure together. The film was such a success, it spawned five sequels, and in the 1950s was made into a television series starring Peter Lawford and Phyllis Kirk.

Sid and Nancy is a 1986 British biographical film, starring Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb in the title roles. The film examines the destructive drug-fuelled relationship between Sid Vicious, the bassist for British punk band The Sex Pistols, and his American girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, which ended in tragedy when Sid stabbed Nancy, either accidentally or deliberately.

Lorelai is saying that she and Luke weren’t just having their usual comic flirting, but actually went for each other with a genuine intention to hurt each other emotionally. She clearly sees herself as the main victim in their interchange, and this is the origin of this episode’s title.

Luke and Lorelai’s Fight

LUKE: Oh, you have a kid, so you know everything, right?
LORELAI: I have a kid, so yeah, I know a little more than you do.
LUKE: You know, you ever think maybe you just got lucky with Rory? I mean, you did get pregnant at sixteen. That doesn’t show the greatest decision making skills, now does it?

Luke is furious to discover that Lorelai has taken it upon herself to start lecturing Jess without him being present, and thus doesn’t take on board the serious information that Lorelai is giving him – that Jess stole beer from her fridge. Maybe Luke should have listened to her, but on the other hand, Lorelai is too angry and upset to handle it very tactfully.

I think Lorelai is correct that Luke could avail himself of what parenting advice she has to offer – she has raised a fairly well-behaved, academically successful child, after all. She must know something about children and teenagers. (And she got pregnant at fifteen, not sixteen).

However, I think Luke has a point that she has got a bit lucky with Rory, who’s a fairly easygoing, compliant child (she takes after Christopher and his mother in that regard, rather than Lorelai). If Lorelai had had a kid more like herself, rebellious and oppositional, particularly a boy, she might have found being a young single mother rather more challenging.

This is the beginning of Jess putting a strain on the relationship between Luke and Lorelai, and serves as yet another obstacle to them getting together (Jess sharing a one-bedroom apartment with Luke would surely make that a bit problematic, even if there were no other issues).

The Breakfast Club

LUKE: Where’s Jess?
LORELAI: Outside, working on his Breakfast Club audition.

The Breakfast Club is a 1985 American coming of age teen comedy, written and directed by John Hughes, in his directorial debut. The story involves five teenagers from different high school cliques who spend a Saturday together in all-day detention, writing on essay on “who you think you are”. In the process, the students share secrets, bond, and learn more about themselves and each other.

The Breakfast Club was a box-office success. It is considered to be a quintessential 80s film, one of Hughes’ most memorable works, and one of the best teen films of all time.

When Lorelai is talking about Jess, she is probably specifically thinking of the character John Bender (Judd Nelson), a rebellious punk known as “The Criminal”. He is the only one of the students to stand up to the harsh Vince-Principal. During the course of the film, John becomes close to a pretty, popular girl called Claire Standish known as “The Princess” (Molly Ringwald), and they share a kiss. Jess has only spoken to Rory for a few minutes, but already the genre-savvy Lorelai is worried they will have a natural good girl/bad boy attraction.

Jess and Lorelai’s Fight

LORELAI: Ugh, Jess, let me give you a little advice. The whole ‘my parents don’t get me’ thing, I’ve been there.
JESS: You have, huh?

Lorelai follows Jess again, and for the third time finds him doing something in her house on the sly. This time, it’s taking a beer from her fridge.

Lorelai handles this awkward situation rather neatly, and it’s only after Jess balks at coming in to dinner and mocks her cosy small-town life (“Well geez, Ms. Gilmore … that sounds plum crazy”) that she starts handing out unsolicited advice. It’s (mostly) well-intentioned and she is genuinely trying to help Luke if not Jess, but it goes down very badly.

It’s hard not to have some sympathy with Jess here, because Lorelai is very patronising saying that “she’s been there”. Yes, she was a smartass, misunderstood, and misbehaving teenager like Jess, but their lives were hardly parallel.

Lorelai grew up in a wealthy, privileged household, her father didn’t leave them, her mother wasn’t unreliable and impractical. Nor did her mother give up on her and basically throw her out to live with a relative she barely knows in a small town hours away from her home. In fact, it was Lorelai who rejected her parents and ran to the sanctuary of Stars Hollow.

Lorelai has the rare experience of taking someone on who is intelligent enough to match her in wits, and confident enough to stand up to her. It obviously comes as a shock, and by the end of the argument, Jess has made a crude yet insightful attack on the possible sexual relationship between she and Luke, and Lorelai has sunk to playground levels of retaliation, showing that she hasn’t grown up much since being a teenager.

It is Lorelai who retreats inside while giving a parting shot, so it’s round one to Jess, but Lorelai gets the last word.

NOTE: Edited with the kind assistance of helpful reader Daniel A Huth, who stopped me from imagining a fridge which wasn’t there.

“Hooked on phonics”

JESS: [looking at bookshelf] Wow, aren’t we hooked on phonics.

Hooked on Phonics is a brand of educational materials. First marketed in 1987, it was originally designed to teach reading through a system of phonetics.

Jess could have just said, “You must like reading”, or, “It’s great to meet someone else who’s into good literature”. But instead he makes a snarky, superior-sounding comment.

Hey, a snarky quip using a slightly out-of-date cultural reference that implies he’s smarter and better than most people? He sounds just like Lorelai! (It’s almost like the same people are writing their dialogue). Naturally this resonates with Rory. She just met her mother in teenage boy form, and will doubtless find him irresistible. See the entry on Freud.

Rory Meets Jess

While Jess is in the kitchen being introduced (he never bothers to greet Sookie and Jackson), he notices that Rory’s bedroom door is open, and just as he quietly slipped into the living room without being invited, he now wanders into Rory’s room. She is sitting with her back to the door, so she doesn’t immediately know he is there. As with the photos, he gets a chance to check Rory out without her knowing, and before she can look at him.

There is a parallel with Rory’s boyfriend Dean at this point. Both Dean and Jess were invited to the Gilmore home for dinner by Lorelai, and both of them went into Rory’s bedroom without asking, as a sign of their interest in her. Dean had been asked as a date for Rory, and they had previously kissed, but Jess has never even met Rory before. It’s a bold and presumptuous move to explore her personal space.

In case there is any doubt what’s going on here, Rory is wearing a cardigan decorated with pinkish-red love hearts, made to look as if they are the fluttering petals of flowers (fluttering heart, hearts and flowers!). The cardigan is buttoned up though, to show that this flower has not yet opened to Jess. Meanwhile, Jess has a large number 2 on the back of his (bad boy) hoodie. The show uses costume a lot to make a point, and in this instance, it seems impossible not to mention it.

Once again, Lorelai follows Jess to see what he’s up to, and this time she isn’t quite so smiling when she asks both of them to come to dinner. I think Jess can now count himself as being on Lorelai’s radar.