One Line

This 2000 love song by PJ Harvey plays after Rory tells Dean that she loves him, and while she kisses him. The song begins, “Do you remember the first kiss?”, and goes on to say, “You never left my mind”, as if this describes what Rory has been thinking all this time. The song is one about needing to feel safe, and this security is what Rory seems to have most missed from her relationship with Dean.

One Line is is the fourth track from Harvey’s album Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea, generally considered one of her best works, and the winner of the 2001 Mercury Prize. PJ Harvey was the first female solo artist to win the award, and is the only artist to have to won it twice.

PJ Harvey was in Washington DC on September 11 2001, while still on tour with U2, and watched the terrorist attacks on the Pentagon from her hotel window on the same day she was informed she had won the Mercury Prize for Stories from the City, Stories from the Sea. She naturally found it a very surreal day.

Rory and Dean Reunite

While Rory is arguing with Tristan, Dean appears. He has slowly put together the pieces of the puzzle: Rory came to his house, and made a speech in public about how hard it is express your feelings. From this he correctly deduces that Rory wants to see him, and really does have feelings for him, so he drives to her school to confront her.

Why he didn’t just go to her house is not clear – maybe he was scared to see Lorelai, or word had got around that Luke was spending all his free time, and some time that wasn’t free, hanging around Lorelai’s house. It also seems to have taken him a long time to ponder the two bits of information and arrive at the correct result, as it’s more than a week since the town meeting now.

Luckily security at Chilton is really lax, and nobody tells Dean to get off school property or go find somewhere else to park rather than the main courtyard in front of the building. And luckily Rory happened to come right to where he was waiting, and he even got to rescue her from creepy Tristan.

Rory is glad to see him, and touched to discover that he has a Rory box of memories, the counterpart to her Dean box of memories. She is finally able to say, “I love you“, although she can’t help adding, “… you idiot”, and she kisses Dean.

“The concert’s tonight”

TRISTAN: Are we meeting there, or what?
RORY: What are you talking about?
TRISTAN: The concert’s tonight.

In real life, U2 and PJ Harvey performed at the Civic Center in Hartford on Sunday June 3 2001, so it doesn’t match up with the timeline in Gilmore Girls, but is only two or three weeks out.

During their argument, Tristan makes it clear that he thought PJ Harvey was a man, which lets us know that he has no chance with Rory, either now or in the future.

“We should get married”

MAX: We can’t keep getting this close, just to have something completely derail us again. And frankly there’s only one thing I can think of that could solve it.
LORELAI: Break up.
MAX: Ugh.
LORELAI: Well, I’m not interested in a murder-suicide kind of thing.
MAX: We should get married.

With the honeymoon period already fading, Lorelai and Max are back to squabbling. Max picked up that there was something between Luke and Lorelai (it seemed as if Luke was just about to confess his feelings to Lorelai before Max came in). Then Lorelai got jealous that Max dated other women while they were apart, and told him that she had sex with Rory’s father on her parents balcony.

When Max says only one thing can solve it, Lorelai immediately suggests that they break up. But what Max has in mind is marriage. The fact that the next option on Lorelai’s list was murder-suicide (suicide always seems to be the default option to relationship problems) shows that she was not ready for this at all.

Lorelai says that Max’s proposal was not romantic enough, and only offered as a way to stop them from fighting. She doesn’t mention that they have only been dating a very short time (about three weeks) since they reunited, and that their relationship is based on little more than physical attraction and sexual compatibility. These would be factors of more concern.

“Have a really good summer”

PARIS: Too bad I already filled the spot for music coverage. You know, record reviewing and such. You’d have been perfect for it. I gave the job to Louise.
RORY: Louise owns two CDs.
PARIS: Yeah. Well, gotta go. Have a really good summer.

Paris makes it sound as if it is now the last day of the school year, which I guess it could be if the episode covered more than a month, but that doesn’t explain how Rory is back at school again later in the episode (and doesn’t fit with how this episode is dated in a future season). More likely she means the summer vacation is very soon, or perhaps that regular classes are about to end to make way for the final exams schedule.

As Rory looks back at Paris, Madeline, Louise, who began the school year as her enemies, became her friends, and are now suddenly enemies again at the end of the school year, they stand on the steps in a manner reminiscent of an iconic scene in the film Heathers, previously discussed. It’s a clear sign that they are back to being a gang of “mean girls” again.

Typhoid Mary

RORY: But … what’s wrong with her [Madeline]?
LOUISE: Nothing’s wrong with her, Mary.
RORY: Mary? Oh no, not this Virgin Mary thing again.
LOUISE: Not Virgin. Typhoid.

Typhoid Mary was the name given to the Irish-born American Mary Mallon (1869-1938), the first identified person in the United States to be a carrier of typhoid fever without displaying any symptoms. She is believed to have infected an estimated 51 people, at least three of whom died, while working as a cook. As she used fake identities and was able to give authorities the slip several times, the numbers could be far higher, with some estimating that she may have killed over 50 people.

Mary spent the last 23 years of her life in forced quarantine, as she refused to stop working as a cook, even after being told she was a carrier of disease – she would not accept it. Typhoid Mary is a name given to anyone who unknowingly spreads disease or other undesirable traits.

Louise means that they intend to “quarantine” Rory by ignoring her, showing that she and Madeline are loyal to Paris, even when she is being unfair.

“So don’t wait too long”

RACHEL: So don’t wait too long, okay?
LUKE: To what?
RACHEL: To tell her [Lorelai]. (Rachel leaves.)

This would be great advice – except that because Luke got back with his ex-girlfriend Rachel just as Lorelai was going mad with loneliness, Lorelai was pushed into the arms of her ex-boyfriend Max, and now Luke can’t tell her how he feels.

So this is advice that Luke would have really appreciated about seven weeks ago, except he blew that by getting back with Rachel. And he only really discovered how he felt about Lorelai because of getting back with Rachel, and Rachel telling him how he feels. It’s great, yet essentially useless, advice at the moment.

Goodbye Rachel, we hardly knew ye, and now you’re gone forever.

Max at the Town Meeting

LORELAI: Are you sure you wanna go to this thing?
MAX: You’ve been talking about these town meetings for months. I’ve got to see one for myself.

With Max attending a town meeting in Stars Hollow with Lorelai and Rory, you can see that he is trying to adapt to her world, and become a member of her family. We know this was his idea, because he says that he felt that he had to attend a meeting since Lorelai talked about them all the time. Lorelai appears rather reluctant, as if she is not sure about having Max become part of her everyday life so quickly.

Town meetings seem to be held on the second Thursday of the month, so this could be Thursday 10 May.

Clara

RORY: What’s your name?
CLARA: Clara.

Clara (Scout Taylor-Compton) is Dean’s younger sister. Dean earlier alluded to having “sisters”, and Clara is one of them, although we never directly hear of any other. She seems to be around eight or nine years old, since she is still in the Brownies.

It is very strange that Rory has apparently never been to Dean’s house before, or met his family, even though they live in a small town and dated for several months. It’s even odder because Dean knows her mother very well, and visits her house often.

It makes her look like a detached and rather selfish girlfriend, that she expects Dean to always come to her, and to fit in with her life, rather than both of them making an effort. Or perhaps Dean has rather weirdly kept her away from his family, in which case she seems to have passively accepted it rather than argued against it.

Notice that the Forester’s front door has a friendly “Welcome” sign on the front door decorated with a red rose – a sure sign that Dean would welcome Rory’s visit, and her love, if only she knew.

Milk and Cookies

LUKE: It’s just a little weird having her [Rachel] in my place.
LORELAI: I thought that’s what you wanted.
LUKE: It was. Is. I’m just … I’ve just been living alone since forever. And I just got used to putting the milk someplace in the fridge and finding it in the exact same spot. You know what I mean?
LORELAI: Oh, we don’t even keep milk in the house.
LUKE: Well, then cookies.
LORELAI: Cookies almost never make it out of the car.

Luke admits that having Rachel back in his life isn’t what he thought he wanted – even he notices that he puts wanting her in the past tense before quickly correcting himself.

It is absolute nonsense that Lorelai and Rory don’t keep milk and cookies in the house. We have often seen both in their kitchen, and the milk is especially needed because they drink so much coffee.