CHRISTOPHER: Sherry’s pregnant … She just found out and she called me as soon as she found out, and that was her calling to tell me that she found out.
Christopher comes to see Lorelai who is standing on the bridge, waiting for him (another mention of bridges as significant emotional spaces). He tells her that Sherry has called him on his cell phone to tell him she has just discovered she is pregnant – I presume she used a home pregnancy testing kit, as it’s a Sunday.
Oddly enough, Lorelai says, “Women all over the world will line up to see that tiny little woman fat”. Sherry isn’t a tiny little woman, she’s only a few inches shorter than Lorelai, and Lorelai is slim as well. It makes Sherry sound like a stick-thin five foot tall waif, which she isn’t. Not to mention the bizarre thinking that equates being pregnant with being “fat”.
Apparently all the terrible problems Christopher and Sherry were having were not enough to stop them from having (unprotected?) sex. It does beg the question, did Sherry even know they were supposedly having problems and Christopher was thinking of moving out? Maybe all she did was go away on business for a month or so, and Christopher used that as an opportunity to weasel his way back in to Lorelai’s life, telling her some story about how he and Sherry were practically broken up.
As a huge slap in the face to Lorelai, Christopher is going back to Sherry because she’s having a baby. Christopher was never around while Rory was growing up, and he’s apparently never forgiven himself (zero evidence of that, but whatever). He can’t make that mistake again, so it’s back to his girlfriend that he doesn’t love, so he can be a father to their child. (This is actually a terrible basis for a relationship).
It doesn’t make any sense, because he could still be a good father to his second child without going back to Sherry (and I bet while telling her nothing of what he’s been up to with Lorelai in the interim). For that matter, he could have been a good father to Rory while not being with Lorelai all this time.
Notice that when Rory questions why her dad has a work phone call on a Sunday, he responds, “Hey, I have a lot of responsibility now”. Little did he know how true those words would turn out to be!
PARIS: Oh, relax. I won’t call you on Prince William’s precious phone again.
Prince William (born 1982), member of the British royal family, and since birth, second in the line of succession to the British throne. In 2002, Prince William was enrolled at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and considered one of the most eligible young bachelors in the world. (By the next year, he was dating fellow student Catherine Middleton, who would eventually become his wife).
Paris never says how she got Dean’s cell phone number. Presumably she had a snoop at Rory’s pager some time.
We get to see guests gathering for Sookie and Jackson’s wedding, which is being held at the Independence Inn. Everything looks pretty and romantic, with lots of colourful spring flowers everywhere. However, there’s plenty of quirky little details to provide some fun, including a sing-along around the piano.
Sookie and Jackson are going to be married under the chuppah that Luke made for Lorelai and Max’s wedding. So if you’ve been unhappy about the chuppah being relegated to a piece of garden decoration, here you go – it’s finally fulfilling its purpose. Decorated with flowers, it really does look very nice. Hopefully someone shows Luke a photo.
You might also notice that the minister performing the wedding ceremony is wearing a tee-shirt with a photo of Sookie and Jackson on it. They clearly went a little nutso with the photocopying from Jackson’s cousin. The minister isn’t either of the two ministers we’ve already seen in Stars Hollow, and is possibly from Jackson’s home town, as his family seemed to be more concerned about the religious conventions being followed (such as getting the children christened).
Some fans are disappointed that we never get to see Sookie and Jackson get married, or even walk down the aisle. However, the show is about the Gilmore girls, and everything is focused on their dramas, not that of side characters.
Luke goes upstairs to his apartment and finds Jess there. Luke’s first question is how Jess got in, because the only entrance is through the diner and up the stairs, and nobody saw Jess come up. Either he was able to time his arrival so that everyone was busy and distracted just as he got there, or he was able to gain entrance by climbing into an upstairs window somehow – neither of which sounds very plausible.
Jess tells Luke that although things are fine with his mother, and he’s not in any trouble, he wants to come back to Stars Hollow and live with Luke. Luke says that things will have to be different, and Jess agrees. Luke informs Jess that Rory and Dean are still together, and to leave them be. Learning that Rory is at Sookie’s wedding, Jess says he needs to take a walk. Rory came all the way to New York to see him, and it looks as if Jess has returned the favour by coming all the way to Stars Hollow to see her …
Note that Luke doesn’t seem to have received an invitation to Sookie and Jackson’s wedding. Perhaps Sookie has left him off the guest list in support of her bridesmaid, Lorelai, since he and Lorelai are still in an argument. Or perhaps he turned the invitation down, pleading work as an excuse, since he is running the diner as usual.
Based on having a bout of really great sex, Lorelai and Christopher decide they should be a family now (boy, that must’ve been some sex they had!). Lorelai says, “This thing with Sherry is so recent” – mm, so recent it’s not actually over, Lorelai! But when you can downgrade someone’s relationship into a “thing”, I guess it’s easier to justify.
They say it’s the best thing for Rory, but I don’t think either of them are really thinking about Rory too much at all. Neither of them discuss how they will break the news to Rory, and Lorelai doesn’t stress to Christopher that he can’t let Rory down any more, or give her a few minutes of phone time once a week and call it fatherhood.
While Christopher has always been trying to get Lorelai for himself (even getting a girlfriend was apparently part of his plan to win Lorelai back), Lorelai seems to be going along with this because she’s unhappy without Luke’s friendship, and because watching her best friend prepare for marriage to the man of her choice has left her feeling even lonelier. It’s not a great basis for a relationship, let alone a family.
Rory references the Inferno, the first part of Italian writer Dante Alighieri’s 14th century epic poem, the Divine Comedy. The Inferno describes Dante’s journey through Hell, guided by the ancient Roman poet, Virgil. In the poem, Hell is described as nine concentric circles of torment located within the Earth.
It is not certain from this whether Rory has actually read the book, although it doesn’t seem unlikely that she has. There are circles of Hell in the poem, not “rungs”, and the fourth circle of Hell is for the miserly, the hoarders of wealth, and those who squandered it – not people gloating over relationship break ups (those are dealt with in the next part, the Purgatorio). However, that could very easily be a bit of artistic licence on Rory’s part.
Lorelai possibly gives away that she hasn’t read the poem when she says her feet won’t get cold. In fact, the final circle of Hell is a huge frozen lake. Hell does actually freeze over. The frozen lake is reserved for the traitors, who remain trapped in the ice, and in the very centre of the lake is Lucifer, who was a traitor to Heaven.
Jackson is dismayed when his father hands him a kilt to wear to his wedding on the weekend. It’s a family tradition, and both Jackson’s father and grandfather were married in kilts, suggesting that the Belleville family have Scottish heritage. (Which made more sense when Jackson’s surname was Melville, which is a Scottish surname, while Belleville is French – although there is a historical relationship between France and Scotland, so it’s not unrealistic either).
I am not able to identify Jackson’s tartan – it looks most like a Buchanan Clan tartan, but I suspect it’s fictional.
Note that Jackson’s father is played by the real life father of Jackson Douglas, the actor who plays Jackson Belleville.
PARIS: Harvard loves this kind of crap. Being vice president is just one more thing to put you ahead of the rest of the hundreds of thousands of straight A students who are applying for the same spot you are. Think about it. You say no, then comes the day when the letter from Harvard arrives. They’ve turned you down. Enjoy Connecticut State, sucker.
There isn’t actually a Connecticut State University in real life. There’s a Central Connecticut State University in New Britain (about half an hour from Hartford), an Eastern Connecticut State University in Willimantic (about an hour from Hartford), a Western Connecticut State University in Danbury (about 40 minutes from Washington Depot), and a Southern Connecticut State University in New Haven (where Yale is).
It’s hard to know which of them, if any, Paris could be talking about, as the location of Stars Hollow kept moving about, but I suppose the most likely candidates are Central, which would be closer to Stars Hollow than Chilton, and Southern, which is in the city where Rory ends up attending college. Both of them are considered only average as educational institutions, and easy to get into. Even a Rory who failed to get into Harvard could probably aim higher.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 