Dave Kisses Lane

LANE: Really? After all this – the marathon hymns, the weak punch, the crabby Koreans, you still wanna go out on a date with me?

[Dave nods, then kisses her] DAVE: I’ve gotta go . . . but I’m gonna call you tomorrow.

Lane and Dave puts into place what I assume to be another step in their plan when Lane says she needs to run after Dave to return his Bible. Did Dave really bring a Bible with him, and purposefully leave it behind, or did Lane prepare and plant the Bible in advance?

Either way, one or the other had the genius idea of having Dave inscribe the Bible: This Bible belongs to God, but is being used by Dave Rygalski. Mrs Kim reads this, and it immediately convinces her that Dave is a solid young Christian man, and allows Lane to go after him.

This episode is the one where Dave and Lane kiss for the first time, and begin dating (Rory kissed and began dating both Dean and Jess around Thanksgiving, too, and it was when Lorelai went on her first date with Max – November, it’s dating month on Gilmore Girls!).

Lane is so excited by what happened that when she pages Rory to tell her all about it, she can only write bible kiss bible, which Rory says is a great band name.

“Where else did you apply?”

LORELAI: Where else did you apply? ….

RORY: Princeton . . . um, Yale.

LORELAI: Yale?

In the early 2000s, it was free to apply to up to three colleges, but after that you had to pay a small application fee for each one. Because of this, it was common to only make three applications, and it looks as if Rory applied to three universities: Harvard, Princeton (where her paternal grandfather went), and Yale (where her maternal grandfather went). She probably didn’t want to ask Lorelai for the money for further applications, knowing that she’d be upset about it, nor did she want to go behind her mother’s back and ask her grandparents for the money.

Lorelai acts as if applying to Yale is a complete shock, even though she knows Rory had an interview there, and she herself read a brochure about it, as if she was trying to get used to the idea. Apparently she needed a lot more time for it to sink in.

“You can’t just apply to one place”

DOUGLAS: You can’t just apply to one place.

NATALIE: Chilton wouldn’t allow that.

LORELAI: Is that true?

RORY: Pretty much.

Chilton would certainly not permit Rory to only apply to Harvard. It is staggering that Lorelai wouldn’t already know this – she did attend a private school, even if she never ended up applying to university. And even if she somehow didn’t know this from her school or her parents (surely Richard and Emily would have talked to her about college?), it’s something which she should have educated herself about if she wanted to help Rory get into Harvard.

It also seems very telling that Rory has never talked this over with Lorelai, but kept her college applications a secret from her mother. It seems that she was so nervous about how Lorelai would react that she never discussed it with her. Lorelai’s overreaction at dinner shows that she was right to be wary about it, but then again, Lorelai probably wouldn’t have overreacted so badly in public if Rory had talked about it with her first.

Orlando

CLAUDE: I have a grandson who lives with his mother in Orlando, you know, he’s going through a very similar thing, poor boy.

EMILY: How do they like Orlando, Claude?

CLAUDE: Well, it’s all Mickey Mouse this and Mickey Mouse that, you know. They want to die.

Orlando, Florida, previously discussed. Claude refers to the fact that Walt Disney World is in the city, which apparently ruins it for Claude’s family (surely they knew this before they moved there?).

Because Claude says my grandson, rather than ours, I assume Monique is his second wife. I’m also assuming that his grandson’s mother is Claude’s daughter-in-law or former daughter-in-law, rather than his daughter, because otherwise he would say so. And I’m further assuming that Claude’s son is separated or divorced, because he doesn’t mention him as also living in Florida.

Lots of assumptions! But it’s letting us fill in quite a bit of back story for ourselves. We might also note that Claude is not spending Thanksgiving with his grandson, and never has – he says he has only seen Thanksgiving in American movies.

Natalie Swope

RICHARD: These are our guests, Natalie and Douglas Swope.

EMILY: You two have met.

LORELAI: Yes, at the auction.

NATALIE: Good to see you again.

The show seems to have committed to the new timeline where Lorelai and Natalie Swope first met at the auction in “Eight O’clock at the Oasis”, supposedly about six weeks previously. However, when Natalie was visiting Emily in “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”, she asked after Lorelai, who she remembered very well even though she hadn’t seen her since before she had Rory (as Lorelai is said to have attended the Christmas party at Richard and Emily’s every year, this in itself doesn’t seem very likely – did Natalie never attend one of the parties?).

We meet Natalie’s husband, Douglas, in this episode. Again, surely he and Lorelai would have met in the original timeline, but obviously not in this one, as he wasn’t at the auction. Douglas is played by John Aniston, the father of Jennifer Aniston. He had roles on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and The West Wing, as well as a long-term connection with Days of Our Lives.

Free Bird

EMILY: I thought a little background music would add a nice touch. He knows every song ever written.

LORELAI: “Free Bird”! Hi Brad.

“Free Bird” or “Freebird” is a song by rock band Lynyrd Skynyrd, written by Allen Collins and Ronnie Van Zan. The song featured on the band’s 1973 debut album. Released as a single in 1974, “Free Bird” got to #19 in the US. A live version of the song got to #38 in 1977. It is Lynyrd Skynyrd’s signature song, the finale during live performances, and their longest song, often going well over 14 minutes when played live.

The lyrics sound like something Lorelai would relate to in regard to her parents:

But if I stay here with you …
Things just couldn’t be the same
‘Cause I’m as free as a bird now
And this bird you cannot change
Oh, oh, oh, oh …
And this bird, you cannot change
Lord knows, I can’t change

Kim Relations at Thanksgiving

LORELAI: Young-Kwan, good to see you. Hee-Jin, hi. Oh, I love your hair. Su-Nam, hi. Hi. Ho-Kyung, Won-Kyu, great to see you, hi.

Young-Kwan – a male name meaning “brave and strong”. In A Year in the Life, one of Lane’s sons is named Kwan, so it is possibly a family name.

Hee-Jin – a female name meaning “precious pearl”.

Su-Nam – a male name which can be translated as “man of a long lifespan”. Lane said she had a cousin called “Nam”, I am not sure if this is the same person or not.

Ho-Kyung – a unisex (?) name which can be translated in several ways, including “bright and respectful”.

Won-Kyu – a unisex (?) name which can be translated as “first and standard”. I have only ever seen it the other way around, Kyu-Won, when it is usually male.

Notice how familiar Lorelai and Rory are with the Kim relatives, knowing their names, and comfortable enough to make polite small talk. They look genuinely happy to see Lorelai and Rory. Although we rarely see it, the Gilmore girls must often attend family gatherings at the Kim household.

The Kim family members are played by Peter Kim, Jennifer Bolton Lee, Janet Song, Kim Kim, Alexis Rhee, Greg Joung Paik, Jae Woo Lee, Sunny Bonner, John D. Kim, and April Moon. None were very experienced at this point, but Rhee and Song have gone on to have long careers, appearing in some well-known and popular productions.

Note: I know nothing about Korean names, so feel free to rip this apart!

“Just because you and Rory broke up doesn’t mean we did”

LORELAI: I hate hiding from people, especially when I don’t wanna hide from them. You were a pal. You were so good to Rory. You were the best first boyfriend a mother could’ve hoped for … It’s okay to keep avoiding me if you want. I just wanted you to know that you don’t need to, okay? Just because you and Rory broke up doesn’t mean we did.

More inappropriate comments from Lorelai to Dean. If Lorelai and Dean “don’t need to break up”, what is it exactly they are not breaking up from? Because if their relationship was Mother of Rory and Rory’s Boyfriend, then yeah, it is going to break up when Rory and Dean do. Otherwise, Lorelai is suggesting that their relationship was something more than this.

It really feels as if Lorelai is trying to keep Dean hanging around for Rory, in hopes that they will get back together. A pretty terrible thing to do to Rory, and certainly unkind to Dean.

“From your mouth to God’s ears”

LORELAI: Well, here’s hoping your cat exposes itself to you soon.

KIRK: From your mouth to God’s ears.

From your mouth to God’s ears is an idiomatic Yiddish saying, indicating that the speaker wishes whatever has been to come true. Although similar such proverbs can be found in the Bible, the expression only seems to exist in Jewish/Yiddish literature from the middle of the 19^th century. The saying is also common in Arabic, and this is possibly its origin.

“It is for us”

JESS: It’s not the first time a couple’s broken up.

RORY: It is for us.

In fact, Rory and Dean broke up before, in “Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers”. However, as they got back together again, Rory might think it doesn’t count, and was only “being on a break”. It’s interesting that she doesn’t share this detail with Jess, as if not wanting to expose the cracks and weaknesses in her prior relationship with Dean.