[Rory is studying on the couch as Lorelai walks into the room with two mugs]
LORELAI: Coffee and Ovaltine.
Ovaltine (originally Ovomaltine), a chocolate milk powder which can either be made into a hot or cold drink. It was developed in Switzerland in 1904, and quickly gained international appeal. By 1915 it was being manufactured in the US, among other countries. The drink is particularly popular in Britain, and the British version is also imported in the US.
It seems that Rory doesn’t have coffee before bed, the way Lorelai does. She may have trouble getting to sleep if she drinks coffee late at night, or the Ovaltine is a comforting childhood ritual.
RORY: I wanna say that I’m sorry … For treating you the way I did. For doing all the things you said I did. I am so, so sorry. It’s all my fault. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. You were the most amazing boyfriend in the world. You made me so happy. You made me laugh, you made my mother like you, you were nice to my friends, you protected me, you even came with me to that stupid debutante ball … I really did love you. Please believe that … I don’t wanna talk about him. I just came to tell you that I’m truly sorry that I hurt you, and that I’m going to miss you so much, and I just hope that someday you won’t hate me anymore.
DEAN: I hope so, too.
Rory apologises to Dean, taking complete responsibility for the relationship failing. Dean, of course, lets her, as a sign he really wasn’t the amazing boyfriend she says he was. The rose-coloured glasses seem to have started almost the moment Rory and Dean broke up for the second time, and it is troubling that the first thing she does after kissing her new boyfriend Jess is to tell her old boyfriend how much she misses him.
In an earlier season, Rory’s kiss with Tristan helped show her how deep her feelings were for Dean, and how unhappy she was that they broke up. Her kiss with Jess seems to have triggered something similar – perhaps a realisation that she has never had a chance to grieve for the loss of Dean before moving on with Jess. There’s a part of Rory that cannot let go of Dean, and this will lead to unfortunate consequences.
RORY: No, no. This was . . . you were – are . . . it was wonderful, and I look forward to many similar occurrences in the future, but right now, I have to go. Understand?
JESS: Not at all.
RORY: It’s more fun that way, isn’t it?
Rory has to go straight after the kiss because she is going to see Dean. Jess may not have found that explanation quite so quirky and charming. It feels as if Rory is being emotionally dishonest with Jess right from their first kiss as a couple. Unfortunately, one of the things she may have learned from being with Dean is that it isn’t always safe to be honest with your boyfriend.
Although seriously, apart from plot drama, did Rory really have to see Dean right after her first kiss with her new boyfriend? This also feels like “the games beginning” between Rory and Jess.
JESS: Well, whatever else happens between us, at least we know that part works.
Rory and Jess leave the diner separately, Jess claiming that he has to pick up a part for his car, while Rory needs to get home and study. As Lorelai knew immediately, that meant they were planning to meet somewhere.
When Rory catches up with Jess, they kiss. It’s not their first kiss – that happened at Sookie’s wedding about six months previously. But it is their first kiss as a couple (closely followed by their second kiss as a couple).
It is two weeks since Rory and Dean broke up, so they haven’t rushed into kissing, probably because Luke walked in on them when they tried before. Jess’ comment makes it clear that the physical attraction between them is not going to be a problem, whatever else might be.
The viewer might note from Jess’ comment that he is expecting other types of problems to come between them, which is remarkably foresighted for a teenage boy, or unusually cynical.
It’s lucky that Jess decided to kiss Rory rather than light his cigarette, because it is dangerous to smoke near gas pumps, because of the flammable gasoline fumes in the air. The risk is low, but most gas stations have a policy not to allow smoking, in order to reduce the risk even further. (Does this underline what a “bad boy” Jess is, or suggest that he never intended to light the cigarette?).
Note that Jess is still carrying cigarettes around, even though Luke told him to give up smoking more than a year ago, at the start of Season 2. This scene strongly implies that he never gave up – he pats his pockets as if searching for a lighter.
It is also possible to read the scene as Jess using the cigarettes as props to look cool when Rory shows up, or as Jess being a reformed smoker who is tempted to begin again, or testing his own resolve.
[Lorelai and Rory get out of a cab and start walking down the sidewalk]
LORELAI: Thanks. Uh, well, here’s the good news. You no longer have to worry about which college to go to, ’cause that cab ride was your college tuition.
According to a taxi fare calculator I consulted, it would cost about $85 to travel by cab from Yale University to Washington Depot. This seems quite cheap to me, and as Stars Hollow seemed to be in the Wallingford area in Season 1, that would be even cheaper – about $40.
Does that sound correct? I know you have to add extra for the tip in the US, and there’s probably surcharges for heavy traffic and paying tolls, but even so, that seems pretty reasonable for a cab ride to another town about an hour’s drive away.
Lorelai and Rory did stop off for tacos at Hector’s on the way home, which would have been extra money for the taxi. It is dark when they get back to Stars Hollow, so it seems that they spent a bit longer in New Haven, even allowing for early nightfall in November.
HARRIS: It was a pleasure to meet you. I’ll read that book you recommended.
RORY: And don’t be fooled by the Oprah seal on the cover, it’s actually very good.
Rory refers to Oprah’s Book Club, a segment on the Oprah Winfrey Show, which highlighted books selected by the host, Oprah Winfrey. It ran from 1996 until 2011 (with a hiatus in 2002), and in that time it recommended 70 books. Because of the book club’s popularity, previously obscure works could become bestsellers, making an Oprah’s Book Club seal on the cover a highly influential piece of marketing.
Rory does not tell Richard (or the viewer) which book she recommended to the Dean of Admissions. However, due to the aforesaid hiatus, Oprah’s Book Club only recommended two works in 2002. My guess is that Rory recommended Sula, a 1973 novel by Toni Morrison, and her second published work.
The novel is set in the 1920s and ’30s in a fictional small town in Ohio (a favourite setting for Dawn Powell stories, one of Rory’s most admired authors). It is about two black girls named Nel and Sula who are close friends, but who take different paths in life (rather like Rory and Lane). While Nel chooses marriage, motherhood, and the close bonds of the town’s black community, Sula goes to college, lives in the city, and defies conventional sexual morality, bringing down condemnation from the town’s community.
It feels like a book which Rory would be interested in, and would also think suitable to recommend to a Dean, since it is by a Nobel Prize winning author, and the plot involves college and female education.
EMILY: But think about this – you’re fighting so hard to send Rory off to Harvard no matter what that you haven’t even stopped for one second to consider that if she went to Yale, she could live at home.
It doesn’t seem feasible for Rory to live full-time at home while attending Yale, and she’d miss out on the whole college experience. Emily might mean that Rory could live at home on the weekends. When Rory does go to Yale, she spends at least her first semester coming home every weekend, or nearly every weekend.
RICHARD: You never went to college, let alone an Ivy League college.
Lorelai did go to college. She studied Business part-time at the community college in Hartford as a mature student. Presumably Richard means that she never went to college straight from school. It does sound as though he is saying Lorelai’s education just doesn’t count, which is pretty hurtful, considering how much work it took for her to graduate while working full time.
RICHARD: Oh, I told him all about you and your grades and how well you were doing at Chilton. Well, of course, he insisted on seeing you. He wouldn’t let me off the hook.
RORY: But I haven’t applied to Yale.
RICHARD: Oh, I told him that you weren’t finished deciding, that you were being very picky. I think that made him want you even more. They can be very competitive, these Ivy League schools. He’s expecting you at three. Oh, look, it’s three now. Well, we timed this perfectly now, didn’t we?
While showing them the Administration Building, it transpires that Richard’s real reason for bringing Rory to Yale is to get her an interview with the Dean of Admissions, who turns out to be a good friend of Richard’s (shades of Chilton, where Headmaster Charleston was a good friend of Richard and Emily’s).
Lorelai is outraged by Richard’s manipulation, but he has a point. Lorelai has got a bee in her bonnet about Rory going to Harvard and nowhere else, and this was the only way that Richard believed he could give his granddaughter a chance to go to Yale if she wanted to. As he points out, Ivy League colleges are very competitive, and it would be easier for Rory to get into Yale as a legacy, because her grandfather went to Yale.
Although Emily didn’t know what Richard planned to do, she does try to defend him from Lorelai. She points out that if Rory got accepted by Yale, it might make her more attractive to Harvard, which I don’t think Lorelai would have thought of by herself.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 