Debbie Fincher

Lorelai gets a phone call from Debbie Fincher, one of the mothers from Stars Hollow High School Parents and Teachers Association. We learn here that when Rory was a student at the school, Lorelai was actively involved in the PTA and got along well with the other parents, even being considered “a kick” because of her wicked sense of humour (very much like Emily, as it happens).

Rory was even friends (or at least friendly) with Debbie’s daughter Kathy Fincher, and used to go to her house to swim in their pool. Perhaps Kathy was one of the mysterious Stars Hollow girls who appeared at Rory’s sixteenth birthday party, and was never seen again? It does seem a little odd that Rory lives in a small town with teenagers that she went to school with and was apparently even friends with, yet has only kept in contact with Lane. Perhaps she runs into them offscreen.

The reason for Debbie’s call is to ask Lorelai to give a talk at the high school about her success in business, and to think of someone else they might ask. Lorelai agrees, and promptly suggests Luke as the second person.

Debbie Fincher is played by Heidi Swedberg, who had been in TV series such as Northern Exposure (1991), Murder She Wrote (1994), and Touched by an Angel (1996). She was best known for playing George Costanza’s fiancée Susan Ross in Seinfeld (1992-1997).

Wankers

DAVE: Lane, think about this, do you really believe this is working?

LANE: No, it’s not working. We sound like a bunch of wankers.

Wanker, offensive British slang literally referring to someone who masturbates, used to mean someone is stupid, foolish, or unpleasant (often obnoxious or arrogant). I’m not sure if Lane realises how offensive the word is, and may be using it as an approximation of “jerks”. I presume that rehearsing “London Calling” has inspired the use of British slang.

“That girl’s a freak”

[Shane rushes over to Jess at the counter]

LORELAI: That girl’s a freak.

[Jess and Shane start kissing]

Lorelai says that Shane is a “freak” because she kisses her boyfriend in public – something Rory does all the time, and something Lorelai did when she was a teenager! It’s a pretty terrible thing to say about a teenager who is literally right there.

Even though Lorelai doesn’t want Rory to go out with Jess, for some reason she seems miffed that Jess has chosen somebody else, and snipes about Shane (she should be grateful Shane is making Jess unavailable). She may be trying to send Rory the message that only a “freak” would go out with Jess.

Band Practice

LANE: Hello Stars Hollow, are you ready to rock?

LORELAI: Let me guess, band practice tonight?

Lane was given permission by Sophie to use the music store to practice drumming two evenings a week, on Wednesdays and Fridays at 6 pm (evenings when she knew her mother would be out doing church activities). Lane is now really pushing that generous offer by finding a band that needs a drummer and letting them use Sophie’s music store as a free rehearsal space! It sounds like a pretty awful way to repay Sophie, but maybe Lane already fixed this up with Sophie offscreen. I hope so.

You may be wondering whether this episode starts on a Wednesday evening – it can’t be Friday, because Lorelai and Rory are having dinner at the diner, instead of heading off to Hartford for Friday Night Dinner with Richard and Emily. It appears to be a Saturday, oddly enough, so perhaps Lane also got Sophie to agree to a third evening of band practice per week. How Sophie would have agreed to all these changes to the orginal agreement, I don’t know.

This scene shows how happy Lane is to finally be in a band and playing music, she is absolutely radiating joy as she bounces into the diner and starts eating Rory’s dinner. Lane isn’t making any effort to keep her activities a secret, and even though Stars Hollow is super gossipy, she doesn’t seem worried about Mrs Kim finding out. Maybe that’s how confident she feels now she’s actually living her dream.

Christiane Amanpour’s Situation

RORY: Christiane Amanpour spends half of her life standing in foxholes in third world countries, and she has a husband and a kid. And she was on C-SPAN last week getting some award, so if she and her husband can make it work, we can.

DEAN: So we’ll have access to the CNN jet?

Christiane Amanpour, previously discussed as Rory’s idol. From 1998 to 2018 she was married to James Rubin (born 1960), former Assistant Secretary of State and spokesman for the US State Department during the Clinton administration, and was an informal adviser to Hillary Clinton. Their son Darius Rubin was born in 2000, so aged two years old at this time. Because of Amanpour’s career, her husband James did spend a lot of time home alone with the baby, keeping in touch with his wife by telephone.

In real life, Amanpour received two awards in 2002. The Goldsmith Career Award for Excellence in Journalism was presented to her at Harvard in March, and the Edward R. Murrow Award for Distinguished Achievement in Broadcast Journalism was presented to her at Washington State University in May. Neither of those were “last week” from Rory’s perspective, although it’s possible she only saw the broadcast of one of them on C-SPAN the week before.

Christiane Amanpour worked for CNN from 1983 to 2010, so throughout the run of Gilmore Girls. As chief foreign correspondent, she reported on crises from many of the world’s hotspots, and in 2002 had filed reports from the Gaza Strip, famously interviewing Yasser Arafat in his compound by phone.

[Picture shows Christiane Amanpour, her husband James, and son Darius in London, 2003]

“Do we break up?”

DEAN: What happens when you leave?

RORY: When I leave when?

DEAN: When you leave for Harvard . . . do we break up?

Rory acts as if Dean is being unreasonable to ask this question, but it doesn’t really seem so. After all, Zach and Liza broke up when they left Hartford to attend different universities. A lot of young couples break up when one or both go away to college, being realistic enough to know that long-distance relationships don’t usually work out for teenagers.

It does seem a bit premature to bring it up already – Rory hasn’t even applied to Harvard yet, let alone been accepted. It also comes out of the blue, as the pair of them were kissing, holding hands, and smiling together just seconds previously.

It feels as if Dean is either trying to ruin their last year together, or is pushing Rory for some kind of commitment. He must be feeling pessimistic about their future together, and probably rightly so, when they are headed in very different directions. I do sense a jealousy and possessiveness from Dean in regard to Rory’s education, as if it is taking her away from him.

Lane Meets Dave Rygalski

DAVE: Excuse me, Lane?

LANE: That’s me.

DAVE: Okay, great, I’m Dave Rygalski.

LANE: Right, hi. You’re a guitarist.

In this scene, Lane meets Dave Rygalski, who answered her ad because he has a band that needs a drummer. He almost immediately becomes her love interest.

The character of Dave is based on the real life Dave Rygalski, the husband of Helen Pai, producer on Gilmore Girls, who the character of Lane is based on. The real Dave Rygalski has been a writer for Jay Leno and David Letterman, and also plays guitar, just like his fictional namesake. He has been in a few bands, and played some of the music for Lane’s band on Gilmore Girls.

On the show, Dave Rygalski is played by Adam Brody. At this stage, Brody had played Barry Williams in the TV film, Growing Up Brady, and been Greg Brady in an episode of The Amanda Show. Like several other actors on Gilmore Girls, he’d also been in Judging Amy, another show about mothers and daughters set in Connecticut – he played a guy called Barry Gilmore!

There has already been a character named Rygalski on Gilmore Girls – a bank manager in Hartford where Lorelai tried to get a loan was Mr Rygalski. Quite possibly this is Dave’s father.

It seems a bit unlikely that Lane is available to meet Dave on a Saturday night – as a Seventh Day Adventist, she has church on Saturday, and when Lane asked her mother for permission to go out on a Saturday night after church, Mrs Kim told her that after church she should be thinking about what she learned in church. However, perhaps has mother has softened slightly, or Lane is allowed out to see Rory.

Harry Potter

RORY: I’ve dreamt of going to Harvard since I was a little girl.

CAROL: Yeah, a lot of four year olds dream of that. It comes right after meeting Harry Potter.

Harry Potter, the schoolboy wizard who is the protagonist of the popular Harry Potter book and film series, the novels written by English author J.K. Rowling, previously mentioned. In the films, he is played by English actor Daniel Radcliffe.

Rory was four years old in 1988-1989, and the first Harry Potter book was published in 1997, so Rory could hardly have been interested in him as a toddler anyway. Presumably Carol is thinking of her young clients in the present day.

There’s a little mistake in the writing here. Rory never actually tells Carol that she’s been dreaming of Harvard since she was four – only that she was a little girl. We know she was four because Lorelai told Max in Season 1, but somehow Carol knows about it too.

Stalking Tom Waits

CAROL: I worship [Tom Waits]. I even mildly stalked him once … Last year, I heard he was staying at this hotel so I went there everyday and sat in the lobby, drinking massive amounts of coffee, waiting for him to walk by.

I can barely speculate which hotel Tom Waits could have been staying in the previous year. The only concert he had in 2001 was one in his home town of San Francisco, and he took a trip to Copenhagen in Denmark early in the year. He attended the ASCAP Awards at the Beverly Hilton in May, which might be what Carol is referring to (if so, she was in Los Angeles at the time for some reason – where the Palladinos live, probably not coincidentally).

Like Lorelai, Carol worships Tom Waits and drinks huge amounts of coffee. Her mild stalking of Waits at a hotel is replicated later by Lorelai, who stalks Bono at his hotel in exactly the same way.

Round-robin

JENNIFER: Follow up ?

DARREN: And then we’ll go round-robin.

A round-robin tournament is one in which each contestant meets with every other contestant, usually in turn. It’s usually the fairest way of deciding an overall winner, but can be very lengthy. They are common in team sports – Darren’s love of sports might have prompted this idea. The word robin in this context is a corruption of the French word ruban, meaning “ribbon”.

Oddly, Marie (played by Anita Finlay, who, like her onscreen husband and children, had also been on Judging Amy) is never shown taking part in the quizzes or being expected to, as if her role is simply to bring out iced tea and say Darren is brilliant. It doesn’t seem very likely – surely Marie is also a college graduate? Perhaps we just never see her have her turn, and she takes her part during the round-robin tournament.

Lorelai looks very unhappy to be roped into the round-robin tournament. Jennifer looks like Christmas has come early, and Jack looks like he’s forcing himself to smile. I get the feeling he’s not quite as into the competitive quizzes as Jennifer. He doesn’t seem to be as good at them.