This is the song playing on the stereo when Richard returns home from Stars Hollow. It plays over him looking sad while alone in his study, until the end of the episode.
The opening lyrics are in tune with Richard’s melancholy mood:
I was a stranger in the city Out of town were the people I knew I had that feeling of self pity What to do, what to do, what to do? The outlook was decidedly blue
A Foggy Day was composed by George Gershwin, with lyrics by Ira Gershwin. It was introduced by Fred Astaire in the 1937 musical comedy film A Damsel in Distress, loosely based on the 1919 novel of the same name by P.G. Wodehouse, and the 1928 stage play written by Wodehouse and Ian Hay. Astaire’s recording was very popular in 1937.
The song has been covered numerous times, and Richard listens to a Frank Sinatra version. Richard may be listening to his 1954 album Songs for Young Lovers, produced by Voyle Gilmore (!), or from the 1961 Ring-a-Ding-Ding! The second one, which was well-reviewed and went to #4 in the charts, seems more likely, as Richard would been about eighteen when it came out.
[Rory walks past the video store, which her picture is in the window. As she stares at it, Jess walks over to her.] JESS: Nice picture.
Oh, very smooth. We already know how much you like Rory’s pictures, Jess!
Rory has been named Citizen of the Month in Stars Hollow, which is why her photo is up in the window of the video store. It shows her in her Chilton uniform against a blank background, and may be from school photo day.
Rory wonders where Taylor and Kirk got the photo from. Good question!
RICHARD: And drive behind me. I don’t want that thing blowing up right in front of the Jag. DEAN: No problem. Try to keep your electrical system working long enough to get there.
Jag is short for Jaguar, a luxury British vehicle company headquartered in Coventry, originally founded in 1922 as the Swallow Sidecar Company. The current name was chosen in 1945. It holds royal warrants from Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, and has manufactured cars for the British Prime Minister.
There isn’t a good shot of Richard’s Jaguar, it’s behind Rory’s car. I have been informed by a trustworthy source that the car appears to be a Jaguar XJ6 sedan, possibly a 1974 model, based on its hood ornament, chrome bumper bar and paint colour. That’s a classic car known for its performance and superb handling.
Dean mocks it for being unreliable, probably because the 1970s XJ6 sold to the US market is notoriously difficult and expensive to restore and maintain, due to its complexity and numerous issues with the electrics. However, Richard is later shown to be very interested in old cars and has a lot of money (and a chauffeur … hey, whatever happened to Lance, anyway?), so he would be well positioned to take care of an old Jag properly.
You can see Richard is being slightly hypocritical about Rory’s car, since his own vehicle is old, and probably has more safety and reliability issues than the one that Dean has rebuilt.
DEAN: Mr. Gilmore, I understand you want Rory to be safe, but so do I. I would not give this car to her if I did not know for a fact that it was a hundred percent safe. I checked it, my father checked it, and Gypsy at Hewes Brothers checked it.
We are now introduced to a new character in Gilmore Girls – the local mechanic, Gypsy, who works at Hewes Brothers. This is slightly confusing, because in an early episode, Lorelai refers to the local garage as Musky’s, then in “Love, Daisies and Troubadours”, she says that Maven Hewes bought the garage from Jim Dunning.
Musky’s may be a completely different business, an auto body shop which does smash repairs rather than a garage. I suppose it is just possible that Maven and Musky are the two Hewes Brothers, or Musky is Maven’s nickname. In either case, we never see the Hewes Brothers, who seem to have left everything in the capable hands of their mechanic (or perhaps she bought the business from them, including the name).
Gypsy is left as an intentional cypher in the show. We never discover her surname, or find out if Gypsy is her real name or a nickname. We learn nothing of her backstory or why she came to town. We don’t find out her ethnic heritage, or her sexual orientation.
All we need to know is that she’s a sarcastic, straight-talking mechanic who is extremely good at her job and highly respected for it. Nobody ever questions her skills, and it is said that if Gypsy can’t fix a vehicle, then nobody can.
RICHARD: Lorelai, you cannot order all of that food. You’re teaching your daughter wastefulness and gluttony. LORELAI: Um Dad, we do this all the time. We order way too much and then we eat like a third of it and live off the leftovers for a week and a half. It’s a finely honed system.
More evidence that Lorelai and Rory don’t really eat that much. They order a huge amount of food, but then only eat 30% of it. The leftovers take them another ten days to get through, suggesting they’re only picking at them. That doesn’t sound like people with big appetites.
They’re also not worried about food poisoning – you’re meant to eat leftovers within two days (four at the absolute most), not ten! How they never get sick is a miracle. Unless constant vomiting and diarrhoea is their secret to staying slim.
When Rory shows Richard her bedroom, he checks out her bookshelf. Here are some of the books we can see:
Summer of Fear
A 1993 serial killer novel by T. Jefferson Parker, who writes bestselling police procedural novels set in California. Parker is a journalist who turned novelist – perhaps a tiny hint of where Rory’s career is eventually headed.
The Scarecrow of Oz
A 1915 children’s book by L. Frank Baum, the ninth in his series of Oz books. The Wizard of Oz is a touchstone for Gilmore Girls, and this seems to be a little nod to the land of Oz. The Scarecrow from the original story is the magical helper (the one who didn’t have a brain, but was actually quite smart), and the human protagonists are a man and a little girl from California.
Contact
A 1985 science novel by scientist Carl Sagan. The heroine is a scientist named Ellie who showed a strong aptitude for science and mathematics from a young age, and has been left emotionally bereft by the loss of her father, with a problematic relationship with her mother. Contact with an alien civilisation allows Ellie a strange chance to reconnect with her memories of her father. It feels like something that would resonate with Rory. Ellie is also from California. The novel was a bestseller, and made into a film in 1997, starring Jodie Foster. The film might have given Rory an interest in reading the novel.
The Apocalyptics: Cancer and the Big Lie
Edith Efron was a journalist who began her career at the New York Times Magazine, became a member of Ayn Rand’s circle and wrote for her magazine, and then became editor of TV Guide at the height of its popularity. She was critical of what she perceived as “liberal bias in the media”, but provided a strong voice on race relations (Efron had a biracial son during 1950s segregation). She later wrote for the libertarian publication, Reason. The Apocalyptics is a 1984 exposé of the cancer industry and a criticism of environmental policy which Efron saw as being based on “bad science” (basically saying Rachel Carson etc were all a bunch of doom-merchants). It’s an obscure, controversial, and extremely heavy-going work. An intriguing insight into Rory’s interests.
Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do
A 1974 non-fiction book by oral historian and radio broadcaster Louis “Studs” Terkel. An exploration of what makes work meaningful for people, based on interviews with people from all walks of life. It was a bestseller, and turned into a Broadway musical in 1977, and a graphic novel in 2009.
A book by “Tobias Allcot”
This seems to be a fictional book which would have been created by the props department as a slightly odd joke. Tobias Allcot is the name of a Pulitzer Prize-winning author in the film The Man from Elysian Fields, directed by George Hinkenlooper; James Coburn portrays Allcot. The film wasn’t released until September 2002, but had been shown at the Toronto Film Festival in September 2001.
RORY: No! I don’t want a Rory Curtain, I never asked for a Rory Curtain!
Thanks to Rory’s meddling, Kirk and Taylor have placed nearly all the DVDs behind a red velvet curtain which they have named in honour of Rory. The curtain is highly reminiscent of the red velvet curtain in the mysterious Red Room/Black Lodge in the television show, Twin Peaks, by Amy Sherman-Palladino’s favourite director, David Lynch. Like Twin Peaks, Stars Hollow is a quirky little town with a secret dark side, although it skews much more sweet and wholesome than the twisted Twin Peaks.
PARIS: Nothing, not even a cigarette butt on the ground, I can’t believe it. This town would make Frank Capra wanna throw up.
Francesco “Frank” Capra (1897-1991), Italian-born American film director, producer and writer, the creative force behind many of the award-winning films of the 1930s and 1940s. He won six Oscars, and numerous other awards, both in the US and in Italy.
He is perhaps best-known for his 1946 Christmas fantasy drama film, It’s a Wonderful Life, based on the 1943 short story, The Greatest Gift by Philip Van Doren Stern, itself loosely based on Charles Dickens’ novella, A Christmas Carol.
The film stars James Stewart as George Bailey, a man who has given up his own dreams to help others, but is driven to despair one Christmas Eve. His guardian angel saves him from suicide by showing him how he has touched the lives of so many others, and how different life would have been for his wife Mary (played by Donna Reed), and his community of Bedford Falls, should he never have been born.
It’s a Wonderful Life made a loss at the box office, and received lukewarm reviews. The FBI thought it was pro-Communist. However, after becoming a Christmas television staple in the 1970s, it became one of the world’s most beloved movies, and is regarded as one of the greatest, and most inspiring, films of all time. It was Frank Capra’s favourite of his own films, and James Stewart’s favourite film in which he starred.
The wholesome, slightly quirky town of Bedford Falls bears more than a passing resemblance to Stars Hollow, and the Christmas setting seems perfect for Lorelai’s love of snow. Also note that in the film, the kindly George Bailey gives bank loans to people based on their good character, not on their financial status – Lorelai seems to have received a shock when she discovered that bankers don’t actually care how nice you are when she was trying to get a loan.
LORELAI: I was kicked out of summer class for refusing to call the camp counselor Peaches because I thought the entire concept of the counselors choosing summer fruit names was stupid. So they called my dad and he came to get me and it was just the two of us alone in the car all the way from Maine with nothing to talk about but my camp failure. Luckily I had also flashed the swim team or even that subject would’ve gotten stale.
Maine is a New England state, the most north-eastern state in the US, the only state to have one-syllable name, and the only state that borders only one other US state (it borders New Hampshire, Canada, and the Atlantic Ocean). It is also the most rural of all the states of the US, with many farms. It is known for its rocky coastline, forests, smooth mountains, and picturesque lakes. It is famous for its maritime culture and seafood cuisine, especially lobster.
There are many summer camps for children and teens in Maine, and quite a few are exclusive and very expensive – only for the children of the wealthy and powerful, a few with a rigorous application process (one is known as “the Harvard of summer camps”), and a couple that require a uniform. It seems likely that Richard and Emily would have sent Lorelai to one of them.
It takes five to six hours to drive from Maine to Hartford. That’s bad enough, but Richard and Emily always vacation in Martha’s Vineyard during the summer. If Richard had to drive Lorelai back to their summer house in Massachusetts, the drive is even longer – six to seven hours. Considering that Richard might have had a fourteen hour drive that day to pick up his errant daughter and take her home, I can imagine he would have been in a very bad mood.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 