TAYLOR: Three people have reported seeing Jess in that area late last night, skulking, lurking. LUKE: There were a lot of people out late last night. I know because I fed some of them. I’ll give you their names so you can add them to your suspect list. TAYLOR: Another person witnessed Jess walking out of an arts and crafts store two days ago with what appeared to be chalk.
Since the police have refused to show any interest in the prankster who stole their police tape, Taylor has done his own investigating. I’m not sure why lurking around the site late the previous night is so suspicious, the prank was done in the late afternoon, unless we’re meant to think Jess was gloating over it hours later or something. But carrying chalk from the arts and crafts store looks like a clear piece of evidence. And one piece of circumstantial evidence is enough to convict Jess in the Taylor-led court of public opinion.
Still nobody has anything to say about the police tape being stolen, which actually would constitute a slightly more serious crime. Did Jess steal it, or did the police simply allow him to take it, so they would have something to do? It must get pretty boring being a cop in Stars Hollow, after all.
LORELAI: So, Mia, how’s living in Santa Barbara? MIA: Horrible. Did you know the damn sun shines all the time out there? RORY: They’ve written songs about that.
Santa Barbara is a coastal city in California about ninety miles north of Los Angeles. Situated on the Pacific Ocean with a dry sunny Mediterranean climate, it is promoted as “The American Riviera”. Due to its geographic positioning, it has both cooler summers and warmer winters than surrounding areas, and despite what Mia says, it tends to be wetter in winter than its surrounds too, although rainfall is very variable.
It’s the sort of expensive place that wealthy people retire to, suggesting that Mia has done very well out of the hotel industry. Is it really possible she got that rich just from the Independence Inn? Surely she has other properties or investments as well? Maybe she’s a wealthy widow?
People in Stars Hollow seem to be strangely attracted to distant California. Christopher and Liz ran away to California to start new lives, Fran went on holiday there, Mia retired there. The writers live there, the show’s filmed there …
I’m not aware of any famous songs about the sunshine of Santa Barbara specifically that Rory might be thinking of, but there’s several songs about California.
POLICEWOMAN: Everyone’s accounted for Taylor. It looks like this is just an elaborate prank. TAYLOR: But it looks so real. Where’d they get the police tape? POLICEWOMAN: Kids have their ways.
TAYLOR: Who’d be depraved enough to pull a stupid prank like this? POLICEWOMAN: Hard to say. [Rory sees Jess standing across the street smirking as he watches the crowd]
The police officer reassures Taylor that the chalk outline and police tape is just a prank. Somehow, she knows that a child or teenager is responsible. To be fair, Rory also knows – Jess isn’t exactly being subtle here. The police officer seems to be remarkably blasé about someone stealing police tape from the police station. The bizarre way the police behave makes me think that they were in on the prank with Jess, either overtly or tacitly. It’s actually the only way this scene makes any sense.
Once again, one of Jess’ pranks is connected with Rory – it takes place outside the grocery store where her boyfriend works, at a time when he’s doing a shift, so that there’s a good chance of her seeing it. It seems to be a calculated move to get her attention and show off to her, as well as encroaching on her boyfriend’s territory.
In line with the autumnal colours of this episode, Jess wears a dark red tee shirt – Dean is also wearing a red sweater in a bright tone, as if Dean and Jess are the light and dark attractants for Rory (or the public and the private). Red is love and passion, but also aggression and danger, like a red rag to a bull. Both Jess and Dean wear grey sleeveless jackets over their red tops, as if in partial concealment of their feelings. There is nothing on their sleeves – yet.
Jess’s top is a vintage 1980s tee shirt with a Tasman Empire Airways Ltd logo on it – the former name of New Zealand’s flag carrier airline (since 1965, Air New Zealand Ltd). The show keeps connecting Jess with travel, journeys, and flight.
The fire truck going past is also bright red; in fact notice how many things in this scene bear the colour red. It’s a callback to when Rachel was telling Lorelai about her distress in discovering Luke’s romantic preference for Lorelai with the fire department in the background. It’s another painful love triangle situation marked with sinful scarlet, bloody red.
The poster in the background announces another Autumn Festival, nearing the anniversary of Rory and Dean’s first kiss. This suggests that the date is Tuesday 30th October, the day before Halloween. Yes, I know it looks bright and sunny, but that’s because we’re in TV Land, not the real Connecticut!
Does the big number 7 on the fire truck mean that Jess is blessed with luck in his endeavour? Or does it represent the seven days of the week, and the great wheel of time?. It might be a sign that Jess’ time has come. So much can change in just one year.
NOTE: Thank you to reader M for pointing out that the red vehicle is a fire truck or fire engine, not a bus as I incorrectly stated!
LUKE: Well, I should be getting going. You gonna write this meal off? LORELAI: Why? LUKE: Oh, we talked business. You gotta be thinking about these things. LORELAI: No, I mean, why? I’m not paying for it. [Luke sighs] Exactly.
How often did Lorelai and Rory get free meals from Luke? We almost never see them pay, and they seem to storm off or run out without either eating or paying quite a bit. It might help explain how they manage to eat out so often without blowing the budget …
LORELAI: Mmm, I’m terrible at coming up with names. When we first bought out house, Rory and I wanted to name it, you know, like Jefferson named his place Monticello, but all we could come up with is The Crap Shack.
Former US President Thomas Jefferson, previously discussed, called his main plantation Monticello, from the Italian for “little mountain”, as it’s situated on a peak of the Southwest Mountains, near Charlottesville, Virginia. The plantation house was first begun in 1768 in a neoclassical style, but extensively remodelled in the 1790s with elements from Parisian homes Jefferson had seen in France and ideas of his own devising, and work continued into the 1820s. Monticello is now a National Historic Landmark and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and features on the US five cent coin.
Notice that Lorelai wears a black blouse with a red cherry print design on it – Monticello is famous for its orchard, including its cherry trees. You can still buy cherry preserves from the Monticello gift shop. I cannot say if the colour of the blouse is significant in light of the slave labour that was used at Monticello, and even to some extent, in the building of the plantation house itself.
This is the first time we learn that Lorelai and Rory supposedly called their house The Crap Shack when they moved in, when Rory was eleven. Presumably the house was in poor condition, and has needed a lot of work to get it to the standard we see. It can’t be a name they use very often – they’ve always just referred to as “home” or “the house” so far. Perhaps that’s because the house is now far less crappy than when Lorelai bought it and the name doesn’t really apply any more.
EMILY: She wouldn’t stop scowling. LORELAI: I was going for a Billy Idol thing.
Billy Idol (born William Broad in 1955), British-American singer. He first achieved fame in the 1970s as leader of London punk band Generation X, before a subsequent solo career made him a lead artist on MTV in the 1980s. His biggest hits include Dancing With Myself, White Wedding, Rebel Yell, and Eyes Without a Face. Billy Idol took a break from music during the 1990s, making musical comebacks in 2005 and 2014.
Billy Idol was known for his signature scowl, which he came up with as a way of making himself memorable. He could easily have been an artist that Lorelai enjoyed during her teen years.
RORY: Too bad Grandpa’s not here. He likes weird food. LORELAI: Yeah, where’s he eating his weird food tonight? Argentina? Morocco? EMILY: Akron … The amenities are atrociously lacking. He had to eat at a coffee shop last night. The whole thing’s terribly insulting. He’s miserable.
Akron is a city in Ohio, with a population of nearly 200 000, although the Greater Akron area is around 700 000. It has a long history of rubber and tyre manufacturing, earning it the name Rubber Capital of the World. Today it has an economy based on manufacturing, education, healthcare, and biomedical research, with many polymer companies. Racially diverse, it has been the site of several key scenes in African-American race relations, including being the place where Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Society in 1914. Like many manufacturing centres, it suffers from the effects of air and soil pollution.
It is one of many cities which claims to have invented the hamburger, which might be one reason why Gilmore Girls doesn’t rate it as a place for fine dining. They do seem to be lacking silver service restaurants, although with a selection of delicious-looking steakhouses and grills. I feel as if Richard should have been able to find something decent to eat there, but this is the man who ate chocolate pudding with an expression like it was rat poison. Maybe his hotel wasn’t situated near any good food options.
It is one of the few times that Richard needed to travel for work within his home country. Richard seems to travel overseas an inordinate amount for someone who’s an executive at an insurance firm – is that much European travel really necessary in insurance? (Especially when a problem at their office in China was sorted out with a phone call from Richard). I wonder if being sent to Akron is another symptom of Richard being “phased out” of his job.
This is the song which Rory is listening to her on her Walkman, which takes us out to the end of the episode.
It’s the second track from the 1998 album What Makes It Go?, from Swedish indie pop group Komeda. The album received good reviews, and is now regarded as their best album. The lyrics of the song reassure Rory that everything is alright, even in a “crazy world”. The madness has ended now, and she can return to her normal life.
Komeda was influenced by The Velvet Underground, one of Lane’s favourite bands, and was chosen to support Beck, one of Lane’s favourite musical artists. I don’t think it’s a stretch to imagine Lane recommended this album to Rory, and it might even be borrowed from her.
The episode ends with Rory back in the dining hall at Chilton, peacefully reading and listening to her Walkman. She hasn’t been made to socialise after all, and the headmaster has been forced to back down and realise that Gilmore girls have to follow their own rules.
Another girl asks if she can sit with Rory, and she takes her own book out and starts reading in silence. Rory smiles at this confirmation she is not the only person at Chilton who likes to read at lunchtime, and now she isn’t a weird loner any more. She has a lunch friend, just as Mrs Verdinas insisted she find.
According to the credits, this girl is named Lisa. She’s played by Connecticut actress Madeline Zima, who already had quite a lengthy CV at this stage, and was most famous for playing Grace Sheffield in The Nanny.
Lisa was one of the other girls who was going to be inducted by the Puffs at the same time as Rory and Paris, although she is never introduced to the viewer and never speaks to Rory that we see (they might have spoken off-screen). She is the girl wearing blue and yellow checked pyjama pants with a grey tee shirt and a blue cardigan.
Possibly Lisa was also told to find some friends, rather than sit and read at lunchtime – although if so, couldn’t Headmaster Charleston or Mrs Verdinas have simply introduced Rory and Lisa to each other, suggesting that they have something in common? You know, like a normal school? Lisa was never shown eating lunch with the Puffs, so presumably she was recruited some other way, or that occurred after Rory and Paris joined the table, and was therefore offscreen.
Do not expect to ever see Lisa again, or hear her mentioned. Did she and Rory ever speak to each other and become real friends? Did they show each other the books they were reading? Did they have anything else in common? These questions are never answered.
In an episode that doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, it finishes with a character that remains an enigma.
EDIT: This article was heavily edited with the kind assistance of Sarah M, who was able to identify Lisa as one of the girls at the Puffs induction ceremony, something I was unable to do.
LORELAI: Who do you think you are, the Hunchback of Notre Dame? Are you French, are you circular? I don’t think so.
Lorelai teases Rory for her lame initiation ceremony by comparing her to that other famous bell-ringer, Quasimodo, the Hunchback of Notre Dame, previously discussed.
The fact that Lorelai describes the hunchback as “circular” is a possible indication she might be thinking of the 1939 film, starring Charles Laughton as Quasimodo [pictured]. This version gives Quasimodo a very pronounced hump on his back, so that in some scenes he does look almost circular, while later versions tone it down quite a bit.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 