Tag: Speculation

Flashback 7

In the final flashback, we see Emily and Richard coming downstairs, ready to go out. Emily comments that for the first time in a year, she hasn’t tripped over Rory’s baby stroller, which Lorelai never puts away. Emily finds a note on the hall table and begins to cry – it is obviously the note that Lorelai wrote when she left home, taking Rory with her.

It’s interesting to speculate as to where this flashback comes from. It can’t be Lorelai’s memory, because she never saw this happen. Is it Emily’s memory? Or is it Lorelai’s imagining what must have happened, based on what she knows? Or is it somehow an objective picture from the past of that moment?

The seven flashbacks in this episode encapsulate the central conflict in Gilmore Girls – that Lorelai got pregnant as a teenager, and then left home with her baby, leaving only a note.

It seems clear during the episode that Lorelai, through Sherry’s birthing of Georgia, gets to relive and re-examine some of her past behaviour and choices. We get to see that Richard and Emily may not have been perfect parents, but they are by no means monsters who deserved to be abandoned and shunned by their daughter.

Emily was a staunch advocate for Lorelai when she discovered she was pregnant, and stood up for her against the cruel insults of Christopher’s parents. Richard and Emily never rejected Lorelai, or kicked her out. She still had a home with them, and they continued supporting her and baby Rory.

Obviously Lorelai was very unhappy, and wanted to make a life for herself, but in retrospect, some of her decisions seem cruel – I think even to herself. She left for the hospital to give birth by herself, not allowing her parents any role in that, and she left home the same way, leaving only a note.

We already know that Emily was so devastated by Lorelai’s leaving that she was confined to bed for a month, and much of the coldness and harshness that we see from Emily and Richard in the present stem from this rejection by their daughter, which they have never really got over.

I think Lorelai’s generous and thoughtful gift of the DVD player and nine musicals on DVD that are a combination of Emily’s favourites and hers is her way of trying to … not to erase the past, but to make a kind gesture to her mother and to try to connect with her by sharing something they both enjoy, in recognition that Emily’s life is far lonelier than Lorelai’s.

Flashback 6

In the hospital, Lorelai shows Christopher his daughter Rory, who is a newborn in the nursery – a clear parallel with Christopher showing her Georgia in 2003. Christopher says that Rory is “pretty”, which Lorelai firmly corrects to “perfect”, in parallel to Christopher saying Georgia is perfect in the present day scene, with Lorelai saying she is “beautiful”, but a “solid second” to Rory.

Although slightly insulting, Georgia literally is Christopher’s second daughter after Rory – it’s as if Lorelai is keen to remind Christopher that Rory comes first.

We already know that Christopher proposed marriage to Lorelai, and she turned it down – a point of conflict between she and her parents, and something Christopher continued to feel aggrieved about well int adulthood. In this flashback, we actually see the proposal. Christopher uncertainly says, “So, I guess we should get married”, and then the scene ends.

We never see Lorelai turn this half-hearted non-proposal down, but can understand why she does so. It’s hardly the stuff of romance, and it’s clear that Christopher doesn’t really want to, and isn’t committed to the idea. Richard’s plan of Lorelai and Christopher marrying and living with the elder Gilmores comes to nothing.

Apparently Christopher was only going to be given a job at Richard’s company once he was married, as that never happens either. Richard feels resentful about his “plan” not working out, and continues to blame Lorelai for that right up to the present day.

Georgia

During the scene at the nursery, we get a very good shot of Georgia in her crib at the nursery. The baby portraying Georgia is unlisted in the credits, and as usual with TV and film infants, they are clearly at least three months old.

The card on her crib says she is named Georgia, and her mother is S. Tinsdale (no father on the card, presumably because he isn’t a patient).

It gives her date of birth as 31st January 2003, although she was born at 1.17 am – which means she can’t have been born on the 31st January! Sherry went into labour on the night of the 31st January, meaning that if Georgia was born at 1.17 am the next morning, it would be the 1st of February. Can nobody gets babies’ birthdays correct on this show?

Her weight at birth was 6 pounds and 20 ounces, just a little under the average for a baby girl, and she is 18.9 inches long – again, just a smidge under the average. One of her doctors was Schreiber, and I’m afraid I can’t read the second name or what their role was. It looks something like Sasaberi.

Christopher Shows Lorelai His Baby Daughter

Christopher takes Lorelai to see the newborn Georgia in the nursery (Rory is understandably asleep). He is still on a high from watching the birth of his second daughter, saying that it was amazing, and he’d never seen anything like it.

Lorelai, with devastatingly understatement, agrees that she does know how amazing it is, and that Christopher hasn’t seen anything like it before. Her expression says that she is reliving her own nursery moment, which we see in the upcoming flashback.

Due to the fact that we don’t know what happened, it isn’t possible to know for sure whether Lorelai feels resentful that Christopher wasn’t there for Rory’s birth, or whether she feels a b it guilty for shutting him out and denying him the chance to see his daughter being born.

Luke and Nicole Get Back From Their Date

They were gone for four hours, from 7.30-11.30 pm, and they both had a good time, even though both of them hated the restaurant that Luke picked out. In other words, it was a successful date. Jess none-too-subtly asks Luke if he’d like the apartment to himself for an hour so he and Nicole can have sex, which results in a comic argument which the viewer can see through the window, but not hear. You can’t help getting the feeling Jess is only too pleased for Luke to pursue any woman who isn’t Lorelai.

Epilady

NURSE: No, you cannot hit me.
LORELAI: Can I bite you or pull your hair or use the Epilady on you, ’cause I really need to do something?

Epilady was the brand name of the first epilator, an electrical device used to remove hair by mechanically grasping multiple hairs simultaneously and pulling them out. It was released in Israel in 1986, manufactured by Mepro on a kibbutz.

They were notoriously painful to use, sometimes likened to torture devices, so Lorelai thinks of it as something painful she can use on the nurse to take her mind off her labour pains, like biting her or pulling her hair.

Obviously this flashback can’t have actually happened, because it is October 1984, and the Epilady hadn’t been invented yet. Perhaps it is a false memory. (If so, can we really trust any of the flashbacks?).

Flashback 4

Lorelai is eating a sandwich and watching TV when her labour pains begin. We know it’s a pepper sandwich (I think this means a bell pepper or capsicum sandwich, which sounds weird?), because it was mentioned in an earlier episode. There is a cut, and then we see her at the hospital registry, filling out forms on her own.

She has come to the hospital by herself (presumably in a taxi) and there’s nobody to help her with the paperwork or offer support, not even Christopher. To add poignancy to this, there is a young man standing behind Lorelai with a bunch of flowers for someone, but there is nothing for Lorelai.

“I really, really like you”

LORELAI: I’ll be right there.
RORY: I really, really like you.

A possible reference to the actress Sally Field. In 1985 she received her second Best Actress Oscar for Places in the Heart (1984), and made an acceptance speech which was both admired for its earnest sincerity and mocked for being excessive.

Its closing words were, “I haven’t had an orthodox career. And I’ve wanted more than anything to have your respect. The first time I didn’t feel it, but this time I feel it. And I can’t deny the fact that you like me … right now … you like me! Thank you!”.

Field was making a humorous reference to her dialogue in the 1979 film Norma Rae, but most people missed the reference, and it was widely misquoted as, “You like me! You really, really like me!’. Field later parodied herself when she delivered the line in a commercial for finance company Charles Schwab.