Tag: Timeline

“Thank you for last night”

LORELAI: Hi.
MAX: And thank you for last night.
LORELAI: It was a good night, wasn’t it?
MAX: Several novels will be written about it.
LORELAI: I say we do it again, and next time, I’ll be the gypsy queen.

It must be the morning after Max and Lorelai’s first date since they reunited, so it’s Sunday 22 April. Their entire conversation shows that if nothing else, the sexual side of their relationship works great.

A nice side effect is that Sookie sees Lorelai look happy, so immediately decides that she must be as well, just as she thought she must have ennui from being around Michel.

Berringiny Pansy

RICHARD: Saving the Berringiny Pansy. Who ever heard of such a thing?
EMILY: It’s a very rare flower that is rapidly disappearing from the face of this earth.
RICHARD: Well, who cares?
EMILY: As president of the Horticultural Society, I have to care.

A fictional species of flower. There are a few species of pansy in Europe which are rare or even endangered though.

The name of the pansy flower comes from the French for “thought” (pensée), to symbolise remembrance, especially of a loved one. Another name for the pansy is love-in-idleness, meaning someone who has nothing to do but think of their beloved. This seems apt, as Rory has been trapped by her thoughts and memories of Dean, with not enough to occupy her lately. Yet another name for the flower is heartsease, telling us that Rory will soon unburden her heart, and have her feelings soothed.

The Connecticut Horticultural Society has existed since 1887, and in real life does have speakers on one Thursday a month, just like in this episode (it now seems to be Thursday 19 April). They take place at the Emanuel Auditorium in West Hartford, and start at 7.30 pm – although you’re encouraged to come early so you can socialise. This suggests the time when Rory comes to her grandparents’ house is somewhere 6.30 and 7 pm.

“Dean is not in the store on Wednesdays”

LANE: I just thought you’d might like to know for future reference that Dean is not in the store on Wednesdays, so you can mark it down on that little list you’re hiding from me that says where Dean is, so that you can avoid him at any time.

Lane goes into the supermarket for Rory and does her shopping – she needs chewing gum, soda, a copy of The New Yorker, and dental floss. She lets Rory know that Dean is not in the store, so we know that the day is a Wednesday – most likely Wednesday 18 April.

“A couple of weeks now”

MAX: We’ve been having these very successful phone calls for a couple of weeks now.
LORELAI: Yes we have.
MAX: And I think that all the talking has done us a lot of good.
LORELAI: Yes it has.
MAX: So I was thinking that maybe this weekend instead of a phone call, we should have a date.

Lorelai and Max reunited more than four weeks ago, but perhaps they didn’t start talking on the phone straight away, or Max is giving a general estimate. Their first date is scheduled for five weeks after their reunion, so they didn’t rush into it.

Gaslight

LORELAI: Hey – [looks at Sookie’s watch] Aw! No! I’ve got to go home.
SOOKIE: Why? What are you doing?
LORELAI: I have to change, and go to tea with Gran and the cast of Gaslight.

Gaslight is a 1944 mystery thriller film directed by George Cukor, and adapted from the successful 1938 play Gas Light by British dramatist Patrick Hamilton.

Set mostly in Edwardian London, the film is about a woman named Paula (Ingrid Bergman) whose husband Gregory (Charles Boyer) tries to convince her that she is going insane as part of a fiendish criminal scheme: one of his methods is to contintually turn down the gas lighting in the house and tell her that only she can see it flickering.

Because of the film, the term gaslighting now refers to a form of psychological abuse where the abuser gradually manipulates the victim into doubting their own sanity, thus making them more dependent on the abuser. Lorelai is saying that’s exactly what her mother is doing to her.

Gaslight was the #13 film of 1944 and well-received by critics. It won two Academy Awards, including a Best Actress for Ingrid Bergman.

According to the town clock they walk past, it is around 11.35 am when Lorelai and Sookie leave the flower shop. Lorelai seems to need an inordinate amount of time to get changed so she can be in Hartford for afternoon tea, which is usually somewhere between 4 and 6 pm.

“Faster than seventeen?”

LORELAI: It’s just that – you know, it’s about the freedom. I mean if I had access to all that money as a kid I would have left the house so fast.
SOOKIE: Faster than seventeen?

In fact we learn in the next season that Lorelai was actually eighteen when she left home in 1986. Originally the show seems to have decided it would happen in 1985, when she was seventeen and Rory almost one.