Tag: Timeline

“Upcoming month”

LORELAI: I didn’t do anything wrong. I did the same thing I always do when I’m pulling up reservations for the upcoming month, but nothing happened.
MICHEL: You typed in the name?
LORELAI: I typed in the name.
MICHEL: You clicked on the April 5?

If April is the upcoming month, it must still be March. The only way it can still be March is if the month has about six weeks in it, but February seemed to have about seven weeks, so we’re clearly in Gilmore time now and just have to go with it. From Lorelai’s comment, it seems to be Friday March 30.

“So tell me more about her”

RORY: So tell me more about her [her great-grandmother] …
LORELAI: Well, let’s see. She moved to London when Grandpa died but she didn’t like to travel, so once a year Mom and Dad would go to visit her, usually leaving me behind, much to my relief by the way, and that’s it.

We don’t know when Richard’s father died, but it was clearly a long time ago, possibly before Lorelai was born. It seems strange that someone who doesn’t like to travel would move overseas to live.

Richard and Emily said they can only afford to go to Europe every two years, but Lorelai says they saw Richard’s mother in London every year. Maybe they used to have more money when Lorelai was a child, or prices were cheaper? Because Lorelai says they “usually” left her behind, it means that she must have been to London with her parents at least once.

As her grandmother is the only one who can seemingly control Lorelai and scare her into uncharacteristically meek behaviour, it makes the viewer wonder if Lorelai would have gone off the rails as a teenager if Richard’s mother hadn’t moved to London. I suspect not, and Gilmore Girls would never have happened.

David Mamet

EMILY: I have to get out everything she’s [Richard’s mother] ever given us. Thirty-five years worth of fish lamps and dog statues, lion tables, and stupid naked angels with their … butts!
LORELAI: Whoa! Stupid naked angel butts? What, did David Mamet just stop by?

Lorelai is probably referring to David Mamet’s 1983 play Glengarry Glen Ross. It shows two days in the lives of four Chicago real estate agents prepared to do anything, no matter how illegal or unethical, to sell some undesirable real estate. It won the 1984 Pulitzer Prize, and in 1992 was made into into a highly-acclaimed film, with the screenplay written by Mamet.

The play is notorious for its use of profanity, and Lorelai is teasing her mother for her uncharacteristic use of the word “butts”. Maybe the butt model conversation affected her.

David Mamet is one of Amy Sherman-Palladino’s own favourite playwrights.

Emily’s statement suggests that she and Richard have been married for thirty-five years, so since 1965-1966.

“So where’s that list?”

LORELAI: So where’s that list?
RORY: What?
LORELAI: The list, we’ve got a lot to do Missy, otherwise I’m gonna be dragging your butt outta bed at 6 again tomorrow morning. So, where do we start?

I’m not sure how they can start at all yet. Rory woke Lorelai up at 6 am, and they would have been at the diner by around 6.30 am (Lorelei got dressed, they talked, and they walked there by a slightly longer route than usual). It can’t be any later than 7 am by now, and the shops and recycling centre surely won’t be open for another hour at least.

When Rory asks Dean if he is okay after his fight with Luke, the clock shows that it is still only 6.25 am, so somehow the speedy Rory and Lorelai were able to get ready, walk to the diner, and eat breakfast all within less than half an hour.

I’m not sure when Luke had a chance to cook their breakfast while he was fighting Dean, but perhaps someone else did it, or the Gilmores just decided to leave without eating breakfast – yet another case of them storming out of a meal without eating anything. If so, it makes the visit to the diner seem pretty pointless: they could have not eaten at home.

Even if they skipped breakfast it barely seems possible they could do everything in 25 minutes, but if that’s what happened then they still have around two hours before the shops open.

Gazebo at the Founders Firelight Festival

HARRY: People of Stars Hollow, and our many friends. It gives me great pleasure to preside over our annual Founders Festival for the thirty-second time. Many a true love has had it start right on the spot where I stand. And I don’t mind telling you that at this very festival, right by this gazebo, is where I met my own true love, Miss Dora Braithwaite. We have been married for 43 years, and it all started right here.

Harry Porter has been mayor of Stars Hollow since 1968/1969, and was married in 1957/1958. Harry’s statement emphasises the importance of the festival and gazebo in bringing lovers together, just as he met his wife there.

Three-month Anniversary

DEAN: There must be some other excuse that you could use.
RORY: Like what?
DEAN: Like it’s your three-month anniversary with your boyfriend.
RORY: It is?
DEAN: Yeah. Three months from your birthday. I mean, that’s when I gave you the bracelet and that’s when I figured this whole thing kinda started.
RORY: Wow. Three months.
DEAN: Actually, technically your birthday was on a Saturday, so really it should be Saturday, but I work Saturday and I planned out this whole big thing so I thought maybe we could do it on Friday.

There is no way that we are only three months from the night that Dean gave Rory her bracelet as a birthday present (despite what Dean says, it wasn’t her birthday, but the day after her birthday). That was in late October, so three months later would be late January. It’s now mid-March, so it’s roughly four and a half months from her birthday.

Frustratingly, it is about three months after another significant date in their relationship – the night of the Chilton Winter Formal on December 9, when Dean and Rory mutually agreed that they were boyfriend and girlfriend. It would have made a lot more sense if Dean decided that was the start of their relationship, and then we could have dated their anniversary dinner to March 9.

Dean says technically it should have held on the Saturday as Rory’s birthday was a Saturday (again, not her birthday, but her birthday party in Stars Hollow), but he has to work that night. That isn’t how anniversaries work – they are on the same date each time, not on the same day of the week. This one is just really perplexing. (It also shows that if there is any clash in their schedules, Dean expects Rory to change her schedule to suit him, rather than changing his schedule for her).

We’re probably meant to be struck by how much more invested in the relationship Dean is than Rory, as she paid no attention to the one-month and two-month anniversaries while he did. However, due to this sloppy and confusing writing, you can hardly hardly blame her for that.

Dean has arbitrarily decided what marks the start of their relationship, and has his own method of deciding what makes a month. Under these circumstances, any normal person would have been at a loss to keep up. Of course, it does show that Rory just hasn’t been paying attention to her relationship and is taking it for granted.

“Finally got off the septic tank system”

RORY: Well, this is a town that likes the celebrating. Last year we had a month long carnival when we finally got off the septic tank system.
DEAN: A month long? You’re kidding.
RORY: No. There were rides and a petting zoo and balloon animals and a freak show.
DEAN: Uh huh. Okay, you almost had me going there for a second.
RORY: Well, we did have a ribbon cutting ceremony.

A septic tank system is one where domestic sewage flows into for basic treatment. The “fecal sludge” (poo) does not break down fast enough, and will periodically need to be taken away in a truck. It’s an onsite sewage facility used in areas not connected to a sewerage system, especially rural areas, such as on farms.

From Rory’s comment we learn that Stars Hollow got off the septic tank system in early-ish 2000 to be connected to the main sewerage system. For some reason, that was retconned in the revival so that the town was still on the septic tank system.

Lorelai and Christopher’s Childhood Duet

CHRISTOPHER: Lucy, Schroeder, you laying on the coffee table.
LORELAI: You pretending it was a piano. God, why is that remembered?
EMILY: Because it was such a wonderful production.
LORELAI: I don’t know if it was a production, Mom. It was just one song.
CHRISTOPHER: Suppertime.
RICHARD: Did you write that? That was really very good.
LORELAI: Dad, that’s from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. It’s a famous musical.

At the age of ten (around 1978), Lorelai and Christopher sang a song for at least Richard and Emily, and possibly Christopher’s parents as well.

The song was Suppertime, from the 1967 musical comedy You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown by Clark Gesner, based on the characters from the Peanuts comic strip drawn by Charles M. Schulz. The show premiered off-Broadway in 1967, went to London’s West End in 1968, and opened on Broadway in 1971. It had a Broadway revival in 1999.

The show was adapted for television in 1973, when Lorelai and Christopher were about five. This might be where they knew of the musical from, although it’s a favourite for amateurs to perform, and they might have seen a local production, or even been in a school production. The musical was adapted for TV again in 1985.

Suppertime is a song sung by the dog Snoopy, about his excitement in being fed after waiting hopelessly for the food to arrive. It’s a strange song to choose as a duet, because Snoopy sings almost the entire song, with only a few interjections from Charlie Brown. I presume Lorelai sung Snoopy’s part, and Christopher sung Charlie Brown’s – it seems like her to hog the limelight, and like him to do only minimal work. Possibly they chose that song because they were performing it just before dinner was served.

Lorelai and Christopher recall playing the roles of Lucy and Schroeder, in the iconic pose of Lucy lying on the piano while Schroeder plays it. It isn’t clear how this fitted in with the song by Snoopy. In the musical, Lucy and Schroeder have a scene together where he plays Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the piano while Lucy expresses her love for him and asks about marriage, while Schroeder remains detached. This is ironic considering what comes later.