Footnotes to the TV series
LUKE: Dean had that girl for two years. You have a little fight after two months, you walk out, and it’s over?
Jess and Rory have actually been going over for a little over three months, since mid-November.
It annoys me that Luke says, “Dean had that girl for two years”. He had Rory? He owned her? And why does Luke call her “that girl” like he hardly knows her? It’s very strange and a bit creepy.
Yep, it’s an episode of Gilmore Girls written by Daniel Palladino, so it’s time for another segment of “How to Make Sense of This Timeline”.
To recap. The episode begins with a Friday Night Dinner on February 7th, where Emily asks Rory to invite her boyfriend Jess to the next Friday Night Dinner, which would be February 14th. Sounds simple, right? Wrong.
The next scene appears to be the Sunday after the Friday Night Dinner, where Lorelai and Rory watch movies on the one day of the week they have to spend together. They discuss their future plans, which are that Rory is going on a date with Jess on the following Saturday afternoon, followed by studying in the evening, while Lorelai has a date with Alex at the same time.
Next, we cross straight to Rory and Jess’ Saturday afternoon date, which appears to be hanging around the town square together yet again. So … where did Friday go? That is, the Friday Night Dinner which was the day before this date?
The only way you can make sense of this is that Emily said next Friday, but she actually meant the next Friday to that, February 21st. As Friday the 14th is Valentine’s Day, it is possible that Emily gave them the night off from Friday Night Dinner so they could go out with their respective boyfriends. (There is precedent for Emily making allowances for romantic dates).
Therefore, the next Friday Night Dinner to February 7th would be February 21st, and this is the dinner Emily invites Jess to.
RORY: Do you wanna watch more of the extra supplementary stuff on the Lord of the Rings DVD?
LORELAI: Well, it’s just the drawings and that fat guy talking.
RORY: Well, let’s watch Footloose again.
At this point, only the first film in the trilogy, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, previously discussed, had been released on DVD. An extended edition was released in November 2002, with 30 minutes of new material, added special effects and music, plus 19 minutes of fan-club credits. The DVD set included four commentaries and over three hours of supplementary material. The “fat guy” was the film’s director, New Zealander Sir Peter Jackson (he has since lost weight). You can tell this is a Daniel Palladino script, with someone’s weight being mentioned like this!
You might remember that Rory balked at watching The Fellowship of the Ring with Dean another time, even though he reminded her that she had earlier said she wanted to watch it “a hundred times”. Obviously it was Dean she was sick of, not the film, as she and Lorelai got it on DVD and are even watching the extra stuff on the disc together.
Footloose, previously discussed and frequently mentioned as a favourite film of Lorelai’s.
During this scene, Lorelai and Rory have to coordinate their schedules, because with both of them so busy, it’s getting harder for them to spend mother-and-daughter alone time. Each of them are getting more conscious of the fact that Rory will be going to college later in the year, and their time for having their “secret little club” is fast coming to a close.
Sunday is the only day they have to spend together now. As they immediately start getting ready to watch a movie together, it suggests that this scene takes place on Sunday 9th February.
RORY: How did you know [Dean and I broke up]?
EMILY: Well, you very abruptly stopped mentioning him eleven dinners ago, so I figured that was the case.
According to the timeline of the show, it is now February 7th 2003. This means that Rory and Dean broke up early in the morning on Sunday 17th November 2002.
When Rory phones Lorelai in distress, Lorelai is still eating dinner with Emily, as if it’s 7.30-8 pm. Impossible! It must have been around 10 pm by then. Gilmore Girls rarely seemed able to get a plausible timeline in place.
It is a two hour drive to Boston from Hartford, meaning it would be around midnight before Lorelai got there, and Rory would have been left alone for hours. The show always made it seem as if Boston was about 40 minutes away.
However ridiculously this occurs, Rory is naturally overjoyed to see her mother, who immediately takes charge of the situation, and stops Sherry from exploiting Rory. Lorelai’s protective mothering really gets a chance to shine here.
RORY: Wait, where are you going?
MAUREEN: I’ve gotta get back to work. I’m swamped today.
It’s between 8.30 and 10.30 pm, yet somehow everyone has to work. The original plan was to meet at 6 pm – why are they off work at 6 pm, but have to be at work at 9 pm?
The second flashback shows teenaged Lorelai preparing for her debutante ball. She is about three or four months pregnant, so it is perhaps April or May, and can no longer do up the zip on her debutante dress, which she was fitted for three months previously.
Lorelai hasn’t told her parents about her condition, and earlier told Rory that she still hadn’t told them on her sixteenth birthday, which is around April. This seems to be the moment leading up to Emily finding out about the pregnancy, although at first she blames the dressmaker for sending Lorelai a dress that is too small.
We know that Lorelai never got to go to debutante ball because she got pregnant, and this scene shows how it happened. Rory got to fulfil her mother’s role by making her debut, even wearing the same dress to her ball. The dresses don’t look the same – Lorelai’s has butterfly sleeves and Rory’s is sleeveless – but perhaps the dress was altered for Rory.
If Rory was born in October, she was most likely conceived in mid-to-late January, even though Lorelai and Christopher are shown kissing in December. It can perhaps be assumed that they continued having sex for a few weeks before conceiving Rory.
RORY: Well, I’m actually done with school now. I could grab a train and –
Hartford is three and a half hours from Boston by train, requiring a change at New Haven. The trains are two hours apart, meaning that if you miss one, there’s quite a wait for the next. Rory would also need to take a 15 minute bus ride from her school to Hartford Union Station in order to catch the train.
If Rory has finished school for the day, then it’s after 4.05 pm. Even with all the bus and train schedules lining up perfectly, Rory would not reach Boston until at least 8 pm. She would then need another 15 minutes to reach the hospital using the subway, and finishing the last part on foot. 8.30 pm seems to be the earliest she could get there, and 9.30-10 pm is probably more realistic.
It’s a truly terrible thing to ask a teenage high school student to do without any warning in the middle of winter, and with no time to get changed into warm clothing or to take anything other than her school bag with her. It is also a crazy thing for Rory to agree to, and quite impractical.
By the way, the meeting at the hospital for Sherry’s C-section was originally for 6 pm. How was Rory ever meant to get there in time on a Friday, when she has school?
MAUREEN: Listen, I know the invitation said that we were all gathering at the C-section next week, but Sherry just went into labor … She screwed up, she’s in labor, and she wanted me to call all the girls and beg them to get down to the hospital ASAP.
Sherry’s best friend Maureen calls Rory while she’s in the middle of a meeting for the school newspaper. Rory is back to having a cell phone again, and is able to take the call. Maybe she used a pager in between these two calls because her phone was charging.
Maureen tells Rory that “Sherry screwed up” by going into labour a week before her C-section is scheduled, a phrase that gets repeated again and again. It’s meant to underline how hopelessly ignorant Sherry’s friends are about childbirth, that they don’t understand that babies don’t necessarily arrive on schedule. How they can not know this? It’s in movies and on TV shows (like this one!). You can see that Sherry will receive little or no support from her friends after having Georgia.
Because this is the week before February 7th, we know the main events of this episode take place on Friday 31st January 2003.
During the call, Maureen refers to Rory as a “child”, something which Rory never confirms nor denies. In fact, although she is still at school, she is 18 (turning 19 that year) and an adult now.
PARIS: Okay, everyone, gather around. I have in my hand the 2002 Franklin Yearbook photos.
It’s actually 2003. Perhaps this is another sign that Paris is very distracted by having a boyfriend, a big theme of this season.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 