Footnotes to the TV series
[Dean sees them and waves. Lindsay glances at Rory]
LORELAI: Oh, I think she’s ready to go to the ghetto on you.
Possibly a reference to the 1998 hip-hop song, “The Geto”, by the rapper Scarface, featuring Willie D, Ice Cube, and K.B, from the album, My Homies. One part says, ” … got to go, to the ghetto”. If so, it may be an attempt to make us believe Lorelai’s earlier assertion that she is “into rap”. It sort of ends up seeming a bit racist.
MAX: I’m very sorry.
LORELAI: Oh, don’t be. At least we get to wear skirts without being Scottish or riding a float in the gay pride parade.
MAX: Well, that’ll change someday my friend, and when it does, I still won’t wear a skirt. But I’ll applaud those that do, and then cross the street so nobody sees I’m with them.
Gay rights protests had been held in the US since 1965, and in 1970 Chicago Gay Liberation held a march to commemorate the Stonewall riot in New York, which had taken place the previous year. More parades followed around the country and they soon became annual events. Originally called Gay Liberation or Gay Freedom marches, the name Gay Pride became standard in the 1980s.
Particularly in cities which are already accepting of LGBT communities, the parades have a festive character, whereby the political stage is built on notions of celebration. Large parades often involve floats, dancers, drag queens and amplified music; but even such celebratory parades usually include political and educational contingents, such as local politicians and marching groups from LGBT institutions of various kinds.
Lorelai and Max’s interaction here is quite uncomfortable to watch.
PARIS: I’m being punished. I had sex, so now I don’t get to go to Harvard.
Gilmore Girls really does seem to enjoy punishing girls and women for having sex. The consequences can be dire, and this is perhaps the first big example of that (after Lorelai getting pregnant with Rory, which happens before the show opens).
LORELAI: I’ve got the good kid.
Lorelai says this to herself, after accidentally overhearing Rory tell Paris she is still a virgin. It’s a line that infuriates many fans, and which Lauren Graham strenuously argued against. However, it doesn’t seem out of character for Lorelai, who has a lot of anxiety about Rory losing her virginity. The line comes to seem rather ironic in later seasons.
RICHARD: Oh, and you’re forgetting Liesl … Our East-German maid. She was much more masculine-looking than me.
We saw Liesl in “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”. She wasn’t masculine looking at all. Unless there was some other Liesl. There’s quite a few jokes about East German women being masculine in this show.
LORELAI: If you’d won, you could’ve rioted through town trashing storefronts and torching police cars like they do in L.A.
Lorelai is presumably thinking about the 1992 race riots in Los Angeles which began after a jury acquitted four officers of the Los Angeles Police Department charged with using excessive force in the arrest and beating of Rodney King. She makes it sound as if the riot was an excess of high spirits caused by winning a sporting match. Lorelai has a way of saying these uncomfortably racist-sounding things.
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.
LUKE: When you date a girl like Rory, you’re involved with her whole family. Just like that last girl you dated, you were involved with her whole Petri dish.
Petri dish, a shallow, transparent lidded dish that biologists use to grow cell cultures, such as bacteria, fungi, and moss. The container is named after its inventor, German bacteriologist Julius Petri.
Everyone is so horrible about Shane on this show. Even Luke, who (rightly) urged Jess to be nicer to Shane when they were going out, now he speaks of her family as nothing more than bacteria!
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.
Throughout this scene, Rory and Lane do the hair up and make-up for cousin James’ bride from Korea – a woman who remains nameless, and is played by Jessica Shim in her first role. She would go on to a smattering of small TV roles.
The bride is unable to speak English, but Lane speaks Korean, and exchanges a few words with her, asking if she likes her hair (not really, is the answer), and getting her water when she asks for it. Neither Lane nor Rory make any attempt to include her in their conversation, give her any comfort, or even try to teach her just one or two words of English.
She has come from another country, doesn’t speak any English, and is marrying a stranger described as “quiet and skulky”, which sounds like code for lacking the social skills to attract a wife among his peers. Cousin James is played by stand-up comedian and actor E.K., and whatever James’ possible faults, he is at least attractive.
Lane and Rory discuss an unhappy marriage which began with a wedding at the Kim house, between Min Cha, and the “mean man” she married, Wan Nam. There were seven years of Min Cha being told she was stupid and ordered around like a slave before she snapped and attacked her husband. They now live separate lives in the same house, still married.
The chances of the Korean bride having a happy marriage and happy life in America seem quite slim, yet Rory and Lane express no pity over her situation (and not really any for Min Cha either). She is marrying into Lane’s family, yet receives little welcome or signs of kindness from anyone. Mrs Kim doesn’t even bother speaking Korean to her, or in front of her, while talking about her.
It’s rather chilling that Rory and Lane get to have a heartwarming bonding scene together all while virtually ignoring this young woman, doing her up like a doll, and treating her as if she barely exists. She is a prop in the scene, rather than another actor.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 