Rory seems to think the word “chores” sounds very rural and folksy. Unlike Dean, Rory doesn’t have regular chores – as it’s just she and Lorelai (and they both have work/school), she takes an almost equal share of the household tasks. It’s never made clear how Lorelai and Rory divide up jobs around the house, but they’re rarely shown arguing about it or even discussing it, and they have a relaxed approach in any case.
LANE: Okay, I just crunched the numbers and at two thousand words and twenty-five cents a word, this stupid ad’s gonna cost five hundred dollars! That’s five months worth of Minwaxing end tables at my mom’s store.
Minwax is a company founded in Brooklyn in 1904 by Arthur B. Harrison. It’s currently headquartered in Cleveland, Ohio. They make Minwax Wood Finish Stain, so Lane is staining end tables (small tables designed to sit next to an armchair or sofa).
This solves the mystery of where Lane gets the money to buy music and other paraphernalia – she gets paid $100 a month (around $25 per week) for staining furniture at the antiques store. It’s not a lot of money, but Lane is thrifty.
Lane refers to it as her “mom’s store”, even though she has a father as well (or she did at the start of the show, anyway). I don’t know if Mrs Kim is the actual sole owner of the store, or if Lane refers to it that way because she sees her mother as the “boss” of the store, being there all the time while her father is mysteriously absent.
While Lorelai and Rory are having Friday Night Dinner with Emily, Christopher decides to show up – no doubt encouraged by Emily, who has had a cosy little chat with him over the phone, and tried to make Lorelai get back with him.
Christopher doesn’t actually have any ideas on how to change the situation – he just wants Lorelai (and to a lesser extent, Rory) back in his life. He makes it clear that he wants Lorelai, not Sherry, but isn’t willing to break up with Sherry. In fact, he tells Lorelai he plans to marry her. I feel as if Sherry deserves to know all this before she commits to marriage and motherhood with Christopher!
I’m not completely sure what Christopher hopes to gain by seeing Lorelai – presumably to make friends again, with the hopes of one day persuading Lorelai to become his mistress, bed buddy, or booty call.
PARIS: All right, I’ll push it through … But the next genius who comes up with the brilliant plan to put Elizabeth Arden in the chemistry class can bite my ass.
Elizabeth Arden Inc., major cosmetics, skin care, and fragrance company founded by Canadian-American businesswoman Elizabeth Arden in 1910, first as the Red Door salon on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The brand has been owned by Revlon since 2016 and is headquartered in Miami, Florida.
I’m not sure why students would ask for Elizabeth Arden in the chemistry class – maybe for the hand cream? Or for perfume, to cover the chemical smell?
This 1996 book by Happeth A. Jones is on the coffee table when Lorelai and Rory are talking. It is part of a series, and as its title suggests, is all about raising a happy, healthy Pomeranian dog.
The question is, why is Lorelai apparently reading it? Is she preparing to do some dog sitting for someone with a Pomeranian, or is she thinking of buying one, as she has been shown to be keen on getting a dog?
CHRISTOPHER: Sherry’s pregnant … She just found out and she called me as soon as she found out, and that was her calling to tell me that she found out.
Christopher comes to see Lorelai who is standing on the bridge, waiting for him (another mention of bridges as significant emotional spaces). He tells her that Sherry has called him on his cell phone to tell him she has just discovered she is pregnant – I presume she used a home pregnancy testing kit, as it’s a Sunday.
Oddly enough, Lorelai says, “Women all over the world will line up to see that tiny little woman fat”. Sherry isn’t a tiny little woman, she’s only a few inches shorter than Lorelai, and Lorelai is slim as well. It makes Sherry sound like a stick-thin five foot tall waif, which she isn’t. Not to mention the bizarre thinking that equates being pregnant with being “fat”.
Apparently all the terrible problems Christopher and Sherry were having were not enough to stop them from having (unprotected?) sex. It does beg the question, did Sherry even know they were supposedly having problems and Christopher was thinking of moving out? Maybe all she did was go away on business for a month or so, and Christopher used that as an opportunity to weasel his way back in to Lorelai’s life, telling her some story about how he and Sherry were practically broken up.
As a huge slap in the face to Lorelai, Christopher is going back to Sherry because she’s having a baby. Christopher was never around while Rory was growing up, and he’s apparently never forgiven himself (zero evidence of that, but whatever). He can’t make that mistake again, so it’s back to his girlfriend that he doesn’t love, so he can be a father to their child. (This is actually a terrible basis for a relationship).
It doesn’t make any sense, because he could still be a good father to his second child without going back to Sherry (and I bet while telling her nothing of what he’s been up to with Lorelai in the interim). For that matter, he could have been a good father to Rory while not being with Lorelai all this time.
Notice that when Rory questions why her dad has a work phone call on a Sunday, he responds, “Hey, I have a lot of responsibility now”. Little did he know how true those words would turn out to be!
PARIS: Oh, relax. I won’t call you on Prince William’s precious phone again.
Prince William (born 1982), member of the British royal family, and since birth, second in the line of succession to the British throne. In 2002, Prince William was enrolled at the University of St Andrews in Scotland, and considered one of the most eligible young bachelors in the world. (By the next year, he was dating fellow student Catherine Middleton, who would eventually become his wife).
Paris never says how she got Dean’s cell phone number. Presumably she had a snoop at Rory’s pager some time.
Paris rings Rory on Dean’s cell phone while they are at Sookie and Jackson’s wedding to tell her that they have won the election. It’s a rather strange scene, because it shows Paris at Chilton, with what looks like students and teachers busily counting the votes for the school President elections.
But the election was on Friday, and it’s now Sunday – have they been counting votes all weekend? Couldn’t this have waited until Monday? And why does it take all weekend – surely Chilton doesn’t have that many students?
Also, they clearly haven’t finished counting votes, they are still working at it. And this isn’t a recount either, because the scrutineers are taking the votes straight from the original boxes. How does Paris know she has won already? Is there a tally board up somewhere, so Paris can see that she already has an unbeatable lead?
And Paris says the real clincher was that they got the votes from the school band, which was always a wild card, as the academic clubs were something they could count on. Do all the clubs vote en bloc, or does each particular club get one collective vote (which is obviously very undemocratic?). And how does Paris know all this? Isn’t the voting a secret ballot?
LORELAI: Aw, look at you, trying to make Mommy feel like you don’t spend every night tunneling out of here with a spoon.
Lorelai references Escape from Alcatraz, 1979 prison thriller film directed by Don Spiegel. It’s an adaptation of the 1963 non-fiction book of the same name by J. Campbell Bruce, and dramatises the 1962 prisoner escape from the maximum security prison on Alcatraz Island, off the shore of San Francisco.
The film stars Clint Eastwood as Frank Morris, an extremely intelligent criminal who forms an escape plan with a few other prisoners. Over the next few months, they dig through their cell walls with spoons, make papier-mache dummies to act as decoys, and construct a raft out of raincoats. The film implies the escape was successful, although that is not certain (recent evidence seems to suggest the men did survive).
Escape from Alcatraz was a commercial success and well received by critics. It is often considered one of the best films of 1979.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 