Wednesday Nights

SHERRY: And he told me about how he wasn’t really a presence in her life for years and how he’d like to make up for all that time that he wasted.
LORELAI: Well, he’s been doing really well lately.
SHERRY: I know. He is obsessive about his call dates to her. I mean, it doesn’t matter where we are or what we’re doing, he’s gotta call Rory Wednesday nights at seven o’clock. I like that about him.

We learn here that Christopher has been phoning Rory every Wednesday at 7 pm since the debutante ball, after years of neglect. It seems a bit suspicious he only became so conscientious when he got with Sherry, as if he’s mainly doing it to impress his girlfriend.

It’s not clear when the Wednesday night phone calls initially started. After Christopher visited them in March 2001, Rory asked for him to phone more often. That could have been when the Wednesday calls were implemented, but if so, there was a big break during the summer, as Christopher moved to Boston then without ever letting Lorelai and Rory know, and they only resumed contact in September 2001.

Peppermint stick

SHERRY: Except that our colors were white and bright red. I looked hideous.
CHRISTOPHER: Oh, she’s being self-deprecating. You looked cute in that outfit.
SHERRY: No no, I looked like a peppermint stick. I swear, that’s where my addiction to clothes comes from. Trying to make up for all the years of having to wear the same thing every day.

A peppermint stick is a long stick of hard candy with peppermint flavouring, traditionally coloured with red and white stripes. They were developed in the US, and are often marketed as an “old fashioned” or traditional candy. They have been sold since at least 1837, when they were shown at an exhibition in Massachusetts, and were popular by the 1860s. By the early 1900s, they were already viewed nostalgically.

I don’t know of any private school in the US which has a bright red and white uniform. Note Sherry’s implication that she was very slim as a schoolgirl, when she compares herself to a skinny peppermint stick.

“I paraphrased Proust”

RORY: Well, having company is about making sacrifices.

LORELAI: Martha Stewart?

RORY: I paraphrased Proust.

Martha Stewart, previously discussed.

Rory refers to Marcel Proust, previously discussed, the author of In Search of Lost Time, a novel in seven volumes.

I’m not sure which part of Proust Rory is paraphrasing from. There are so many times that the author reflects on sacrifices made for other people, and for the benefit of society that it is difficult to choose. However, this sentence from The Guermantes Way, Vol 3 of the novel, stood out for me as possibly reflecting Rory’s feelings:

The same familiar spirit represented to Mme. de Guermantes the social duties of duchesses, of the foremost among them, that was, who like herself were multi-millionaires, the sacrifice to boring tea, dinner and evening parties of hours in which she might have read interesting books, as unpleasant necessities like rain, which Mme. de Guermantes accepted, letting play on them her biting humour, but without seeking in any way to justify her acceptance of them.

Rory also submits to social duties she finds boring, in a way Lorelai doesn’t, but like Mme. de Guermantes, she would probably prefer to be reading “interesting books”, and uses her sense of humour as a coping mechanism to get through them.

That does sound a lot like Rory’s attitude, and if so, suggests she thinks of entertaining her father and his girlfriend as a boring necessity. A big change from the previous season, when she was so thrilled to see Christopher in Stars Hollow. Is it just Sherry making the difference, or is some of the gilt coming off Christopher already?

If this is the source, it means Rory has read at least the first three volumes of In Search of Lost Time.

Puppy on the Christmas Card

LORELAI: I recognized you from your Christmas card.
CHRISTOPHER: Which I’m sure you mocked mercilessly.
LORELAI: Did not. Others, yes, but not yours. You guys were cute, and the puppy was cute.

Lorelai didn’t mock their card nearly as much as others, although she did say that Sherry looked like Tammy Faye Bakker. She so clearly doesn’t resemble Tammy Faye that I wonder if they had even cast an actress for the role at that point? Perhaps Sherry had a make-over for the photo shoot with a touch of Tammy Faye glamour to it.

The puppy is never seen or referred to again. Did they even have a puppy? Maybe they rented one for the photo shoot. Hopefully they didn’t get a puppy for Christmas and give it away in the New Year.

All-Boys Private School Uniform and a Yankees Cap

SOOKIE: I’m looking for a guy that looks like a guy that you could be with, only I’m deducting seventeen years off his age and I’m adding an all-boys private school uniform and a Yankees cap.

Sookie is looking around for Christopher, until Lorelai points out Sookie doesn’t know what he looks like. It seems hard to believe Lorelai has never shown Sookie a picture of Christopher, but from the way Rory treasures an old strip of photos of Christopher and Lorelai, it appears they possess no photo of him.

Sookie explains that she’s been looking for someone Lorelai would go out with, but imagining him seventeen years younger and in a private boy’s school uniform. This may suggest that Lorelai and Christopher went to separate single-sex private high schools. In real life, there are no single-sex private schools in Hartford itself, but a few in the nearby surrounding suburbs and towns that Lorelai and Christopher could have easily attended.

I’m not sure why Sookie is mentally making him a teenager in a school uniform when he’s an adult though. Maybe she’s going to then mentally add seventeen years to his age?

She gives him a Yankees cap because that’s what Luke wears!

Litchfield

LORELAI: So where’d this business trip take you?
CHRISTOPHER: Your neck of the woods, actually. I’m in the Litchfield area.

Litchfield is a historic town in Connecticut with a population of around 8000 (about the size of Stars Hollow). This comment seems to place Stars Hollow in Litchfield County, the location of Washington Depot, Milford Green, and Woodbury, which can be seen as inspirations for the town and its setting.

What business Christopher could be doing there is a bit of a headscratcher – he works for a Boston company that helps struggling technology companies trim their resources, presumably softening them up for corporate takeovers. Litchfield County is a rural area with a low population density, farmland, and small towns: what tech company could possibly be located there?

I can only think he is actually in Hartford or New York or something, or the whole thing is a lie. Perhaps Christopher has actually lost his job?

Reader’s Digest World Famous Polka CD

LANE: Okay, I’m dying for news. Give me some headlines.
RORY: Oh, well, I’ve got a debate coming up. And, um, Dean’s been working extra hours lately saving up for a new motorcycle, so I hardly see him. Mom and I haven’t done laundry in three weeks, but I have taken to jumping into the gigantic pile of dirty clothes while we play our Reader’s Digest World Famous Polka CD that we got used for ninety-nine cents.

I wasn’t able to find a World Famous Polka CD released by Reader’s Digest, but I did find Polka Party with Myron Floren on his accordion, released on CD in 1991 by Reader’s Digest. It’s possible that “world famous polka” is simply the sarcastic way that that Rory refers to it – “our world famous polka CD”. Otherwise it’s simply fictional.

Among the snippets from her life that Rory tells Lane is that she has hardly seen Dean since the Bid-on-a-Basket Fundraiser, almost a week ago. Conveniently, he has started working extra hours to save up for a new motorcycle, just after they got into a fight. I think we can assume they aren’t on the best of terms at the moment.

Klump Street

LORELAI: I don’t know. Um, how ‘bout this table with it’s unobstructed westward view of the wide cosmopolitan expansive Klump Street?

Lorelai seems to be saying that Luke’s is on Klump Street. I presumed that the street that Luke’s is on is Main Street – Luke mentioned Main Street, and it looks like the main street of town, as it’s where major businesses are, like the market. If there is a bigger, more important Main Street somewhere, we never see it, which seems odd.

It’s just possible she means that you can see the street which crosses it, as Luke’s is on a corner, and that this is Klump Street. If so, that’s the street Weston Bakery is on. Klump Street is the location of the giant slinky.

In fact, due to the frosted glass, curtains and blinds on the diner windows, customers don’t actually seem to have a great view of anything much from the tables at Luke’s.

Rory Loses her Bracelet

Rory walks away, not realizing her bracelet had fallen off while she was on the bridge (the bracelet Dean gave her as a sixteenth birthday present). Jess picks it up and puts it in his pocket – just like the “little boy” who picked up the lost love letter in the nursery rhyme, A-Tisket, A-Tasket.

It is unclear why Jess keeps Rory’s bracelet, but most likely just the sentimental pleasure of having something of Rory’s he can hold and touch. He probably intended to give it back at some point, the same way he returned her book. He may have also thought the handing back ceremony would be a flirtatiously teasing one – “Oh, you were looking for this? Another one of my magic tricks“.

Ernest Hemingway

JESS: Okay, tomorrow I will try again, and you will . . .
RORY: Give the painful Ernest Hemingway another chance. Yes, I promise.
JESS: You know, Ernest only has lovely things to say about you.

Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961), author, journalist, and sportsman. He is famous for his economical and understated style, which had a profound influence on 20^th century fiction, while his public image and adventurous lifestyle brought many admirers. He produced most of his work during the 1920s to the 1950s, and was awarded the 1954 Nobel Prize for Literature. Many of his works are considered classics of American literature.

Hemingway’s hard, lean prose style and strongly masculinist ethos (to the point where it sometimes seems misogynistic) seem at odds with the more diffuse, subtle writing that Rory seems to appreciate. The irony is that Hemingway was a journalist, which helped to hone his spare writing style.

I’m not sure exactly what Jess means by “Ernest only has lovely things to say about you”, but in his works, brunettes are usually good, while blondes are bad (hm, rather like Gilmore Girls). Hemingway married four times times, three times to fellow journalists, as Rory plans to be.