JACKSON: I think we should get married … Soon. SOOKIE: Are you pregnant? JACKSON: What do you say? Sookie? SOOKIE: Yes! I say yes. Oh my God, we’re getting married!
In typical Gilmore Girls fashion, a marriage proposal comes out of a fight, and the wedding is scheduled to happen as soon as possible.
Sookie seems to have packed the basket expecting or hoping for a proposal, because there’s a vase of roses, candles, champagne, and even what looks like a tiny wedding cake with white icing. She may not have been quite so surprised by the proposal as she acts. Is it possible that Sookie deliberately ignored Jackson’s hints about moving in together because she was holding out for marriage?
A bit of trivia – this scene was filmed in the dark, and then the light turned up in editing until it appears to be a sunny afternoon.
KIRK: Two hundred and fifty dollars … JACKSON: Will you take a check? KIRK: With two forms of ID.
Jackson eventually convinces Kirk to let him have Sookie’s basket, but it costs him $250 – much more than if he had bid on it originally. This makes Sookie’s the most expensive basket of the day, but the money doesn’t go to charity, but to Kirk!
However, Kirk refuses to take Jackson’s cheque because he doesn’t resemble his photo ID closely enough, so Jackson is paying him back in weekly instalments of crinkle cut carrot sticks. It is not known whether Jackson ever really did pay him back, and no cash seems to have changed hands. It’s possible that Kirk only wanted to mess with Jackson and never intended to make him pay for Sookie’s basket. I think he should have at least got his $35 back though.
KIRK: My mother didn’t even make one for me … She made one for all my brothers and sisters but not for me … Twelve brothers and sisters, the only one without a basket – me.
Kirk’s statement could mean either that he has twelve siblings, or that he is one of twelve brothers and sisters. Either way, that’s a very large family. It doesn’t make a huge amount of sense for Kirk’s mother to make baskets for her children – I guess maybe for the girls, so they’ve got something to take to the auction, but shouldn’t the boys be buying other people’s baskets for charity, not getting a free one from their mother???
We never find out if Kirk’s claim is true or not, or if he’s making it up to sound more pathetic. He did talk of going on vacation with his parents, as if he was their only child, and if they chose to only take him over eleven or twelve other siblings, he doesn’t sound neglected by them.
Some fans have wondered if the “swan guy” and “Mick the DSL installer” from the early episodes were actually two of Kirk’s look-alike brothers. However, all the siblings may be entirely imaginary.
LORELAI: Luke, you gotta come out there with me. Patty gave my picture out to all these guys because she thinks I need a man. LUKE: You do. One with a nice couch and a deep knowledge of Freud.
Jackson is piqued because Sookie hasn’t picked up on his hints he wants to move in with her, and petulantly refuses to bid on her basket. With nobody else making a move, Andrew from Stars Hollow Books puts in a bid for it. At this point, Andrew appears to be single, but it’s unclear whether he wants the delicious basket, or Sookie herself. He certainly doesn’t seem worried about upsetting Jackson.
The point where Andrew and Jackson’s names are said together is almost certainly a joking reference to Andrew Jackson (1767-1845), lawyer, soldier, and statesmen who served as the 7th President of the United States, from 1829 to 1837.
DEAN: So buck tradition. RORY: Are you kidding? Do you remember how mad Taylor was when I was sick and I couldn’t go to the turkey-calling contest?
Turkey calling is a type of contest held in North America, where contestants must try to mimic the sound of a turkey so successfully that judges cannot tell the difference between the human and a real turkey. They may use their voice (“natural turkey calling”), or use instruments made of wood, glass, metal, etc, and must perform five different calls.
Turkey calling contests are usually held during the turkey hunting season, in the fall, with Thanksgiving providing a natural occasion to include one. The other season for turkey calling contests is the spring, during the turkey mating season.
If Stars Hollow holds theirs at Thanksgiving, it isn’t mentioned in the Thanksgiving episode we see (that doesn’t mean it doesn’t happen offscreen, of course). Also, Rory wasn’t sick the previous Thanksgiving – she seemed fine at the Chilton play, which occurred around the same time. That means that if it’s held at Thanksgiving, Rory must have been sick at Thanksgiving 2000, which took place between “Love and War and Snow” and “Rory’s Dance”. She and Dean had just begun dating then, so he would be able to remember her being too sick to participate.
Another possibility is that it’s part of the Autumn Festival, in early November. Rory wasn’t sick for the 2000 one, but is just possible she was sick the previous year, in 2001. We see her just before and after the festival but not on the day itself, so if she was sick, it would have just been a 24-hour bug (food poisoning from leftovers???).
This is the first mention we get of Taylor apparently insisting that Rory participate in every Stars Hollow activity, even though she didn’t go on the teen hayride in the pilot episode. It puts a slightly sinister spin on the enforced fun that Rory seems to have been pressured into.
RORY: It’s tradition. DEAN: I don’t believe this. RORY: It’s true. My mother and I have been doing this every year since we moved here.
We now know that Lorelai has been taking part in the Bid-a-Basket Fundraiser since 1987, even though she was a maid at the inn at the time, and had only been in Stars Hollow for a few months. It seems she became heavily involved in the town almost immediately.
Rory says she has also been taking part since she arrived in town too, but she was only a toddler. Perhaps she means that she accompanied Lorelai on her picnic lunch dates, as a sort of chaperone to make sure things could never get too romantic, and because Lorelai either didn’t want to leave her with a babysitter, or had no babysitting options.
It’s unclear at what age Rory was deemed old enough to take part in the fundraiser with her own basket, but most likely not until she was sixteen and had a boyfriend to buy her basket. That would be since the previous year, 2001. So Rory’s grand “tradition” has probably been going for a whole twelve months.
It’s also “tradition” for the woman to bake a delicious picnic lunch, but Lorelai and Rory don’t bother sticking to that tradition. There’s so many places that Dean could poke holes in Rory’s narrative or call her out, but he never does.
[Rory walks past the video store, which her picture is in the window. As she stares at it, Jess walks over to her.] JESS: Nice picture.
Oh, very smooth. We already know how much you like Rory’s pictures, Jess!
Rory has been named Citizen of the Month in Stars Hollow, which is why her photo is up in the window of the video store. It shows her in her Chilton uniform against a blank background, and may be from school photo day.
Rory wonders where Taylor and Kirk got the photo from. Good question!
DEAN: Mr. Gilmore, I understand you want Rory to be safe, but so do I. I would not give this car to her if I did not know for a fact that it was a hundred percent safe. I checked it, my father checked it, and Gypsy at Hewes Brothers checked it.
We are now introduced to a new character in Gilmore Girls – the local mechanic, Gypsy, who works at Hewes Brothers. This is slightly confusing, because in an early episode, Lorelai refers to the local garage as Musky’s, then in “Love, Daisies and Troubadours”, she says that Maven Hewes bought the garage from Jim Dunning.
Musky’s may be a completely different business, an auto body shop which does smash repairs rather than a garage. I suppose it is just possible that Maven and Musky are the two Hewes Brothers, or Musky is Maven’s nickname. In either case, we never see the Hewes Brothers, who seem to have left everything in the capable hands of their mechanic (or perhaps she bought the business from them, including the name).
Gypsy is left as an intentional cypher in the show. We never discover her surname, or find out if Gypsy is her real name or a nickname. We learn nothing of her backstory or why she came to town. We don’t find out her ethnic heritage, or her sexual orientation.
All we need to know is that she’s a sarcastic, straight-talking mechanic who is extremely good at her job and highly respected for it. Nobody ever questions her skills, and it is said that if Gypsy can’t fix a vehicle, then nobody can.
PARIS: The Oppenheimer Award for Excellence in school journalism is not a contest. It’s a statement. It says you’re the best. The best writers, the best reporters, the best editors. It says that you have crushed all others who have dared to take you on. It says that every other single school in the United States of America is feeling nothing but shame and defeat and pain because of the people who won the Oppenheimer plaque. I wanna be those people, I wanna cause that pain.
The Oppenheimer Award for Excellence seems to have been named in honour of Jess Oppenheimer (1913-1988) [pictured], the creator, producer, and head writer of the sitcomI Love Lucy, starring Lucille Ball. Lucille Ball called him “the brains” behind Lucy, and he was the creative driving force of the show. (Jess may also be named after Oppenheimer!).
In real life, there are the National Pacemaker Awards in student journalism, which has a category for high school newspapers. They are administered by the National Scholastic Press Association. Founded in 1927, they are the student equivalent of the Pulitzer Prizes, and for that category the deadline is in June. There is no plaque handed out as a prize.
We never discover whether The Franklin won the award, but it is never mentioned again, suggesting that it didn’t.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 