Lorelai Apologises to Emily

Emily goes to to the kitchen to get more bread (wherever is the cook or the maid during these dramatic kitchen scenes? Do they just happen to be on a break in the middle of a meal, or in the toilet? Is there another food preparation or storage room somewhere? Even weirder, are they just out of shot and actually present the whole time?).

Lorelai apologises to Emily for not trusting her motives in helping, saying that she isn’t used to people doing things without strings attached. Emily immediately realises that Lorelai is talking about her and Richard, but Lorelai continues thanking her, saying she didn’t have anywhere to turn and was all out of ideas, and that she doesn’t know what she would have done without Emily. Hm, maybe she needs to thank and apologise to Rory as well now?

Emily thanks Lorelai, and then gives her parting shot – with a wicked smile, she tells her the DAR will be holding all their meetings at the Independence Inn from now on. She leaves, seemingly without the bread she supposedly came in for. Emily wasn’t joking either. A year later, there is mention of the DAR meetings still being held at the inn.

Of course, the DAR would have been free to book the Independence if they wanted to anyway, and Emily has organised things so that the inn Lorelai manages gets more business. It’s up to the viewer whether she has really taken revenge on Lorelai, or is trying to give her even more help. Or both!

Note how beautifully this scene is composed and shot, and that here is the colour red again to indicate strong emotion. Lorelai in red with a red light on her hair, vase of red flowers, red strawberries on the cake, little red desserts, red grapes, a red pepper in the fruit bowl (slightly oddly). Only Emily remains in cool blue and silver, her emotions under control.

Executive Manager

LORELAI: Oh, but I am good for the money. I, uh, pay off all my debts and I work really hard. I’ve been the executive manager of the Independence Inn for the last four years now.

We now learn that Lorelai has been the executive manager at the Independence Inn since early 1998. We don’t know what her position was before that, but the pay was good enough that Lorelai was able to buy a house even before her promotion.

Luke Tries to Loan Lorelai Money

LORELAI: Luke, that’s a loan.
LUKE: No, it’s just a temporary exchange of money for services that will be paid back when you finally have the . . . it’s a loan.

Luke makes an attempt to help Lorelai by advancing her the money to pay for the home repairs, as well as getting in a “good contractor” who did some work at the diner for him. I wonder if this is Tom the Contractor, who appears later in the show, and may be the same Tom who assisted Rory in her volunteer work for Rebuilding Together?

Lorelai thanks Luke but turns his offer down. She is refusing help from both family and friends, apparently determined to go it alone.

First National Bank

EMILY: You have any idea who Miles Hahn is? … He’s the president of the First National Bank. We’ve been doing business with him for years. He’s become a very dear friend of ours actually.

A name sometimes given to local banks in the US; there have been many of this name, most of which have closed down or been taken over by now. There are still examples in Florida, Utah, Nebraska, and Pennsylvania, but there’s never been one in Hartford.

It is unclear if Emily means that they use the First National Bank themselves, or if she means that Miles Hahn has been doing business with Richard through the insurance company he works for. I presume the first one.

Lorelai’s Contributions to Stars Hollow

Made all the donkey outfits for the 2001 Christmas Festival – we never saw this, but presumably it’s the same festival that the Christmas pageant is a part of. Seems like a lot of people dressed up as donkeys for the festival, in typical quirky Stars Hollow fashion.

Organised the Save the Historic Oak Tree campaign. Apparently Stars Hollow has a historic oak tree, which we haven’t seen, and Lorelai saved it.

Played the role of Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof for the Stars Hollow Community Theater. Tevye is the father and patriarch in the musical, so Lorelai must have been great to beat any male competitors for the role (unless she was the only candidate, or they were doing a gender-flipped version). Either way, she obviously gave a standout performance. A reminder that Lorelai has to be both mother and father, as a single parent.

I don’t know why Sookie and Rory think any of these things will help Lorelai get a loan – do either of them know how banks work? They don’t give you loans based on how nice and community-minded you are.

Rory’s PSAT Scores

RORY: I got a 740 Verbal and a 760 Math.

In 2001, the PSAT was split into three sections, not two: Math, Writing, and Critical Reading, and the maxiumum score in each section was 80.

Rory seems to have taken the pre-1997 PSAT, which only had two sections, Math and Verbal, and had a maximum score of 800 in each section. No doubt the writer (Linda Loiselle Guzik) based it on her memories of taking the PSAT in high school, not the PSAT then in use.

Rory’s scores are extremely good in both categories, putting her in the top 1%, and making her a virtual certainty as a Merit Scholarship semi-finalist. Somehow she never seemed to receive a Merit Scholarship to help her pay for her college education, and we never hear of it as a possibility.

The Elaborate Snowman is Vandalised

On their way home, Lorelai and Rory notice that the elaborate snowman from the contest has been destroyed, presumably by Jess, who criticised it to Rory as “overdone”, and who wanted Rory’s entry to win. Rory, aka Miss Honesty, claims that she has no idea what happened to the snowman. Really, Rory? No idea at all?

For some reason, Lorelai believes that means she and Rory will win by default, even though there are many other snowmen still in the contest. This seems arrogant to the point of delusion. Their snow-woman was a good entry, but I don’t know if it’s automatically the winner now. The judges could very well take exception to her stroke mouth or even be literal enough to say it’s a snowman contest, not a snow-woman contest. We never do find out if they won the competition or not.

Lorelai and Rory Ride Home in a Sleigh

Rather than trudging home through the snow carrying their bags, Lorelai organises a sleigh ride home for she and Rory (and none of their friends, like Luke or Sookie or Dean or Lane … but maybe she didn’t want to seem like she was playing favourites, or the company would only allow one sleigh ride home). I’m not sure how they got to the inn with their bags in the first place. Perhaps someone gave them a lift?

The Bracebridge Dinner was originally going to be held on a Thursday night, and that would mean this was Friday morning, and Rory should be going to school. It’s likely it was moved to the Friday (meaning that it replaced the usual Friday Night Dinner with Emily and Richard), and it’s now Saturday morning and Rory is on her break. It can’t have been a weekend night, because Dean and Lane went to school the same day as the Bracebridge Dinner.

Mozart’s Prague Symphony

RICHARD: Well, I was appalled. Prague has played host to some of the greatest composers in history. Mozart named a symphony after it, for heaven’s sake. So what did I do?
EMILY: I have tried so hard to forget this.
RICHARD: I stood beside them and their boombox and I hummed Mozart’s Prague Symphony as loud as I could. [starts humming]

Symphony No. 38 in D major (K. 504), was composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, previously discussed, in late 1786. It premiered in Prague in 1787, during Mozart’s first visit to the city. Because of this, it is popularly known as the Prague Symphony. Mozart didn’t actually give it this name, and it’s not certain that Mozart wrote it in honour of Prague, although there is some evidence that he might have done.

Tammy Faye Bakker

RORY (looking at photo of Sherry): Nice looking lady.
LORELAI: Mm hmm. Like a young Tammy Faye Bakker.
RORY: But prettier than that.

Tammy Faye Bakker, born Tamara LaValley (1942-2007) was the ex-wife of television evangelist Jim Bakker (born 1940). She and her husband ran a televangelist program called the PTL Club, founded in 1974; it was dissolved in 1989 when Jim Bakker was convicted and imprisoned on indicted on numerous counts of fraud and conspiracy. Tammy Faye divorced Jim in 1992, and married Roe Messner, a church building contractor (so by this stage she was actually Tammy Faye Messner).

Tammy Faye was known for her eccentric and glamorous image, and her views which often diverged from mainstream evangelical Christianity. For example, she supported the LGBT community, and reached out to HIV positive patients at the height of the AIDS epidemic. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996, so was already terminally ill when this episode aired.

It is unclear what age “young” Tammy Faye Bakker was that Lorelai believes Sherry resembles. Knowing what Sherry actually looks like, perhaps when Tammy Faye’s hair was brown, before she dyed it blonde. That would have been in the 1960s, when Tammy Faye and her husband Jim had a puppet show on a Christian TV network.

The viewer may decide for themselves whether Sherry looks like Tammy Faye Bakker at any age, but I personally cannot see any strong resemblance (I can barely see a weak resemblance). I’m surprised that Rory doesn’t disagree any more strenuously than by saying Sherry is “prettier than that”, and can only think that she walks on eggshells when it comes to her mother’s jealousy over Sherry.

I’m not sure how Lorelai’s frame of reference for picturing a young Tammy Faye Bakker is in the 1960s, before Lorelai was born. I find this whole reference quite confusing.