Second Cousin Stan

RORY: This is one ugly looking baby. Whose baby is this?
LORELAI: That’s your second cousin’s Stan’s. Poor kid.
RORY: Ugh, he got Stan’s everything.

If Stan is Rory’s second cousin, then surely he is the son of Lorelai’s cousin? But where did Lorelai get a cousin from? We’re only told of one aunt, Hopie, who is Emily’s sister and lives in Paris (no husband or children were mentioned). It is implied that Richard is an only child, despite the proliferation of Gilmore aunts and uncles. And could Lorelai’s cousin already be old enough to be a grandfather?

It’s possible that Lorelai (or the writer?) means that Stan is Rory’s cousin twice removed, meaning that he is Richard’s cousin – if so, he’s presumably a lot younger than Richard since he’s just welcomed a new baby. Many people get second cousins and cousins twice removed mixed up.

The baby doesn’t actually seem particularly ugly, to me it just looks like a normal baby.

Christmas in the Bahamas

LORELAI (to Richard): You and Mom, you always go out of town this time of year.
RORY: Last year it was the Bahamas.

Last year we discovered it was Richard and Emily’s annual tradition to hold a Christmas party in mid-December. This year we discover another tradition: they go out of town around Christmas time (presumably after the party, but possibly before).

I’m not sure whether they actually go away for Christmas, or if they travel in the week or so before Christmas, and get back in time for the 25^th. Richard and Emily spoke about only seeing Lorelai and Rory at Christmas and Easter, so did that just mean attending the Christmas party each year? As that was attended by their friends, it doesn’t seem as if they spent much time together as a family at all, even in the holidays. Perhaps they meant the entire Christmas season – the party, and then Christmas itself.

Richard and Emily went to the Bahamas in December 2000, after Richard had been hospitalised for an angina attack. As Christopher’s parents, Straub and Francine Hayden, live in the Bahamas, it seems very likely the Gilmores either stayed with them, or visited them, during their vacation. It was only a couple of months later that Christopher’s parents come to Hartford just as Christopher arrives for a visit to Stars Hollow, suggesting it was a plan that the elder Gilmores cooked up to bring Lorelai and Christopher together – with devastating results.

“You’re gonna kill yourself in a couple of hours”

LORELAI: Taking pity on your burger?
RORY: Not hungry.
LORELAI: Honey, you’ve got to eat. You’re gonna kill yourself in a couple of hours, you really need your strength.

The timeline of this episode, already fairly wonky with a week that seems to have gone missing, goes completely bazonkers on the day of the final rehearsal. Rehearsal starts at 5 pm, and Lorelai says Rory has to kill herself “in a couple of hours” (yet another suicide joke in the show). So it seems as if it is 3 pm, and they are eating mid-afternoon burgers, perhaps a late lunch.

Yet not long afterwards, Lorelai makes plans for them to go shopping that afternoon, as if it’s midday, then Paul and his parents come in for breakfast. Lorelai and Rory are eating burgers for breakfast??? They always have eggs or pancakes on a weekend (muffins if they’re not hungry), they’ve never had breakfast hamburgers before. Is this brunch or a second breakfast or an early lunch? What the dink time is it?

Romeo and Juliet Movie

RORY: She’s letting you go? That’s amazing. What changed her mind?
LANE: I let her watch the Romeo and Juliet movie with Leo and Claire Danes.

Lane is talking about William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (often shortened to Romeo + Juliet), a 1996 film directed by Baz Luhrman and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the title roles. It is a modernised adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, with the Montagues and Capulets two rival (mafia) business empires in the fictional American city of Verona Beach (inspired by Venice Beach in L.A., but filmed in Mexico).

The film was a commercial success and gained mostly positive reviews, as well as winning several awards internationally. At the BAFTA Film Awards, it won Best Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Music, and Best Production Design. It continues to be a popular choice for high school English teachers to show their students as an introduction to the play.

It wasn’t released on DVD until 2002, so I’m not sure how Lane showed her mother the movie. Perhaps it was conveniently on at the local cinema.

Fernando

SOOKIE: But we have an ice cream maker, a professional one. See, that means we can make enough ice cream for everyone in the inn, whereas this little guy…
LORELAI: Fernando.

Lorelai may have named her ice cream maker after Fernando, the 1976 song by Swedish pop group ABBA, included on their album Arrival the same year. One of the best-selling singles of all time, it went to #13 in the US, and is still a staple on some American radio stations.

I’m mostly suggesting this because I can’t imagine a woman of Lorelai’s age and background choosing the name Fernando without thinking of the song. The lyrics do fit the circumstances though, because the song is about two old Mexican freedom fighters from a nameless conflict, reminiscing about the battles of their youth.

The stars were bright, Fernando
They were shining there for you and me
For liberty, Fernando
Though I never thought that we could lose
There’s no regret
If I had to do the same again
I would, my friend, Fernando

Lorelai chose liberty over marriage to Max, and in the end she has no regrets about doing so. However, she doesn’t want to keep the ice cream maker, as it’s a constant reminder of a failed relationship.

Extended Family

As Lorelai begins calling relatives to find out if they sent her the ice cream maker, we learn a few names from the extended family. They are identified as aunts and uncles, which may be courtesy titles for any elderly distant relatives. Or they could be Richard’s aunts and uncles, the siblings of either Trix, or Richard’s father.

Aunt Bobbie. Aunt Bobbie is a traditional Bible-thumping Christian, by the sounds of it.

Aunt Clarissa. Turns out to have recently died. Aunt Bobbie seems to suggest a belief that Clarissa would have been hell-bound.

Aunt Bunny. Has also died.

Uncle Randolph. The older brother of Bunny. Lorelai doesn’t seem to think he has much longer to live.

The Pennsylvania Gilmores. A branch of the family in this state is next on Lorelai’s list. It sounds as if she is working her way through the Gilmore side of the family first.

The Shakespeare Project

PROFESSOR ANDERSON: Believe it or not, Shakespeare probably never intended his plays to be read by students sitting at desks more concerned with getting As than with the fate of Macbeth. His plays were meant to be experienced, lived. So with that in mind, together with my third period Shakespeare, you’ll be split up into five groups and each group will assume responsibility for one act of Romeo and Juliet, which will be performed a week from Sunday. You will nominate the director, you will cast the scene, rehearse the scene, and interpret the scene in your own individual manner.

This is the main plot of this episode, revolving around the group project that Rory’s class is doing for English Literature (?). Her new teacher is Professor Anderson, according to the credits, so she no longer has Mr Medina, like at the start of this year. I’m not sure if he’s just conveniently faded out of the picture (like Mr Remmy did), or if Professor Anderson is teaching English instead.

Professor Anderson references Macbeth, previously discussed, a callback to it last being mentioned when Rory had to do a project outside class with Paris, Madeline and Louise. The project is focused on Romeo and Juliet, previously mentioned, a play which has become a touchstone for Gilmore Girls.

The Ice-Cream Maker Wedding Gift

SOOKIE: A Musso Lussino 480!
LORELAI: Somebody sent me a Fascist ice cream maker?

The episode begins with Lorelai receiving a mysterious late wedding gift from someone who apparently doesn’t know her wedding with Max was cancelled. When Sookie and Rory persuade her to open it (in case there’s a card inside), it turns out to be a Lello Musso Lussino 480 ice cream maker.

This is a top-shelf ice cream maker, made in Italy, producing restaurant-quality ice cream in half an hour for the domestic market. It’s extremely expensive, costing almost $1000 today. Lorelai jokes that it’s a Fascist ice-cream maker, because its name sounds slightly like Mussolini, and of course Lorelai has to refer to it as Il Duce.

We never discover who sent Lorelai the ice cream maker. It seems reasonable to guess that it was Emily, trying to give Lorelai her gift anonymously. It’s certainly the kind of expensive gift she would pick out, and it’s thoughtful, because this ice cream maker is quick and easy to use – she knows Lorelai and Rory are not at home in the kitchen. It seems telling that just after she told Lorelai about the wedding gift she chose, refusing to say what it was, she asked them if they wanted ice cream.

Luke Protects and Mends the Chuppah

LORELAI: Thanks for doing this. I didn’t want the rain to destroy your beautiful chuppah. And I looked and looked in the yellow pages and I didn’t see a chuppah waterproofer listing anywhere.

Luke comes over because Lorelai is worried the chuppah Luke made for her wedding to Max might get damaged by rain – apparently this is the first time heavy rain has been expected since August? Or else there’s been so much successive rain that Lorelai is worried about its cumulative effect.

I’m not sure how Luke saved the chuppah from getting wet, possibly some sort of oil or coating to protect it from the elements (there’s a bottle of something in his bucket, but you can’t see the label). He also has to superglue the head of a wooden goat decorating the chuppah back on. It’s a nice symbol of how Luke is willing to maintain and protect his relationship with Lorelai.

As part of that, he asks Lorelai about her fight with Sookie, and listens to her fears about starting her own business, and her grief at losing her connection to the Independence. She speaks of the inn as her “memory home”, where both she and Rory took their first steps, saying it means more to her than her parents’ home (what a kick in the teeth for Emily and Richard!).

Blue Book Laws

JESS: I’m not really familiar with the blue book laws in this town, so you can be talking about a lot of things. Dropping a gum wrapper, strolling arm in arm with a member of the opposite sex on a Sunday.

Jess seems to have confused two different things and put them together (perhaps deliberately).

Blue laws are laws designed to restrict activities on a Sunday, such as banning certain retail activities eg buying alcohol. In Puritan times, they were very strict when Connecticut was a colony, which might be what Jess is implying – that Stars Hollow is still stuck in the colonial past. Examples of such old timey strictness include not allowing people to run anywhere, or to walk in their gardens on a Sunday. It’s not common, but some towns in the US do have their own blue laws, even today.

Project Blue Book was the code name for the study of UFOs by the US Air Force from 1952 to 1969. Did Jess make a simple error, a Freudian slip of the tongue, or is he saying that he feels like an “alien” being studied by the townsfolk of Stars Hollow?

(I have actually seen people make this same error in regard to “blue book laws”, so I don’t discount the idea that the writer, Daniel Palladino, may have had the same misunderstanding).