Footnotes to the TV series
Andrew from Stars Hollow Books is at the meeting, and says that his son told him about Jess setting off the fire alarms at the high school. We now discover that Andrew is the father of a boy, presumably a teenager. (He makes it sound as if he only has one son, although there may be daughters as well). He’s sitting next to Bootsy, as if they might be friends (or both in the trade of selling reading materials, so have something in common).
Stole money from the bridge fundraising jar (money was returned)
Stole a gnome from Babette (gnome was returned)
Hooted one of Miss Patty’s dance classes (it’s not really clear if he hooted a horn or hooted in derision, either way, they’re just little girls, so kind of yuck)
Stole a hose from Fran’s front yard (was this payback for refusing to sell her inn to Rory’s mother?)
Set off all the fire alarms at the high school
Drew a chalk outline outside Doose’s Market so that Taylor lost business
The viewer might be getting the impression that Jess, although clearly a pest and a nuisance around town, is hardly committing any major acts of villainy. For some reason, the police don’t seem to be getting involved, even for petty theft, misuse of a fire alarm, or vandalism, and perhaps this lack of police action is one of the things fuelling the town’s frustration. It may also be spurring Jess on to further mischief, if he’s mostly doing this for attention or to prove he’s a “bad boy” so he’ll be sent back to his mother.
MIA: I miss you. Hey, do you realize it was fifteen years ago almost to the day?
LORELAI: Yes it was.
RORY: What was?
MIA: To the day when this skinny little teenage girl showed up at the inn. She had this tiny little thing in her arms.
LORELAI: A little thing named Rory.
The date appears to be 31st October 2001, although there is no mention of it being Halloween. Presumably the parties and celebrations will be in the evening, offscreen. If it is fifteen years, almost to the day, since Lorelai and Rory arrived in Stars Hollow, then it would have been in late October or early November 1986, when Rory was two, and Lorelai eighteen and a half.
In 1986, Halloween was a Friday. If Lorelai arrived in Stars Hollow that weekend, then she could have arrived on Saturday the 1st of November. The connection with Halloween gives Lorelai’s entrance into Stars Hollow a magical feel, as if forces beyond our ken were at work to bring the Gilmore girls to this starlit little town. That weekend would have also been the Autumn Festival, which remains a touchstone for the Gilmore girls throughout the original series and into the revival.
Perhaps more interestingly, they came to Stars Hollow just days after Rory’s second birthday. It makes you wonder what occurred to drive Lorelai to flee her parents’ home, because she doesn’t seem to have made a planned, measured, or calculated approach to running away. The show makes it sound as if she grabbed Rory and a few essentials, jumped in the car and drove at random until she found somewhere that would take her in.
Although I think it is safe to assume that things had always been fraught with her parents, there must have been a final straw around the time of Rory’s birthday which triggered her sudden flight. Did Richard and Emily shower Rory with luxurious gifts, so that Lorelai began to fear they might buy Rory’s love or make her spoiled?
Was there an extravagant party (shades of Rory’s sweet sixteen), where even a baby Rory was being pressured to perform to exacting Gilmore standards, did Emily become so demanding that every detail of the party be perfect until Rory was stressed and crying?
All just speculation, but fascinating to imagine. The seeds of Lorelai’s mistrust of allowing her parents near Rory must have sprouted somewhere, and we know it began early.
LORELAI: So, Mia, how’s living in Santa Barbara?
MIA: Horrible. Did you know the damn sun shines all the time out there?
RORY: They’ve written songs about that.
Santa Barbara is a coastal city in California about ninety miles north of Los Angeles. Situated on the Pacific Ocean with a dry sunny Mediterranean climate, it is promoted as “The American Riviera”. Due to its geographic positioning, it has both cooler summers and warmer winters than surrounding areas, and despite what Mia says, it tends to be wetter in winter than its surrounds too, although rainfall is very variable.
It’s the sort of expensive place that wealthy people retire to, suggesting that Mia has done very well out of the hotel industry. Is it really possible she got that rich just from the Independence Inn? Surely she has other properties or investments as well? Maybe she’s a wealthy widow?
People in Stars Hollow seem to be strangely attracted to distant California. Christopher and Liz ran away to California to start new lives, Fran went on holiday there, Mia retired there. The writers live there, the show’s filmed there …
I’m not aware of any famous songs about the sunshine of Santa Barbara specifically that Rory might be thinking of, but there’s several songs about California.
LUKE: Well, I should be getting going. You gonna write this meal off?
LORELAI: Why?
LUKE: Oh, we talked business. You gotta be thinking about these things.
LORELAI: No, I mean, why? I’m not paying for it. [Luke sighs] Exactly.
How often did Lorelai and Rory get free meals from Luke? We almost never see them pay, and they seem to storm off or run out without either eating or paying quite a bit. It might help explain how they manage to eat out so often without blowing the budget …
The episode ends with Rory back in the dining hall at Chilton, peacefully reading and listening to her Walkman. She hasn’t been made to socialise after all, and the headmaster has been forced to back down and realise that Gilmore girls have to follow their own rules.
Another girl asks if she can sit with Rory, and she takes her own book out and starts reading in silence. Rory smiles at this confirmation she is not the only person at Chilton who likes to read at lunchtime, and now she isn’t a weird loner any more. She has a lunch friend, just as Mrs Verdinas insisted she find.
According to the credits, this girl is named Lisa. She’s played by Connecticut actress Madeline Zima, who already had quite a lengthy CV at this stage, and was most famous for playing Grace Sheffield in The Nanny.
Lisa was one of the other girls who was going to be inducted by the Puffs at the same time as Rory and Paris, although she is never introduced to the viewer and never speaks to Rory that we see (they might have spoken off-screen). She is the girl wearing blue and yellow checked pyjama pants with a grey tee shirt and a blue cardigan.
Possibly Lisa was also told to find some friends, rather than sit and read at lunchtime – although if so, couldn’t Headmaster Charleston or Mrs Verdinas have simply introduced Rory and Lisa to each other, suggesting that they have something in common? You know, like a normal school? Lisa was never shown eating lunch with the Puffs, so presumably she was recruited some other way, or that occurred after Rory and Paris joined the table, and was therefore offscreen.
Do not expect to ever see Lisa again, or hear her mentioned. Did she and Rory ever speak to each other and become real friends? Did they show each other the books they were reading? Did they have anything else in common? These questions are never answered.
In an episode that doesn’t make a hell of a lot of sense, it finishes with a character that remains an enigma.
EDIT: This article was heavily edited with the kind assistance of Sarah M, who was able to identify Lisa as one of the girls at the Puffs induction ceremony, something I was unable to do.
SECRETARY: Headmaster Charleston, the parents are starting to arrive.
HEADMASTER: Thank you, Mrs. Traiger.
Mrs Traiger is Headmaster Charleston’s secretary, last seen in The Lorelai’s First Day at Chilton. I’m not exactly sure what she’s doing here in this scene. Can’t Headmaster Charleston handle this situation without his secretary? Does she have all the keys to the school? Did he phone her and make her get out of bed in the middle of the night and come down to the school, just so she can make all the phone calls to the parents? This woman is not getting paid enough!
Mrs Verdinas, Rory’s guidance counsellor at Chilton, speaks to her about her lack of socialising at school, which Headmaster Charleston told her about a few weeks ago. Mrs Verdinas is her new guidance counsellor; the previous year it was Mr Summers, who we never saw.
This means that only a short time into the academic year, Headmaster Charleston, who is running an entire school, has decided the big problem he needs to address is Rory reading at lunchtime. How he knows about this is a bit of a mystery, unless he spends his free time stalking students in the dining hall.
In a school with hundreds of students, Mrs Verdinas and Headmaster Charleston have been keeping such a close watch on Rory that they’re bothered she’s been spending her lunch times reading and listening to music. Even though she’s getting good grades, works on the school paper, and interacts well with other students on class projects, none of that counts because she doesn’t have any friends at school.
Apparently colleges don’t accept “loners” (really?), and Chilton isn’t going to write a good letter of recommendation for Rory (have they never heard of simply telling some vaguely-worded white lies?). And friends in class doesn’t count, they have to be friends to eat lunch with. Mrs Verdinas never even checks what Rory is reading – perhaps reading Gore Vidal at lunch is better preparation for college than gossiping with Madeline and Louise?
It isn’t even a matter of Mrs Verdinas having a quiet chat to Rory to suggest she might try socialising a little more outside class, she more or less threatens to ruin Rory’s academic future unless she gets some lunch friends, stat!
Yes, it’s all pretty unbelievable, but that is the plot of this episode.
LORELAI: Um, guys, hi, there’s a lady up there with a rock the size of Neptune around her neck talking about the debutantes of ancient Greece. It’s a lot easier to fall asleep if you’re sitting down, trust me.
The planet Neptune, the eighth planet from the Sun, was officially discovered in 1846, although it had been previously sighted and thought to be a star. It has a mass of 1.0243×1026 kg, making it 17 times more massive than the Earth. It is named after the Roman god of the sea, who interestingly, carries a trident, which Rory referenced earlier.
Symbolically, Neptune is associated with dreams and fantasy, suggesting that the debutante ball is creating an illusion, and there is little that is solid or genuine behind it. Notice that Emily despairs that the elegant ballroom is not all that it appears, the debutantes are “false” in that they have artificially changed their appearance, and that there is something insubstantial about the proceedings – which we barely manage to see. Not to mention that the ball itself takes a rather surreal turn, as if it is all just a dream. (Is it pure coincidence that Lorelai immediately talks about falling asleep?).
Lorelai’s statement about “the debutantes of ancient Greece” can be taken as nothing more than a joke – as if the MC’s reminiscences about her own debut must be positively ancient. However, the ancient Greeks did hold puberty rites for girls, of which you could say debutante balls are the spiritual successor. It seems very unlikely the MC would really mention ancient puberty rites, but the ball is just bizarre enough for this to be taken at face value.
LADY 2: Janet just got out of Rainbow Hills two days ago.
LORELAI: Rehab?
LADY 1: Fat farm.
Even though a “fat farm” sounds like a place you go to in order to gain weight, it’s actually an old fashioned word for a residential weight loss program. It seems like a word they would use on a sit-com from the 1970s – Oscar and Felix from The Odd Couple went to a fat farm in one episode. Why is everything so dated in the world of Gilmore Girls?
The Hartford debutantes seem to be going to extremes for their debut, enrolling in weight loss programs, like Janet, and getting nose jobs, like Libby. Lucky Rory already looks perfect, so she doesn’t need to do anything except show up.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 