JESS: I was attacked by a swan. Okay, you happy? A stupid swan. LUKE: Now, how ’bout the real story?
Luke professes disbelief that Jess’ black eye came from a swan attack. Swans are notoriously aggressive during breeding season, and can do some damage when provoked – generally of the bruising variety, rather than breaking bones or anything. Breeding season is April to June, and this is February, but if you’re unlucky, swans can attack at any time.
I’m not sure why Luke doesn’t believe Jess at first, nor why Jess is too embarrassed to tell Rory the truth. For that matter, why is everyone so sure that Dean gave Jess the black eye? Had it happened before? Does Dean seem that dangerous? And if she believes Dean did hurt Jess, why is Rory angry at Jess, rather than Dean?
An interesting point to ponder: most swan-related injuries actually occur when the person is running away from the swan – falling over and cutting their knee, or getting a branch in their eye running through trees. (In one unfortunate case, drowning while trying to escape). Is it possible that this is really how Jess got a black eye, and is this why he is so embarrassed?
LANE: At 3:40, my mom will be on her way to the yarn store for her bimonthly sew-a-thon with Lacey Schwartz and Bich Ho. DAVE: The yarn store’s on Peach. LANE: Plum. DAVE: That cuts us off from our usual route to the interstate. LANE: There’s a back road that circles around it, but it’s gonna be muddy from the rains. DAVE: How about I have the guys take the usual route, I’ll go by foot on Peach, down the alley behind Al’s, over the fence, and they can pick me up a half a mile down by the Shell station. LANE: Perfect. Uh, what, that’s not complicated.
Lane and Dave have come up with some ingenious plan to avoid seeing Mrs Kim, so that she doesn’t realise Dave is in (gasp) a band. And even worse, that Lane is too. Lane confessed her feelings about Dave to her mother at the family wedding, and we don’t know any more since then. Presumably Mrs Kim is still unable to move on from Dave not being Korean.
We learn a little bit of back story during this scene. Mrs Kim’s life apparently doesn’t revolve entirely around work, church, and family – she also attends a sewing circle (?) once a fortnight at the local yarn store with two women named Lacey Schwartz and Bich Ho (Ho is a common Vietnamese surname, and Bich is a Vietnamese girl’s name meaning “jade”).
The yarn store is on Plum Street, one street over from Peach Street, which is where Dean and his family live. Lorelai described this area to Jess as a desirable residential neighbourhood, so it’s slightly surprising to learn it has shops around it as well – and also leads to the alley behind Al’s, which is always implied to be in the centre of town. Maybe Peach is a very long street? Incidentally, I wonder if this alley is the one Lorelai and Rory were shown walking down in “The Break Up, Part 2”?
Unlike Henry, Dave readily fits in with all of Lane’s zany schemes to keep secrets from her mother, and even comes up with own solutions. They are clearly made for each other.
LORELAI: Okay, I think I get it. I have the best intentions. RORY: Bingo.
Bingo, an informal interjection used to mean either, “I have found it”, or “You got it, my point exactly”. The origin is unknown, and the word is the source of the name of the game of chance, Bingo.
JESS: Find someone who vaguely resembles me. Take him. Just don’t kiss him goodnight. RORY: That’s not going to work. JESS: Andy Warhol did it all the time.
Andy Warhol, born Andrew Warhola Jr (1928-1987), artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the art movement known as Pop Art. His works explore the relationship between artistic expression, advertising, and celebrity culture that flourished by the 1960s, and span a variety of media.
I’m not completely sure what Jess is referring to here, except that Andy Warhol did have something of a “type” when it came to his lovers and muses, both male and female. If anyone has any more specific ideas, please write in!
LORELAI: No, Jim is coming here to fix the garbage disposal. RORY: Jim Dunning, got it.
In an earlier episode, Jim Dunning is mentioned as the auto mechanic who used to run the Hewes Brothers garage – before Gypsy became the mechanic there (although there may have been someone named Musky in between them, it’s not made explicit).
Either Jim Dunning (who Lorelai couldn’t remember before, not even whether he was tall and thin or short and stocky) is now fixing garbage disposals, or Rory is joking, as if “Jim Dunning” has become their name for any random guy who fixes stuff.
EMILY: And then she just brushed me off with a wave of her regal hand. Not even a word, just a . . . like I’m her cabana boy. Next thing you know, instead of just walking out of the room, she’ll make me bow and back out. Imperious attitude, she never gives it a rest. I schlepped her to the doctor the other day – by command, not request – and the elevator operator there greeted us nice and friendly. Her doctor’s on the second floor and by the time we got there, that operator was in tears.
In North America, a cabana is a hut, cabin, or shelter at beach or swimming pool, often part of a resort. They can be quite elaborate or luxurious. The word comes from the Spanish for “hut, cabin”. A cabana boy [pictured] is a young male attendant who serves guests from the cabana – typically, these young men are treated like servants by the wealthy, and will be willing to do many little tasks for them in the hopes of receiving tips or favours in return.
Schlepped: Informal American English, meaning “walked or proceeded somewhere in a reluctant manner, typically in the fulfilment of some unwanted burden or duty”. It is from the Yiddish shlepn, meaning “pull, drag”.
Trix moved back to her house in Hartford in January 2003, citing health concerns. It’s only early February, and she is already driving Emily up the wall, treating her like a servant.
Note that Trix had a doctor’s appointment, as a reminder that her health needs monitoring. By the way, Trix previously said that she couldn’t abide women driving, so how did Emily transport her to the doctor’s office?
In the final flashback, we see Emily and Richard coming downstairs, ready to go out. Emily comments that for the first time in a year, she hasn’t tripped over Rory’s baby stroller, which Lorelai never puts away. Emily finds a note on the hall table and begins to cry – it is obviously the note that Lorelai wrote when she left home, taking Rory with her.
It’s interesting to speculate as to where this flashback comes from. It can’t be Lorelai’s memory, because she never saw this happen. Is it Emily’s memory? Or is it Lorelai’s imagining what must have happened, based on what she knows? Or is it somehow an objective picture from the past of that moment?
The seven flashbacks in this episode encapsulate the central conflict in Gilmore Girls – that Lorelai got pregnant as a teenager, and then left home with her baby, leaving only a note.
It seems clear during the episode that Lorelai, through Sherry’s birthing of Georgia, gets to relive and re-examine some of her past behaviour and choices. We get to see that Richard and Emily may not have been perfect parents, but they are by no means monsters who deserved to be abandoned and shunned by their daughter.
Emily was a staunch advocate for Lorelai when she discovered she was pregnant, and stood up for her against the cruel insults of Christopher’s parents. Richard and Emily never rejected Lorelai, or kicked her out. She still had a home with them, and they continued supporting her and baby Rory.
Obviously Lorelai was very unhappy, and wanted to make a life for herself, but in retrospect, some of her decisions seem cruel – I think even to herself. She left for the hospital to give birth by herself, not allowing her parents any role in that, and she left home the same way, leaving only a note.
We already know that Emily was so devastated by Lorelai’s leaving that she was confined to bed for a month, and much of the coldness and harshness that we see from Emily and Richard in the present stem from this rejection by their daughter, which they have never really got over.
I think Lorelai’s generous and thoughtful gift of the DVD player and nine musicals on DVD that are a combination of Emily’s favourites and hers is her way of trying to … not to erase the past, but to make a kind gesture to her mother and to try to connect with her by sharing something they both enjoy, in recognition that Emily’s life is far lonelier than Lorelai’s.
During the scene at the nursery, we get a very good shot of Georgia in her crib at the nursery. The baby portraying Georgia is unlisted in the credits, and as usual with TV and film infants, they are clearly at least three months old.
The card on her crib says she is named Georgia, and her mother is S. Tinsdale (no father on the card, presumably because he isn’t a patient).
It gives her date of birth as 31st January 2003, although she was born at 1.17 am – which means she can’t have been born on the 31st January! Sherry went into labour on the night of the 31st January, meaning that if Georgia was born at 1.17 am the next morning, it would be the 1st of February. Can nobody gets babies’ birthdays correct on this show?
Her weight at birth was 6 pounds and 20 ounces, just a little under the average for a baby girl, and she is 18.9 inches long – again, just a smidge under the average. One of her doctors was Schreiber, and I’m afraid I can’t read the second name or what their role was. It looks something like Sasaberi.
Christopher takes Lorelai to see the newborn Georgia in the nursery (Rory is understandably asleep). He is still on a high from watching the birth of his second daughter, saying that it was amazing, and he’d never seen anything like it.
Lorelai, with devastatingly understatement, agrees that she does know how amazing it is, and that Christopher hasn’t seen anything like it before. Her expression says that she is reliving her own nursery moment, which we see in the upcoming flashback.
Due to the fact that we don’t know what happened, it isn’t possible to know for sure whether Lorelai feels resentful that Christopher wasn’t there for Rory’s birth, or whether she feels a b it guilty for shutting him out and denying him the chance to see his daughter being born.
NURSE: No, you cannot hit me. LORELAI: Can I bite you or pull your hair or use the Epilady on you, ’cause I really need to do something?
Epilady was the brand name of the first epilator, an electrical device used to remove hair by mechanically grasping multiple hairs simultaneously and pulling them out. It was released in Israel in 1986, manufactured by Mepro on a kibbutz.
They were notoriously painful to use, sometimes likened to torture devices, so Lorelai thinks of it as something painful she can use on the nurse to take her mind off her labour pains, like biting her or pulling her hair.
Obviously this flashback can’t have actually happened, because it is October 1984, and the Epilady hadn’t been invented yet. Perhaps it is a false memory. (If so, can we really trust any of the flashbacks?).
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 