Tag: Unsolved Mysteries

Stars Hollow Beauty Supply Store

Rory and Lane go to buy cosmetics at the beauty store. Kirk is now working there instead of Shane, making this another of Kirk’s jobs (it raises the question, does Taylor own this business as well?). Kirk does have an interest in beauty products, having created his own line of skin treatments, which was shut down by the EPA.

I don’t know whether Shane has left the job at the store, or if she works there on a different shift. If the latter, her shift has changed, as she previously served the counter at the same time Rory was home from school.

“Just go back to school tomorrow”

RORY: I can’t believe I was her best friend. I feel awful.
LORELAI: Look, I’ll tell you what. If you wanna make things right, just go back to school tomorrow and let her stab you.

It’s Friday Night Dinner, so why would Rory and Paris go to school the next day, Saturday?

Rory is surprised to discover that Paris considered her her best friend, which seems somewhat oblivious, considering that Paris already told Rory several times that she feels able to ask Rory for help in a way that she can’t with Louise and Madeline. Paris has made it fairly clear that she considers Rory her equal, and relies on her – Rory fulfils a role in her life that nobody else can.

I think Rory is meant to come across as sweet and humble here, but she actually seems too self-absorbed to understand how important she is to Paris.

International Grab Bag Night

LORELAI: We are so in luck. It was international grab bag night at Al’s.
RORY: Cool. Did you peek?
LORELAI: And ruin the whole point of the mystery dinner? I think not. Pick.

Another quirky offering from Al’s Pancake World – on certain nights, how often is a mystery, Al offers an international grab bag, where you apparently receive a randomly assigned dinner from any national cuisine.

Who would be interested in this? Certainly not fussy eaters or people with food allergies, at least. To add to the chaos, diners apparently don’t know when it will be international grab bag night, as Lorelai proclaims that they are “in luck” that they happened to be buying dinner on that night.

Lorelai and Rory love this insane tradition because it is a game as well as food. They each pick one of the bags without looking, smell it, then try to guess what it is. Rory guesses hers is Moroccan, which is what she always says, on the basis that if you say the same thing every time, it will eventually be correct. Lorelai takes a cover-all-bases approach by declaring hers is Pan-Asian, with a hint of English Colonial and touches of South African.

Rory strongly implies that the food is old, suggesting that “grab bag night” might be a way of selling off out of date leftovers. It’s quite stomach-churning.

In the end, neither Gilmore girl can identify what food they have bought, and they end up going to Luke’s for dinner. What a waste of time, money, and food!

Radisson

MICHEL: It was one of the premiere hotel schools in the world. You two, on the other hand, are going to take a two-hour course at the Radisson.

Radisson Hotels, international hotel chain headquartered in Minnetonka, Minnesota. The first hotel was opened in Minneapolis, Minnesota in 1909, by Chicago heiress Edna Dickerson. A high-end luxury hotel, it was bought by the Carlson Company in 1962, and the chain had 32 locations by 1982, becoming one of the top hotel chains by 2013. It was bought out by Choice Hotels in 2022.

The Radisson Hotel in Hartford [pictured] is at 50 Morgan Street South, and it hosts conventions and other events. Does this mean The Learning Center holds it classes at the Radisson, or just this one? Somehow, Michel has turned a one-day course into a two-hour course.

“Paris doesn’t have a brother”

FRANCIE: I saw her walking off with . . . who was that, her brother?

LOUISE: Paris doesn’t have a brother.

FRANCIE: Really? Well, she certainly seemed to know him.

Jamie is hanging around Chilton, being a distraction to Paris again and giving Francie an opportunity to take her down a peg. Princeton doesn’t go back after the Christmas break until mid-January, suggesting this episode takes place in the first half of the month.

However, it’s something of a mystery what he is doing in Hartford, which is a fair distance from Philadelphia. Is he staying with Paris, since she spent Christmas with his family? And why is Chilton letting him turn up during the school day? Don’t they have any security? Why are they letting Paris leave with him? What ever happened to Chilton being a really strict school?

History Class

DEAN: Not bad. I’ve got McKellan for History.

RORY: Oh, has he done his Napoleon having dinner with Charlemagne bit yet?

DEAN: Catherine the Great shows up for dessert.

RORY: Oh, wow, he’s revised it. Good for him. He’s a unique man, but a decent teacher.

Napoleon, previously discussed.

Charlemagne, or Charles the Great (747-814) [pictured], King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, and the first Holy Roman Emperor. Charlemagne has been called the “Father of Europe” as he united most of Western Europe for the first time since the classical era of the Roman Empire, as well as uniting parts of Europe that had never been under Frankish or Roman rule. His reign spurred the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of energetic cultural and intellectual activity within the Western Church.

Catherine the Great, previously discussed.

Rory hasn’t been a student at Stars Hollow High since she was a freshman in 2000, but apparently Mr McKellan is still using the same material on his senior students. And it’s taken Dean two years to also have him as a History teacher. How many History teachers does little old Stars Hollow High actually have?

Rory and Jess Kiss in Public

[Jess and Rory are walking through the town square, kissing]

It’s about two months since Rory broke up with Dean, and by now she is comfortable enough to be seen kissing her boyfriend Jess in public. It feels as if the relationship between Rory and Jess is nothing but kissing, actually. Do they do anything else?

When they were friends, they read books and talked about books and went book shopping – whatever happened to that? Is it happening offscreen, or are we meant to think that now they’re in a relationship, Rory and Jess don’t bother any more?

Taffy

RORY: No, or the taffy binge of ’97.

Taffy is a type of candy from the US, made by stretching or/and pulling a sticky mass of soft candy base, made of boiled sugar, butter, vegetable oil, flavorings, and colorings, until tiny bubbles form, resulting in a light, fluffy and chewy candy. The word dates to 1817, and the origin is not known. In the UK, this kind of candy is known as “chewy sweets”.

Lorelai and Rory may have binged on taffy they bought at a candy store, possibly on one of their road trips, as it is a specialty of New England. It isn’t difficult to make at home, and if they ate home made taffy, I’d think Sookie would have made it for them. This sickly binge occurred in 1997, when Rory was 12-13.