Season 2, episode 14
It Should've Been Lorelai
Lane is grounded and needs Rory to buy her a record. Paris thinks Rory should practice speaking faster to get as many arguments as possible into the debate. Brad is on the other school's debate team. Christopher brings his girlfriend to watch Rory's debate team and Sherry talks Rory into spending time with her instead of Friday night dinner. Emily is not happy about it.
Tropes:
- Ask a Stupid Question...: Subverted. While diverting attention from the cd drop-off, Kirk asks Mrs. Kim if by "we open at ten" she means ten in the morning or ten in the evening. She knows him too well to bother with sarcasm.
- Bilingual Bonus: Paris yells at hispanic people in Spanish.
- Blatant Lies:
- Lorelai pretends to be a person named Leonard calling from the kitchen to ask if Rory wants to hang out wih Sherry. Chris sees through it.
- Lorelai thinks it's this that Chris told her he was coming to the debate, without mentioning that he was going to bring Sherry. Christopher denies it, but drops some passive-aggressive hints that he may have done it on purpose.
- Compliment Backfire:
- Sookie is not content to be second to Alain Ducasse.
- Chris is offended that Lorelai is glad he's in a relationship.
- Continuity Nod: Rory mentioned the portrait of her to Sherry.
- Death Glare: Paris's gets Brad to change his coin side at the debate.
- Fee Fi Faux Pas: Sookie and Lorelai initially treat the debate like a football match, complete with loud cheering.
- Glamorous Single Mother: Sherry tells Lorelai she wants to be this.
- Hypocrite: Christopher gets back at Lorelai for not including him when she was engaged to Max by having Sherry exclude Lorelai from her bonding with Rory, and accuses her of being a hypocrite for having a problem with it.
- Hypocritical Humor: Lorelai calls Rory's fat joke insensitive after defending her own fat jokes as funny.
- In-Universe Factoid Failure: In-universe, Paris mocks the opposing debate team for claiming South Carolina has neither a statute nor common law prohibiting assisted suicide, when it is in fact North Carolina that doesn't have that.
- Irony: Rory speaks too slowly for Paris.
- I Was Quite a Fashion Victim: Sherry talks about how her school uniform was white and red and made her look like a peppermint stick.
- Malaproper: Lorelai and Rory discuss the frequently misquoted "Music has power to soothe the savage breast", from The Mourning Bride by William Congreve. Lorelai thought it was "beast" too.
- No Sense of Personal Space: Rory tells Lorelai that Sherry was very touchy-feely. Hands on shoulders, lots of hugs… Lorelai quips that she was flirting with her.
- Obfuscating Stupidity: Kirk improvises this to distract Mrs. Kim from Michel, disguised as a jogger, dropping an album in Lane's purse. Makes you wonder how much he actually does this.
- Product Placement: Sherry works for L'Oréal. Chris has a Volvo. Lorelai wants to rob a Sephora with a more daring driver than Sherry driving the getaway car.
- Self-Deprecation: Kirk claims that having known him since he was two is no guarantee you'll remember him.
- Shipper on Deck: Emily still wants Lorelai and Christopher to marry.
- Shout-Out:
- Lorelai says to "Leave the gun, take the canoli".
- Lorelai thinks the morning is The Twilight Zone-y; Luke thinks it's more The Outer Limits-y.
- Lane feels like Dr. Dre in house arrest.
- Lorelai and Rory rush home to speed-tidy and Rory votes to give the Halloween candy to the company (Chris and Sherry) because "company is about sacrifice," assuring her mother she wasn't quoting Martha Stewart; she was paraphrasing Marcel Proust.
- Lorelai figures she would have run into Sherry chained to a tree with Martin Sheen if she hadn't been dating Christopher.
- Richard thinks Metallica is some kind of illegal drug.
- Sherry is a big Bruce Springsteen fan.
- Rory used to dream that her mother married Matthew Broderick. She pictured them talking about his Ferris Bueller's Day Off era.
- Rory quips that Lorelai would come home and find a rabbit boiling on the stove.
- Lorelai compares her family to the Barrymores.
- Lorelai comments that it would have made it easier to get The Producers tickets.
- Title Drop: What should have been Lorelai is the being in a serious relationship with Christopher, according to Emily. She even tells Lorelai so.
- True Blue Femininity: Sherry compliments Rory on how she looks in her blue school uniform and makes a self-deprecating joke about how at her prep school the uniforms were white and bright red and that she looked like a peppermint stick.
