Ballrooms and Biscotti
Lorelai and Rory come home after their interrail in Europe. Luke returns from his cruise with Nicole, married. Rory thought she was starting Yale a week later than she is. Taylor's soda shop opens. Rory's first solo-obligation Friday night dinner gets dragged out because Emily is still offended that Lorelai doesn't want to come.Friends of Emily and Richard's that Rory and Lorelai didn't visit while in Europe:
The Gundersons in Zurich
The Egerholms in Denmark
The Rezoscos in Florence
The Talbots in London
Maid of the week: Gerta.
Tropes:
- The '50s: Invoked. Jackson and Rory agree to be on the Ricky Ricardo and Dick van Dyke team of not knowing the gender of Sookie's baby until it's born, and pretend that Eisenhower is President and discuss the Soviet satellite Sputnik.
- Actually Pretty Funny: Lorelai argues with Emily about keeping Rory up late to watch ballroom dancing tapes the night before she goes to Yale until she learns that Richard went to bed hours ago, then she cracks up.
- Babies Ever After: Subverted. Lorelai guesses that Luke's third piece of news is this, but it's that Luke's getting divorced.
- Bilingual Bonus: Subverted. Lorelai has learned the French phrases "Pouvez-vous attacher vos chassures" and "vos odeurs de chat." The first one she accurately translates as "can you tie your shoes?," but the second she translates as "your cat smells". "Odeurs de chat" does mean "cat smells," but as in "the smell of cat" not as a verb.
- Blatant Lies:
- Lorelai forgot to buy Luke a gift on their trip, so she gets homemade jam from Sookie and gives it to him claiming it's from France and is so exclusive the woman who makes it only makes three jars a year.
- Lorelai tries to convince Rory to skip Friday night dinner by telling her Emily will understand, but has to Verbal Backspace because it sounds like this even to her.
- Brick Joke:
- Lorelai snarks that she's gonna leave Rory alone to make out with her sock drawer. You think she's kidding, but once she closes the door, Rory opens her sock drawer.Rory: Hello, boys!
- Two interwoven. Taylor tells the crowd that he arranged for a skydiver to show up. Lorelai goes to the beauty shop run by Kirk and discovers that he has a parachute. She has just promised to get Kirk some "fake jam" as a gift, but says that the best gift she could possibly give him is the advice not to go parachuting. Kirk is quiet for a moment, then asks if he still gets the jam. Later that night, a shaken Kirk stalks past her and Luke, dragging his open parachute, muttering about strong wind.
- Lorelai snarks that she's gonna leave Rory alone to make out with her sock drawer. You think she's kidding, but once she closes the door, Rory opens her sock drawer.
- Call-Back:
- Lorelai studied phrasebooks at Luke's in the season three finale. When she walks into Luke's in this episode, she demonstrates that she still knows how to ask Frenchmen if they can tie their shoelaces and jokes that there wasn't a single shoelace fatality on her watch.
- Lorelai asks if Sookie's gonna name her son Lorelai. Since Rory is named Lorelai and the lampshade was hung during a phone call earlier in the episode, Sookie just says:
- Luke has not forgotten Lorelai's usual order: coffee.
- Character Development: Since her experiences in season 3, Rory has decided she doesn't want anything to do with pregnancies. She even refuses to feel Sookie's stomach.
- Color-Coded for Your Convenience: Sookie has bought a lot of blue baby stuff, so she only has to show it to Lorelai to let her know it's a boy.
- Comically Missing the Point:
- Taylor cannot for the life of him understand why Luke would have a problem with the window that suddenly got installed in their shared wall.
- Taylor also thinks it's unfair that Luke calls his diner a diner and Taylor's shop a "stupid store."
- When Lorelai asks about the baby Jackson starts making "buh buh" noises to stop Sookie saying anything so he hears it. Lorelai understands it as the baby's gender being buh, which she has never heard about before.
- Kirk is mad that Lorelai and Rory didn't get him a present. Lorelai explains that they forgot others, too, and had to give Luke "fake jam," i.e. jam from Sookie's that they claimed was from France, which only upsets Kirk more. He loves fake jam.
- Kirk's one-lesson parachute instructor told him he was a natural at falling, and he takes it as a compliment.
- Companion Cube: Rory tells her clothes how much she missed them. She calls her socks "boys."
- Continuity Nod: Lorelai's sense of humor still takes a dive when she is too tired.
- Crazy-Prepared: Rory gave Babette their itinerary, just in case they got caught accidentally hash smuggling.
- Didn't Think This Through: The girls detour to Ireland before going back to America, and are upset to discover that they have less time to hang out in Stars Hollow before Rory going to Yale.
- Double Standard: Lorelai gender-flips the one about women of a certain age who live alone being assumed to be lesbians, thus subverting this trope.
- Hidden Depths: We learn that Emily has been taping ballroom dancing contests since 1979.
- Hostage Situation: Rory compares her situation to the one in 1979 and calls Lorelai Jimmy Carter.
- I Have to Go Iron My Dog: Luke's "I have to go check on your food" wouldn't have been this if Lorelai had ordered anything.
- Married at Sea: Luke and Nicole.
- Mistaken for Gay: Lorelai thinks Luke's getting married to Nicole will silence all those rumors.Lorelai: Hey, I always defended you. I always said, "hey, so what if he is?"
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat:
- Taylor assumed Rory would be cool with being made ice-cream queen without being asked, but apparently she's no longer their little Rory now that she is Ivy League.
- Emily cannot pretend to be okay with Lorelai not coming to dinner without this trope.
- Rule of Three: Luke's cruise news: he proposed, he got married, he's getting divorced.
- Running Gag: Lorelai and Rory find Sofia repeatedly dying in The Godfather movies to be this. Lorelai thinks it would be cool if Sofia could die during a foxtrot.
- Shout-Out:
- Rory quotes The Wizard of Oz twice when she tells her clothes: "I missed you! I missed you all!" and "I had a dream about you! You were there, and you, and you."
- Luke does not have good childhood memories about Mary Poppins.
- Rory has played Esther at the Purim festival every year.
- Everything you can buy in Stars Hollow has a Hello Kitty stamp on the bottom according to Rory.
- Jackson claims that Ricky Ricardo and Dick Van Dyke didn't know the gender of their babies before they were born either.
- Lorelai wanted to go to Ireland to see Bono.
- Lorelai and Rory were supposed to watch all three Godfather films.
- Lorelai had a major Marilyn moment and took a third sleeping pill.
- Lorelai tells Rory she should walk past Taylor's grand opening "Warp speed, Mr. Sulu" kind of fast.
- Rory bought Richard's present in an Alice in Wonderland-themes store.
- The girls went to a Jim Morrison concert.
- Lorelai references Patty Hearst's incarceration.
- A ballroom dancer is either Superman or Wonder Woman as far as jetlagged Lorelai is concerned.
- Spoiler: In-universe, Jackson treats everything Sookie says about the baby as this.Jackson: You said it was little, and now I know it's gonna be little!
- Verbal Backspace: Lorelai trying to convince herself and Rory that bailing on the first Yale money Friday night dinner is okay, has to correct herself.Lorelai: We have to get all this stuff by tomorrow. We can't do that if we have to drive all the way to Hartford and back. Grandma will understand. (Beat) Well, the first part was true.
