Season 1, episode 5
Cinnamon's Wake
Rory feels awkward around Dean. Max persuades Lorelai to date him. Cinnamon dies of a combination of clam poisoning and old age.
Tropes:
- All Germans Are Nazis: Lorelai jokes about Richard visiting Nazis when she hears he's in Germany. Emily gets her back by pretending to take her seriously.
- Better than Sex: The plums at Doose's shop as far as Miss Patty is concerned.
- Blatant Lies: Michel claims to be a country boy from Tex-ahs who doesn't speak or understand French.
- Bilingual Bonus: Michel eventually agrees to speak French to the French tourists.
- Brick Joke: Lorelai pretending to forget about the bakesale over and over.
- Captain Obvious: Lorelai tells Rory that Max is her teacher.
- Comically Missing the Point: Emily pretends to take Lorelai's quip about her and Richard knowing Nazis seriously.
- Then Lorelai thinks Emily is serious when she claims to have known a Nazi once.
- Distinction Without a Difference: Lorelai insists that Claudia, who is dead, wasn't her cousin but, in Emily's words, her father's mother's sister's girl, meaning she was Richard's first cousin and Lorelai's first cousin once removed.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: Rory forgets that buses make stops and has a small freak-out about Dean being trapped on her bus until Hartford.
- Early-Installment Weirdness:
- Miss Patty acts like she's never met Kirk before.
- He is named Kirk now (it rhymes with "jerk"), but still doesn't act anywhere as quirky as he will later.
- Foreshadowing: Plenty of references to a future wedding with Max.
- Hypocritical Humor: Michel claims that French people are too obnoxious for him.
- Jump Scare: Played with. Dean sits down behind Rory on the bus and leans over her shoulder, but she doesn't notice before he speaks, so jumps.
- Must Have Caffeine: Lorelai likes coffee with her oxygen.
- No Infantile Amnesia: Invoked. Emily expects Lorelai to remember the moonlanding, which happened the year after she was born.
- Out-of-Context Eavesdropping: The old man who inserts himself between Lorelai and Max just as they discuss whether Rory is mature enough to have a mother who dates her teacher.
- Product Placement: Rory references Dolly Madison bakery.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: Lorelai asks Sookie rhetorically, "Life is a funny, funny thing, huh?" and Sookie replies that she finds Jim Carrey hilarious.
- Running Gag: Dean saying hi to Rory and her yelling in surprise.
- Shout-Out:
- Dolly Madison would have been the only one who brought anything homemade to the Chilton bake sale if Lorelai doesn't bake.
- Mr. Medina thinks Lorelai does a great Henry VIII.
- M. Night Shyamalan, director of The Sixth Sense, lived in Philadelphia, so Lane would like to live there.
- Lorelai wants to be in The Bangles.
- Max claims, not inaccurately, that stunting Rory's growth like in Mommie Dearest might not be the best plan.
- Lorelai: "You know what's funny?" Sookie: "Jim Carrey."
- Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton prove that you don't choose who you're attracted to.
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Michel discusses it when he tries to avoid the group of Frenchmen who are staying at the inn.
- Take That!: Michel really hates Frenchmen.
- Torches and Pitchforks: Lorelai figures it was people with this, and not his hatred of other stereotypical French people, that drove Michel out of France.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: 260 cat years is approximately 56 calendar years, so unless the veterinary is exaggerating to make Morrey feel better, this middle-aged couple have had this cat since their childhood.
