Season 2, episode 15
Lost and Found
Lorelai hurts herself trying to clean her own rain gutters and reluctantly hires Jess to do it. Rory finally realizes she hasn't seen the bracelet Dean gave her for a while. Jess has turned Luke's apartment into a stereotypical teen's bedroom, so Luke looks for a bigger apartment. He accidentally picks one in a building owned by Taylor, so obviously he buys the building for half a million dollars.
Jess returns Rory's bracelet in secret, letting her think she just missed it the last several times she looked under her bed. Lorelai attempts to call him out on it, resulting in him calling her out on putting so much faith in Rory and Dean's relationship even though Dean clearly does most of the work in that relationship.
Tropes:
- Armor-Piercing Question: As Jess points out, if the bracelet mattered so much to Rory, why did it take her two weeks to notice it was gone?
- Ask a Stupid Question...: Discussed when Lorelai accuses Jess of stealing Rory's bracelet, which isn't true.Lorelai: What, did you break into our house, you got all dressed in black and pulled a Mission: Impossible?Jess: Actually, I came down the chimney and pulled a Santa Claus.Lorelai: Very funny.Jess: Thought a ridiculous accusation deserved a ridiculous response.
- Big Eater: Lorelai and Rory ordered every item in the chicken column of the Chinese food menu. Jess comments that it's ambitious.
- Blatant Lies:
- Rory claims to have a rash on her arm, while displaying a completely rashless arm. Dean decides to believe her, though, so subverted.
- Luke claims to prefer to live on the bottom floor, despite living on the second floor in the building where he already lives.
- Jess claims to have gone into Rory's room to check if she has Franny and Zooey, made more plausible by his knowing that she has it, but Lorelai doesn't buy it.
- Lorelai spends a lot of anger telling Jess how miserable Rory was for losing that bracelet, but as he points out, it took her two weeks to even realize it was gone.
- Brick Joke: Lorelai tells Rory the cut on her hand will grant her the power to shower really fast. A couple of scenes later she promises to help Luke shower fast if he makes her pancakes.
- Captain Obvious:
- Luke went apartment hunting, but the only one he liked had walls and a floor.
- Michel thinks Lorelai is lying when she says she believes that he already looked for the bracelet since she looks for it herself in the same places.
- Comically Missing the Point: Lorelai tells Luke he's not gonna be alone forever. He replies he'll never get a pet.
- Confusion Fu: Taylor wants Luke to stop doing this to his future plate customers by having the sign on his diner saying it's a hardware store.
- Continuity Snarl: Lorelai claims Luke's single bed signals to prospective dates that he's afraid of commitment. Luke does not in fact have a single bed. Jess does, but Luke doesn't.
- Deadpan Snarker: Michel gets annoyed about Lorelai doubting he really looked for Rory's bracelet and starts replying exclusively in sarcasms.
- Embarrassing Nickname: We learn that Lorelai used to call Luke "Duke" for the sole purpose of getting on his nerves.
- Hypocritical Humor: Miss Patty drives a golf cart after her weight watchers.Miss Patty: (chanting) And walk. And walk. And pump your arms and walk
And shoulders back and tuchas in
And think about that double chin
And walk - Ironic Echo: "We'll hold hands and skip afterwards", originally a sarcasm of Jess's when learning that Luke is looking for an apartment, gets repeated back to him when Luke gives him the task of taking down a wall so he can have his own bedroom.
- Irony: Jess can only sleep with hard-rock blaring.
- Mathematician's Answer:
- Luke asks Jess how school is and is informed that it's still there.
- Rory thinks Jess could not care less about her bracelet predicament, but he assures her he could.
- Mistaken for Romance: Lorelai helps Luke look at an apartment and the woman showing it assumes they're together. Lorelai, of course, runs with it, much to Luke's annoyance.
- Product Placement: Jess thinks lemon coke is a crazy concept.
- Sarcasm Mode: Michel's style of sarcasm reminds Lorelai of Emily's.
- Shout-Out:
- Lorelai accuses Rory of being Ida Morgenstern and a Rockefeller.
- Mel Brooks, director of The Two Thousand Year Old Man, Young Frankenstein, and Silent Movie, deserves to get his face tattooed on Lorelai's butt.
- Jess hands Rory an album by The Shaggs.
- Rory finds a cheap copy of Inherit the Wind at a flea market.
- She also finds a paperback copy of Letter To A Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke, which she buys although she already has it in hardcover.
- Dean means to watch The Lord of the Rings 100 times.
- He promises to rent Autumn In New York and mock it with her for the rest of the evening.
- Jess says even Euell Gibbons wasn't as healthy an eater as Luke.
- Lorelai calls Rory Wayne Gretzky.
- Checking if Rory has Franny and Zooey is Jess's cover for sneaking into Rory's room.
- Taylor wants to sell plates with motives like Elvis, The Beatles, and Mary Poppins.
- Lorelai asks Jess if he stole Rory's bracelet hanging from the celing Mission: Impossible style.
- Terse Talker: Jess's monosyllabic tendencies around anyone who isn't Rory are discussed, and he hangs a lampshade on them.Jess: The verbal thing comes and goes.
- The Trains Run on Time: Taylor doesn't think the fascists were so bad about maintaining parks.
- Useless Superpowers: Lorelai speculates that she'll gain superpowers from her injury, like the ability to shower really fast.
- Verbal Backspace: Rory accidentally lets slip that she thinks Jess cares about her, backpedals to "like, but not like-like," and ends up on "a person you might think of remotely as a friend."
