Season 3, episode 16
The Big One
Brad is back at Chilton after playing Jack in Into the Woods. Paris bullies him about being in a musical, and taunts Rory into entering a speech contest for the Chilton bicentennial. Sookie's first clue that she is pregnant is that her sense of taste is off. Jackson takes it very seriously. Paris and Rory both win the speech contest and have to coordinate their speeches, and Paris tells her she slept with Jamie. Lorelai runs into Max.
Maid who was more masculine than Richard: Liesel, from East Germany.
Tropes
- Buffy Speak:
- Lorelai calls the contest a way for Rory to practice her "speeching skills."
- Lorelai calls the televised House vote "that show of the big empty chamber with white men with numbers on them walking around."
- Bunny-Ears Lawyer: Kirk wants to deliver the mail his way, which ends up with the mail arriving after dark instead of at dawn.
- Call-Back: When Sookie tells her about Jackson's reaction to the pregnancy news, Lorelai mentions that he said he wanted four kids in four years at the dance marathon.
- Comically Missing the Point: Lorelai wonders how she is supposed to doodle on the diner menus when they are covered in heavy plastic.
- Contrived Coincidence: Lorelai happens to enter the house very quietly just when Rory tells Paris she never had sex.
- Death Glare: Paris wears one after getting rejected by Harvard.
- Defied Trope: Richard advices Rory to not under any circumstances imagine the audience in their underwear. He tried it once, and he still has nightmares about Bulgarians in speedos.
- Easily Forgiven: Lorelai marvels at Max apparently having forgiven her for treating him like crap.
- Easily-Overheard Conversation: Lorelai has no problem hearing a fairly hushed conversation in Rory's room from the entrance hall.
- Hypocritical Humor: Paris spends a few minutes making rude comments and singing while people are preparing to deliver their speech, then when Rory asks her how she hides that she's actually Frankenstein's monster Paris shushes her, informing her that people are trying to concentrate.
- Like Mother, Like Daughter: Rory tells her mother she wants to win the speech contest so she can dance around Paris singing "I win I win I win!" Lorelai comments that Rory is more like her every day.
- Literal-Minded:
- Madeline asks Brad how he leaves the house every day without having a piano fall on his head. He begins to explain that he takes a left turn.
- A little later, Paris comments that Brad has only spoken to a cow for months. He angrily explains that there was a person inside.
- Nap-Inducing Speak: Richard apparently finds Paris's rant extremely boring, because he falls asleep.
- Neologism: Richard names the group of Emily's friends that have had strokes this week "stroke-ladies."
- Papa Wolf: News that his wife is in her first trimester makes Jackson throw out their prescription drugs and childproof the entire house in one day.
- Prank Call: Lorelai keeps stealthily calling Richard's home office so she can get to talk to Rory alone.
- Pregnancy Makes You Crazy: In the case of perfectionist chef Sookie, it comes out as making food that tastes like sewage without being able to taste it herself.
- Rage Breaking Point: Paris got rejected by Harvard and rants about it on C-Span
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Brad was in Into the Woods because his actor was.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: Madeline is so exasperated that Brad didn't think to ask if he could take his Broadway make-up home that she asks how he leaves his house in the morning without having a piano fall on his head. Brad starts to explain that he takes a left on Federal before Rory tells him he's doing this trope.
- Rule of Three: Three of Emily's friends had strokes this week.
- Rules Lawyer: Kirk thinks sorting the mail before delivery takes the fun out of it. However, he will insist on following federal law when it comes to who gets to go through his undelivered mail.
- Sarcasm Mode: The girl who takes coats at the Chilton bicentennial does not try to talk Lorelai out of her pretend suicidal tendencies.
- Self-Deprecation: Paris thinks Harvard must really not like her on a personal level.Paris: It's like they know me or something.
- Shout-Out:
- Lorelai calls Kirk Daniel Day-Lewis.
- Lane complains about Zach's reluctance to consider anything post Kurt Cobain listen-worthy.
- Brad Langford has done Into the Woods on Broadway. Paris mocks him for it.
- Madeline and Louise think it would be fun to keep Broadway costumes, as long as it's not from Les Misérables or Cats.
- Paris calls Brad Mary Martin, Chita Revera, and Jerome Robbins, causing him to comment that she is really up on her Broadway references.
- Max tells her he was teaching in California, Lorelai says "Cowabunga, dude".
- Rory is the Encyclopedia Britannica definition of good.
- Lorelai wrote a lot about Tears for Fears in her diary when she was pregnant.
- Rory quotes Lea Iacocca, Malcolm Forbes and Oscar Wilde in her speech.
- Paris thinks that even if she's the Billy Carter of her family, just being from her family should be enough to get her into Harvard.
- Slut-Shaming:
- Inverted with Lorelai, who wants to reward her daughter for not having had sex yet with new shoes.
- Paris slutshames herself after not getting into Harvard.
- Song Parody: Downplayed with Paris's rendition of "Into the Woods," which contains some new lines about Jack's obsession with beans, albeit in not in Jack's part of the song:Who's got the beans
We need some beans
I love the beans! - Stealth Insult: Paris is just full of these for the other speech writing contestants. Not that anyone who's ever gone to school with her believes any of her compliments.
- Surprise Pregnancy: Sookie is pretty oblivious to her symptoms, so it's doubtful she was trying to get pregnant.
- Take That!: Lorelai feels watching House votes on C-span is like watching the security camera feed of the Men's Warehouse.
- Take a Third Option: Sookie doesn't understand how Jackson can do math if he broke the calculator, but he improvised with a pencil.
- Tastes Like Feet: Lorelai can't decide whether Sookie's failed food tastes more like strychnine or manure.
- They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: In-universe, Lorelai complains about the new menus at Luke's.
- Too Dumb to Live: Discussed by Sookie after being invoked by Jackson off-screen when he thinks the kid won't be smart enough not to disconnect the waterhose and shove it up his or her nose.
- Too Much Information:
- Paris comes over unannounced to put the speeches together and starts telling Rory about her having sex with Jamie right after she and Rory talked on the phone.
- Paris's rant about not getting into Harvard is convincing enough as a speech about education, albeit not one that could plausibly win a contest, until she tells the audience that it is her punishment for losing her virginity.
- Verbal Backspace: Sookie changes her mind about banning someone who sent her food back from the restaurant when she hears what wine he was drinking.
- Worthy Opponent: Paris considers Rory this, declaring that she won't feel like she won the speech competition unless she gets to beat Rory too.
