Say Goodnight, Gracie
People are cleaning up after Kyle's party. Rory is preparing for graduation. Jess doesn't recognize his own father when he sits in the diner. Fran dies. Dean proposes to Lindsay. Mrs. Kim gives Dave permission to take Lane to the prom, but insists that it's not permission to get married.Tropes
- Added Alliterative Appeal: Dean's fiancée Lindsay Lister, although not if you include her middle name which is Ann.
- Artistic Licence – Law: Jess complains that the one guy hogging a table and just ordering coffee prevents better paying customers from sitting there thus cutting back on his tip. Luke counters that the tips are his, which is plainly not true because tips are for the servers, not their employer.
- Bookworm:
- Mrs. Kim has read the Bible cover to cover in one night three times, and she likes to goof off with William Shakespeare.
- Luke thinks being this is a good reason why Jess should like school.
- Berate and Switch: Lorelai's reaction to finding out that Rory was the inciting factor for the Escalating Brawl at the Wild Teen Party of the last episode. She angrily confirms that not only did Rory go to a cop raided party, she was the reason the cops were called and why the house was destroyed… and then starts singing "Wind Beneath My Wings." Rory is mortified."Did you ever know that you're my hero
And everything I'd like to be?" - Cloudcuckoolander: Miss Patty, in grieving Fran and rethinking her priorities, realizes she is so glad she had all that sex.
- Continuity Snarl: Back during the wedding preparations when Lorelai was engaged to Max, Fran said her bakery was opened over a hundred years ago. In her eulogy, Fran's friend says Fran opened the bakery in 1955.
- Crazy-Prepared: Dave avoids video games because he doesn't want to risk becoming a serial killer. He tells Mrs. Kim this to reassure her.
- Death Glare: Lorelai tells Rory about how when she was little and Fran was buying her affection with cookies she'd give her mother looks that said: "You're the one who took me away from the cookies, I'm gonna kill you."
- Deteriorates Into Gibberish: During Fran's eulogy, the mic malfunctions, so all Sookie and Lorelai can hear is "in," "ortant," and "ing."
- Disappointed in You: Mrs. Kim's reaction to Lane getting drunk at a party.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Loser Coffee Guy for Jess's father.
- The "Fun" in "Funeral": Downplayed, but when Sookie and Lorelai realize the Dragonfly inn is theirs, they squeal and jump up and down for joy right in the middle of the funeral procession.
- Half-Truth:
- Jess tells Rory he could not get tickets to prom, but not that the reason he can't get tickets to prom is that he's not graduating.
- He also tells her he will call her later, which he does, from Los Angeles.
- Hidden Depths: Mrs. Kim isn't just a Bible buff; she also reads Shakespeare, at least the historical plays.
- Luke, I Am Your Father: Jimmy has to tell Jess this, since he hasn't seen him since he was a baby, and Luke didn't explain it.
- Once Done, Never Forgotten: Madeline and Louise feel that your prom photo is this.
- One Dialogue, Two Conversations: Less fraught with misunderstanding than usual plays of this trope, Rory vents about her frustration with Jess not telling her stuff while Lorelai keeps trying to get her to say what happened in Kyle's bedroom.
- Rule of Three: Kirk makes three guesses at what day we all thought would never get here: arbor day, the day of reckoning, and the day the music died.
- Shout-Out:
- The title is a reference to The Burns and Allen Show, also the title of a play based on the lives of Burt and Allen.
- Lorelai calls Lane's backpack Ella Fitzgerald.
- Lorelai sings "The Wind Beneath My Wings" to express her pride in Rory doing her first cop-raided party right.
- Lane calls her throwing up in the bushes her "Farrelly Brothers audition."
- Lane thinks her mother's act is more The Stepford Wives than cold.
- Taylor sings "The Candyman" from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory.
- Kirk guesses it's the day the music died.
- Luke thinks Jess is going all Animal House.
- Rory claims Stars Hollow High has proms that are less Cinderella and more Footloose than Chilton proms.
- Mrs. Kim quotes Shakespeare at Dave, who mistakes it for a Bible quote.
- Rory reads Complete Stories of Dorothy Parker on the bus ride to school.
- On the same bus, Jess reads One Hundred Years of Solitude and switches to Death on the Installment Plan after she talks to him.
- Rory and Jess sit in the back of a bus wearing the same expressions as Ben and Elaine in the bus scene in The Graduate.
- Slapstick: Rory finds a picture of Kirk in the newspaper where the coffin fell on him and his trousers split.
- The Unintelligible: Rory speculates that maybe the reason Mrs. Kim is not mad at Lane for her drunken phone call because she misheard it as slurred nonsense.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Jimmy claims he hasn't seen Jess for seventeen years, Luke informs that he disappeared on the day Jess was born, but if Jess isn't 18 by then he shouldn't be a high school senior or working 40-hour weeks while school is in session. Plus, he's in Lane's year, and Lane is born the same year as Rory, who is 18 note Jimmy compounds it by saying he can count.
- Your Approval Fills Me with Shame: Not because of the who but the what. Rory is so ashamed that Lorelai thinks it's cool that two guys at a party fought over her that she stalks off in embarrassment.
