Chicken of Beef?
A burglary alarm has mysteriously installed itself in Lorelai's house. Turns out Kirk did it out of concern for her living alone. Rory comes home for a weekend to find the alarm goes off when she or her mother walks into the room, as Kirk forgot to give her the code to turn it off. Kirk was a mailman at the end of season three, but has been replaced by someone who is even worse at it and delivers the mail to the wrong people.
Dean is getting married to Lindsay. He runs into Rory and invites her and her mother to the wedding. Taylor uses Lorelai to put unnecessary pressure on Luke to let Taylor park his ice cream truck on the pavement outside their businesses. Rory and Lorelai end up not going to the wedding.
Tropes
- Call-Back: Michel claims he called Lorelai in July. Lorelai points out that she was in Europe in July.
- Captain Obvious: Dean's drunk bachelor party falls into the diner shouting a song cheering Stars Hollow high. They inform Luke that it is the Stars Hollow high fight song.
- Comically Missing the Point: Kirk apprehends Lane and her band using Lorelai's garage for band practice.
- Dark Humor: Lorelai says she'll hang herself if Luke doesn't agree to the ice cream truck.
- Dumb Blonde: When Lorelai has trouble understanding a letter she claims to feel blonde.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Kirk calls Lorelai "the pretty spinster".
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Rory has changed her high school shoulder-length hairstyle for a more grown up business-womany style.
- False False Alarm: Lorelai figured out the burglary alarm stops howling if you get out of the motion sensor's way for a minute. It is never clarified whether it doesn't alert the police or if the police simply doesn't care anymore.
- Girls Love Chocolate: Rory is a huge fan of Taylor's chocolate.
- Important Haircut: Rory has gotten a new haircut now that she goes to college.
- Inverted Trope: Lorelai says she has realized that the inn isn't part of their life so much as they are part of its much longer life.
- In Vino Veritas: In Dean's case it's probably beer, but it has him admit that he wishes he was with Rory instead of Lindsay.
- Karma: Lorelai and Rory agree to go to Dean's wedding for fear of cosmic payback.
- Lampshadehanging: As Lorelai makes a post-it path to get around the alarm's motion detector, Rory asks if their lives ever seem ridiculous to her.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Luke being insistent that Lorelai and Rory not go to Dean's wedding, a thing Luke would not usually care about, is enough to convince Rory that they shouldn't go.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Taylor wages this on Lorelai.
- Power Hair: Rory's new hairstyle.
- Redundant Department of Redundancy: Chocolate chocolate chocolate, an ice cream from Taylor's shop. Rory admits it's very chocolate chocolate chocolatey.
- Running Gag: People keep getting each other's mail and casually hand it to the person it was really addressed to whenever they happen to run into them.
- Sarcasm Mode: Michel talks up his new job in a dry tone, pretending he just can't take back his job in Stars Hollow. It makes Sookie and Lorelai feel guilty about not including him in their Dragonfly plans from the beginning.
- Shout-Out:
- Lorelai refers to Rory's new haircut as Rory pulling a G.I. Jane.
- Rory refers to the post-it path as the yellow stick road.
- Zach claims that finding your sound is very important, as evidenced by that Glenn Miller movie. Jimmy Stewart spent a lot of it talking about finding your sound.
- Rory points out that Mick Jagger went to the London School of Economics, Dexter Holland from The Offspring got his Ph.D. in microbiology from USC, Greg Ginn of Black Flag graduated from UCLA, and the guy from Bad Religion got his M.A. in geology from the UCLA.
- Zach is upset to learn that Weezer went to Harvard.
- A guy at Michel's new job is talking to Janet Jackson on the phone.
- Sookie watches Queer Eye For The Straight Guy.
- Michel pretends to think it's cute when modern artists do Shakespeare dressed like punk rockers.
- Luke claims that Jim Morrison is not hanging out with Elvis and the Kennedys did not kill Marilyn.
- Lorelai uses a scene from The Godfather to illustrate how coldly to the point you have to be in business. Rory thinks the message is undermined by the scene being about premeditating murder, but Lorelai thinks that's beside the point.
- Taylor comments that the changes to the Dragonfly amount to "paving paradise and putting up a parking lot".
- Luke comments that the Stars Hollow high school fight song sounded like Mozart to him.
- The Dragonfly porch is as historical as Kate Hudson.
- Lorelai feels like Bud Fox from Wall Street.
- As a child Kirk thought he was related to Ted Knight.
- Stag Party: Dean throws one. He and his friends get drunk, courtesy of Dean's 21-year-old cousin who's a sailor, and stumble into Luke's where Dean proceeds to fall asleep.
- Stealth Insult: At a town meeting Michel, who normally doesn't go to town meetings, offers to explain to people how to apply deodorant.
- That Man Is Dead: A humorous example. Lorelai declares that the old her is dead, now that she's had an epiphany about how business works.
- Title Drop: Dean invites Rory to his wedding and asks if she wants chicken or beef.
- Trail of Bread Crumbs: Lorelai makes a path of post-its where you don't trigger the alarm. Let's hope none of the dangerous burglars in Stars Hollow learn of it.
- Verbal Backspace:
- Dean inviting Rory and Lorelai to his wedding realizes it's redundant to ask whether they want chicken or beef. They're definitely beef. Not that they resemble beef or anything.
- Lorelai and Sookie discuss how much they need Michel at the Dragonfly, alternating between saying that and that they're kind of happy without him.
- Sookie thinks people with headsets look so cute talking to themselves. Of course, she adds, they're not talking to themselves, but to someone on the headset.
- Taylor wants to preserve a historical porch that is the same age as Kate Hudson. When Lorelai points out that it's not that historical he says he meant that it will be historical someday.
- You Do Not Want To Know: Inverted. Kirk gives Lorelai the happy news that he managed to uninstall her alarm, and adds that the roofer will come by her house on Monday. Lorelai decides she doesn't want to know why she needs a roofer.
- Western Zodiac: Luke thinks astrology is crap.
- Would Rather Suffer: Lorelai and Sookie discuss things they would rather do than accompany Taylor's inspection at six in the morning. They include cleaning the shower with a toothbrush and cutting their gums on floss.
