Season 4, episode 6
An Affair To Remember
Emily is mad that the Richmonds gave out candy too generously at Halloween like last year. Jason and Richard are starting their business, and Emily wants to throw a party and hires Lorelai and Sookie to cater it. Rory has trouble finding a good place to study. We meet Lulu for the first time.Tropes
- Big Eater: In preparation for his date with Lulu, Kirk orders every item off Luke's menu to learn their crumb-to-sweater ratio.
- Blatant Lies: Lorelai supposedly sent Emily a business flyer that must have gotten lost in the mail.
- Captain Obvious: Kirk tells Luke he's going on a date, and feels the need to add "with a young lady".
- Comically Missing the Point: Emily doesn't understand why Lorelai would wear a plain jumper and sweatpants with "juicy" written on the back at home, if it's not her pajamas.
- Companion Cube: Rory and her mother talk about Rory's study tree like it's her pet.
- Dark Humor: Lorelai loudly asks for a list of people who got away with killing their parents as she needs heroes.
- Didn't Think This Through: Lorelai asks Emily to treat her and Sookie like professional caterers instead of as her daughter and her daughter's friend, but did not anticipate being asked to use the servants' entrance.
- Distinction Without a Difference: Subverted. Jason assures Lorelai that he didn't call Emily obsolete, he called cocktail parties obsolete. She tells him it's the same thing.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: Lorelai thinks Jason misses the point of her parents being inconsiderate and not telling him about the party they are planning for his clients.
- Embarrassing Nickname: "Digger" for Jason, "Umlauts" for Lorelai.
- Heh Heh, You Said "X": Emily said "ball", and Lorelai finds it amusing.
- Hypocritical Humor: Lorelai calls Jason by his hated nickname "Digger" three times, then gets mad that he calls her "Umlauts" once.
- Insistent Terminology:
- Emily insists her neighbors did not hand out "full-size" candybars, it's "king size".Lorelai: And if a petition doesn't work, you can put on hoods and burn a full-size Mars bar on their lawn!
Emily: King size, Lorelai. King size. - Sookie thinks it's more important that Rory knows her room is full of broccoli tarts and not quiche than that Rory's room is full of broccoli tarts so she can't study there.
- Emily insists her neighbors did not hand out "full-size" candybars, it's "king size".
- My Girl Is Not a Slut: Kirk takes it very personally that Luke thinks Lulu is into him.Luke: (encouraging) I think she likes you!
Kirk: (grabs Luke's collar) You take that back! - Not Good with Rejection: Inverted with Kirk, who is uncomfortable with Lulu genuinely liking him.
- Quit Your Whining: Lorelai tells Rory to stop whining about losing her study tree, and Sookie to stop whining about only having one car.
- A Rare Sentence: "I lost my tree!" —Rory after she's moved from noisy place to noisy place and finally found a tree to study under and someone else takes it.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: Lorelai goes to Jason Styles to tell him how much he sucks for cancelling her mother's party. She throws in a small speech about why her parents suck, too, but that's not her point.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: When Lorelai rhetorically asks Jason what his mother would have left in her life if you took away the functions, he replies "more time with the pool boy".
- Shout-Out:
- The title of the episode is a reference to An Affair to Remember.
- Emily doesn't want Richard and Jason showing up looking like The Bobbsey Twins.
- Tom suggests naming all the horses "Trigger" for a famous stunt horse in Westerns.
- Kirk sells mailboxes shaped like Condoleeza Rice's head.
- Paris doesn't want to be Jamie's Hillary Clinton.
- Lorelai guesses that Emily is telling her a Hans Christian Andersen story.
- Liv Tyler grew up thinking Todd Rundgren was her real father, and Lorelai feels like that was a bigger deal than her not telling Emily about their catering business.
- Rory calls her dorm room a The Three Stooges movie.
- Kirk wants to be seated like Tom Cruise.
- Sookie thinks Lorelai's childhood home is right out of Citizen Kane.
- Lorelai quips about the length of candles, and Emily advises her that Pinocchio humor is to be left out.
- Lorelai characterizes her job at Emily's party as "Prince opening for The Rolling Stones".
- Rory manages to invert this trope by giving a Sheldon speech about why her study tree is the perfect place to sit, but that series won't exist for a few more years.
- Kirk does his Duckie from Pretty in Pink impression.
- Lorelai points out that every family has their Fredo.
- Spoiled Brat: Despite her demand to be treated like a serious caterer, Lorelai has trouble acting professional around her mother.
- Stealth Hi/Bye: Kirk suddenly stands behind Luke, crossing the room in two seconds tops and around the counter without making a sound.
- Take That!: When asked where he would seat Tom Cruise, Luke replies in an acting class.
- Themed Party: Emily wants to arrange a Russian-themed launch party for Richard and Jason's new business. She is glad it's okay to be Russian again, since it's been a while since the Cold War.
- Verbal Backspace:
- Kirk tells Luke that since Lorelai told him to have his date with Lulu somewhere he is comfortable he thought to go to Luke's. Then since Luke is glaring at him he adds that he is not right now, but he has been in the past.
- When Kirk inquires to a diner guest as to whether the meatloaf she is eating is romantic to her, Luke growls at him, and he backtracks to "nice talking to you" and bolts out the door.
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Minor. Sookie says she is eight months pregnant, and Emily translates it to "in her eighth month", but the eighth month ends when you hit eight months. Sookie is in her ninth month.
