Scene In a Mall
Rory has been ill recently, and pre-med Paris is freaked out about the germs. Lane moves into an apartment she shares with Zach and Brian. Luke grants Lorelai the loan she didn't get around to asking for. Lorelai and Rory meet and go to a mall where they run into Emily, who is so annoyed with Richard's mustache (and his youthful coworker and his secret dates with Pennilyn Lott) she wants to spend all his money in one day. Kirk walks dogs, and returns all but one, whose owner he can't find.
Maid of the week: Lettie
Kirk's job: dog-walker
The Lorelais' second most favorite food provider: Lou
Tropes
- Ask a Stupid Question...: Emily looks at Lorelai's dress and asks if that's what she's wearing. Lorelai assumes it's a trick question.
- Blatant Lies: Kirk denies having a dog in his bag. He orders oatmeal and a pound of raw meat.
- Boring, but Practical: Lindsay. She is into environmental cleaning products, and Dean finds her so boring he'd rather be at the arcade than with her.
- Cloudcuckoolander: Kirk doesn't try ordinary dog names on the leftover dog, just random sounds.
- Comically Missing the Point:
- Lorelai and Rory may be doing this on purpose when they eat food samples at the mall and compliment the guy holding the tray on his cooking.
- Obeying Emily's "meet me up here", Lorelai and Rory turn in the downward escalator and try to walk upstairs.
- Continuity Nod: Emily cites Richard's lunches with Pennilyn Lott as part of the reason she is mad at him.
- Embarrassing Nickname:
- Lindsay and her mother refer to Dean as Dino.
- Lorelai calls her mother "Emily the strange".
- Feminine Women Can Cook: Averted with Lindsay, whose mother laments that she didn't teach her to cook when she was a child.
- Gender-Blender Name: Kirk can't figure out if Lulu is on vacation with girl friends or guy friends, even after calling the hotel to check their names. Luke trolls him by pointing out that a number of girl names double as guy names.
- Hypocritical Humor: Lorelai complains about people who just come in and take what they want just before Luke realizes that she poured her own coffee.
- Irony: After Emily bought them lots of expensive stuff they don't need, Rory and Lorelai only want the free tote bag that came with it.
- Malaproper: Kirk says of Snuggles that she's not the smartest tool in the shed.
- Naïve Animal Lover: Downplayed with Kirk. He walks a lot of dogs at the same time and plays hide-and-seek with them by leaving one behind and expecting it to wait for a bit before it follows. We see Snuggles crossing the road dragging her leash.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Subverted. Watching Emily shop, Lorelai and Rory note that she has abandonned all her "passive".
- Pregnancy Scare: Subverted. When Lindsay's mother Theresa tells Dean not to make her mistakes with their little one, Rory is alarmed, but Dean lets her know Lindsay isn't pregnant.
- Pun: Joe at the exchange parlor always cracks the same joke about a given number of singles (one-dollar bills) costing a certain amount of dollars.
- Refuge in Audacity: Lorelai helps herself to pie although Luke told her to wait for him to serve them pie. He doesn't comment on it.
- Retail Therapy: Lorelai and Rory try the window shopping version, but Emily takes it all the way and buys things that aren't even for sale.
- Separated by a Common Language: Lorelai complains about this when Rory uses the British word "skint" (or skinned) for "broke".
- Shout-Out:
- The title is a nod to Scenes From A Mall starring Woody Allen.
- Lorelai hopes Alec Baldwin can do Luke justice in the movie about her meltdown in the park.
- Lorelai pictures Charles Dickens when she thinks of letter writing.
- Rory thinks Paris' precautions are very The L Word.
- Emily has shopped enough for Methusalem's lifetime.
- Richard and Emily disagree about how many Beatles are dead. They eventually agree that John and Keith are dead while Paul and Bingo are still kicking.
- Lorelai claims Rosalind Russell and Ava Gardner windowshopped on Fifth Avenue, but it all comes apart when she can't remember which movie.
- Rory pretends to mistake Dean for one of The Village People.
- Christine thinks Lane's life is very Hogan's Heroes.
- Christine is a fan of The Libertines and The White Stripes. She remembers Led Zeppelin as the band with Stairway to Heaven.
- Christine thinks Mrs. Kim makes the guy from Joy Division look like one of the Teletubbies
- Lane insists she's not Christine's Yoda.
- Zach is convinced the Sex Pistols roomed together without a nightlight.
- Lorelai adds that she thinks her mother has bought her "three milking maids" like in the song "Twelve Days of Christmas".
- Lorelai does a Gollum impression to make fun of Emily.
- Purple is the color of eggplants and Prince, not the Dragonfly.
- Emily gets them hairclips with diamond BettyBoops.
- Take That!: Lorelai thinks window shopping is like going to a museum, except you're actually interested in what you're looking at.
