Season 5, episode 22
A House Is Not A Home
Rory has to be picked up from jail after her grand theft boating adventure. The fifth annual Connecticut bike race passes through Stars Hollow. Lane worries that Hep Alien is breaking up. Mrs. Kim does not want to have a daughter who gives up, so books them a tour. Lorelai enlists her parents to convince Rory to stay in Yale, or tries.Maid of the week: Davida, who is terrified of her employers.
Provides examples of:
- Bait-and-Switch:
- Emily tells Richard things, and he replies in monosyllables while reading the paper. To check if he's paying attention, she adds that she's planning to run off with the golf instructor, to which he absently says "that's fine". The door bell rings, and Richard suggests it's the golf instructor, who couldn't wait until their meeting to see Emily.
- Discussed. Emily doesn't believe Lorelai's news about Rory dropping out of Yale, saying she expects it to be this trope and Lorelai will reveal that the real news is that she's changing her biological sex.Lorelai: Mom, Dad, I'm not having a sex change operation.
- Bait-and-Switch Sentiment: Subverted. At a band meeting, Lane asks if they're breaking up. Zach seems worried for a moment, until he realizes to his relief that she means the band.
- Blue Screen Of Death: Rory doesn't function during her final exam because recent events such as stealing a boat to deal with feelings of disappointment have shocked her.
- Broken Tears: Rory goes to Richard's and tells him she doesn't know what to do, her plans are falling apart… so she starts crying, making her grandfather uncomfortable.
- Brutal Honesty: Logan criticizes his father for saying what he thinks without concern for whose feelings get hurt, but never says he doesn't think he really meant what he said to Rory.
- Captain Obvious: Lorelai wonders if the police put Rory in a cell and is told that that's where you put people in a precinct.
- Cassandra Truth: Lorelai tells her parents about how awful the Huntzberger's have been to Rory, but Emily and Richard refuse to believe such a thing.
- Comically Missing the Point:
- Lorelai's rant about how Rory is not too snobbish to share a prison cell.
- Zach momentarily thinks Lane is asking if they're breaking up, not the band.
- Continuity Snarl: Lorelai claims Rory never even shoplifted, something she did by accident in season one, and we know Lorelai knows about it because Rory kept the box of corn starch and they discussed it when she and Dean broke up and she was getting rid of all the things that reminded her of him.
- Damned by Faint Praise: Rory doesn't like hearing that she'd be a wonderful assistant.
- Dramatically Missing the Point:
- No alarm bells rang in Logan's head when Rory asked him to commit a felony with her.
- Luke fails to realize he has to discuss having kids with Lorelai, with Lorelai.
- Hypocrite: Emily and Richard refuse to believe that their friends the Huntzbergers could ever be as manipulative to Rory as they are to Lorelai.
- Literal-Minded: Mrs. Kim shows the band their tour route, and Zach asks if anyone else is noticing a pattern, meaning that all the locations are churches. Gil replies that the route is kind of horseshoe-shaped.
- Minor Insult Meltdown: Rory's overreaction to Mitchum's criticism has Lorelai point out that she would have eaten poundcake.
- My God, What Have I Done?: Rory suddenly realizes that she got arrested after her mother got her out and drove her home.
- Nervous Wreck: Davida, the maid of the week.
- Not Listening to Me, Are You?: Emily tells Richard she is having an affair to check if he's listening to her while he reads the newspaper. He is.
- Shout-Out:
- Lorelai doesn't want Rory's first time in a cell to be like Caged Heat or Switchblade Sister.
- Lorelai gets most of her knowledge about the prison system from NYPD Blue, using Andy Sipowicz from that show as a reference.
- Taylor laments about what Jane Fonda has wrought.
- Rory's only crime prior to this was returning The Iliad too late.
- Lorelai feels that only Louis B. Mayer has a right to say whether someone has "it".
- Lorelai thinks she should call Harry Houdini to get Rory out of her legal tangle.
- Gil gets T-boned by a 3 Doors Down fan.
- Some product supposedly turns you into Dakota Fanning.
- Lane plans on buying Peter Pan collared shirts to resume her sales training.
- The Huntzbergers see Rory as Anna Nicole Smith.
- Prince made an impression on Mrs. Kim by not swearing in his lyrics.
- Zach considers himself the scarecrow, Lane being the obvious Dorothy, Brian the Tinman and Gil the lion.
- Taylor is unimpressed with the whiny six-year-olds of the modern day; if this had been Charles Dickens' day they would have been sold off to a cobbler.
- You Are Worth Hell: Lane's commitment to the band, she claims, is so strong that she is risking eternal damnation because rock'n roll is against her family's religion.
- Verbal Backspace: Lorelai's entire rant about what happens when you steal a boat.
- Worrying for the Wrong Reason: Lorelai worries that the prison guard will think Rory is a snob because Lorelai hoped she had the cell to herself.
