Season 6, episode 8
Let Me Hear Your Balalaikas Ring Out
Luke and Lorelai discuss what color to paint the house in. Paul Anka is really into dark magenta. Luke agrees to sponsor a girls soccer team. Logan has to go to Omaha to work for his Dad. Rory runs into Jess in the Gilmores' driveway and invites him in. He gives her a book he's written titled "The Subsect". Paul Anka gets sick. Lorelai puts him in Rory's bed and sleeps in the chair she used to sleep in when Rory was sad or drunk or had broken her arm. Jess calls Rory out for trying to be something she's not.
Maid of the week: Shandinka. She has a used SUV.
Tropes
- Ambiguous Innocence: The soccer team Luke sponsors turns out to be a bunch of 11-year-old killers.
- Armor-Piercing Question: Jess asks Rory what's going on with her, and Rory admits to him, herself, and the audience for the first time that she doesn't know—implying her recent rebellious streak isn't actually what she wants her life to look like.
- Blatant Lies: Subverted. Lorelai blames Paul Anka for moving her shoes downstairs and lining them up, but Luke feels pretty sure Lorelai has done it herself. Later she comes home to her shoes lined up to a sad Paul Anka.
- Blood Sport: Soccer in Luke's soccer team's interpretation.
- Call-Back: Lorelai tells Luke that Paul Anka is sick. Luke asks if he ate chocolate again.
- Captain Obvious: Lorelai points out that her and Luke's names start with the same letter.
- Child Hater: Luke feels that kids talk a lot without saying anything so he doesn't really listen even when they speak directly to him.
- Central Theme: Privileged life isn't all it's chalked up to be.
- Cock Fight: Defied. Logan keeps baiting Jess into one over dinner. Jess declines, a sign of his Character Development.
- Comically Missing the Point: Lorelai wonders how many points you lose when you miss the playoff in a soccer game.
- Crazy Jealous Guy: Logan isn't subtle about the fact he feels threatened by Jess.
- Creepy Child: The 12-year-old soccer players who think violence is funny.
- Dramatically Missing the Point: Despite having raised Lorelai, Emily really thinks Rory spends the night at Paris's when she is with Logan.
- The Ex's New Jerkass: From Jess's point of view, definitely.
- Freud Was Right: Jess thinks this of Logan's obsession with lengthy books.
- If Only You Knew: Rory's never mentioned Jess to Logan, so after finding out they used to date, Logan starts probing; he asks if they were "two high school sweethearts? Rock around the clock, two straws in the milkshake?" Jess smirks behind his drink, since Logan has no idea that not only is Jess not that guy, he was the reason for Rory's break-up with Dean, who was that guy.
- Literal-Minded: Finn makes a pass on a girl by yelling "pass" at her.
- Loving Details: Downplayed, but Jess remembered Rory's birthday despite not seeing her in two years. This was likely meant to be juxtaposed with the last episode, in which Logan had to be told by Emily.
- No Social Skills: When Paul Anka meets other dogs he plays dead.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Emily is now wondering what eating disorder Rory has since she declines food.
- The reason Jess is concerned about Rory and the basis for his What the Hell, Hero? moment in the episode.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat: Logan's solution to dealing with his jealousy is to speak in thinly veiled insults, needling Jess about how lame he thinks novel writing is and trying to prove he's smarter by name dropping authors, then asking Jess if he knows who those authors are.
- Plot Parallel: Lorelai treating Paul Anka like her child while her child is being treated like her mother's child by Emily.
- Replacement Goldfish: Paul Anka is one for Rory in Lorelai's life, while Rory is one for Lorelai in Emily's life.
- Running Joke: Lorelai using her "color thingy" to find the perfect colors for anything but the paint to use in her own home.
- Seinfeldian Conversation: Rory tries to alleviate the awkwardness between Logan and Jess by discussing the concept of old friends. It's a one-sided conversation.
- Shout-Out
- Lorelai refers to the two girls who want to talk to Luke as "the Lullaby League".
- Lorelai compares Luke's rejection of the girls who ask him to sponsor their soccer team to rejecting Oliver Twist asking for a little more gruel.
- Rory thinks the big house is getting Tom Thumb tiny.
- Rory thinks Emily has doppelgangers like a Cylon.
- Lorelai thinks Luke sounds like Daddy Warbucks.
- Lorelai thinks Tobey Maguire would play Luke in a movie.
- Luke thinks Viggo Mortensen is a better pick.
- Lorelai changes hers to Donald Sutherland.
- The folk singer at the bar sings Tom Dooley.
- Subverted with The Subsect by Jess Mariano, which is not a real book.
- Logan wonders if Jess writes books the length of Franz Kafka, Dos Pasos, Leo Tolstoy, Robert Musil or Marcel Proust novels.
- Ernest Hemingway could take a punch according to Logan.
- So Proud of You: Given their last interaction, Jess and Rory's meeting starts out a little awkward, with both not knowing quite what to say to each other. Until Jess hands her his novel, and Rory immediately starts gushing about how she knew he could do something with his life if he just put his mind to it. Jess tells her he knows she did, and says he couldn't have done it without her faith in him.
- Stop Being Stereotypical: Inverted as always. Luke asks his girl soccer team to start being more girly in their play.
- Thriving Ex-Crush: Jess returns, now a Self-Made Man working for a publishing company in Philadelphia and promoting a novel he's published. It makes for a stark contrast not only with Rory's own life, but with Logan, who spends the episode feeling threatened and getting drunk.
- Verbal Backspace: When two girls come to Luke's to ask him to sponsor their soccer team, Lorelai starts to tell Luke what happened to their last sponsor: he got caught in a hotel room with a transves… istor radio.
- What the Hell, Hero?: Jess verbally shakes some sense into Rory regarding her recent poor life choices.
