Season 6, episode 11
The Perfect Dress
Lorelai and Rory have been to Atlantic City, since they couldn't on Rory's birthday. Lorelai is planning her wedding. Lane and Zach are broken up so she moves home. Luke visits Anna Nardini to talk to her about April. Logan seeks out Rory and informs her he loves her. Rory has to talk to a Yale psychologist since she took time off, and Rory cries on his couch. Lorelai feels that things are going too smoothly, which must mean that something is wrong.
Tropes:
- Alleged Lookalikes: Lorelai and Rory met a man dressed as Dolly Parton who they claim looks exactly like Luke. Lorelai says the chins are a match.
- Arc Number: 21 for the belated celebration of Rory's 21st birthday.
- Big "NO!": Subverted. Lorelai's response to seeing Rory's new apartment is a string of medium-sized "NO"s.
- Blatant Lies: Zach makes up a story about Lane having his favorite CD to get her alone. She doesn't buy it.
- Continuity Nod: The Yale psychologist asks about the plot of the past several episodes.
- Child Hater: Anna's reason for not telling Luke about April is that he hated kids while they were together.
- Complexity Addiction: Paris's safety precautions, with her seven locks on the door and always pretending the apartment is full of people when someone knocks.
- Expository Hairstyle Change: Rory no longer has Regal Ringlets now that she's rejecting he upper-class lifestyle like her mother once did. She is now letting her hair down — also like her mother since she started rebelling against her parents' lifestyle.
- Freak Out: Lorelai gets caught in a circle of freak-outs.
- Give Me a Sign: Lorelai receives a barrage of signs starting with running into her perfect wedding dress.
- Hidden Depths: Mrs. Kim surprises Lane by retrieving a hidden bottle of cider and offering her a glass.
- Hypocritical Humor: Mrs. Kim thinks Lane is too mean when she drives a hard bargain.
- Ironic Echo: Lorelai pulls a prank on Rory, convincing her to introduce herself to Paul Anka by letting him lick sugar off her toes. She claims that a dog never forgets his first sugar toe. When Rory is leaving and Paul Anka sneaks into her car, and Lorelai calls him a traitor for apparently preferring Rory, Rory repeats the line back to her.A dog never forgets his first sugar toe.
- Irony: Rory fears she'll get community service for stealing her community service vest.
- Like Mother, Like Daughter: Lane sells chairs like her mother, just stricter.
- Malaproper: Paris calls Logan's father his "sugar daddy".
- Misery Builds Character: Paris justifies her dictatorial editor style by reminding Rory that some of the most creative art was made under Stalin's gulag.
- Noodle Incidents: Lorelai apparently made a lot of drunken late-night calls to Luke from Atlantic City. Luke, however, did not receive any.
- Obfuscating Disability: April wore a back brace during her Judy Blume phase.
- The Perfectionist: Paris's really comes out when she's an editor.
- Real Men Wear Pink: There are no macho wedding invitations.
- Rhetorical Question Blunder: Rory tells her shrink that Logan told her he loved her and asks if he was serious. The shrink replies honestly that he doesn't know if Logan was serious or not.
- Running Gag: People not buying that the "doo-wop group" downstairs from Paris's apartment is really a doo-wop group.
- Shout-Out
- Luke asks about Paul Anka the person, but he wasn't performing in Atlantic City.
- Instead there was Journey without their original lead singer, INXS without their original lead singer, Queen without Freddie, The Supremes without Diana, and James Brown without James Brown.
- No one in Atlantic City questioned Lorelai and Rory's claim to be Wendy & Lisa
. - Luke has the same chin as a guy dressed as Dolly Parton who performs an amazing Jolene.
- Paris feels like getting to know two neighbors was sufficiently It Takes A Village.
- The Wizard of Oz was too scary for a young Paris.
- Doyle's safety word is not Steinbeck.
- It's Saroyan (after novelist William Saroyan).
- Sookie wonders if it's across the street from Barbra Streisand or Barbara Mandell.
- Sookie thinks Lorelai's engagement ring is a golden ticket.
- Mrs. Kim knows Nigella Lawson milk glasses when she sees them.
- Paris more or less admits to basing her leadership style on Stalin.
- Paris argues that One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich by Solzhenitsyn could not have been written on a yoga retreat.
- Zach accuses Lane of having his The Cars album.
- Lorelai thinks Rory's new flat is very Angela's Ashes.
- The "doo-wop group" makes Lorelai ask if Rory has any plutonium stashed in her apartment.
- Lorelai's brilliant luck reminds her of the episode of The Twilight Zone (1959) where a young woman gets chased down by an older version of her telling her not to make the choice she's making.
- Luke had an "unnatural hatred" toward Macaulay Culkin when he was dating Anna, according to Anna.
- April found out who her three potential fathers were by reading her mom's old letters.
- Rory argues that her spending a night in jail doesn't reflect so bad on her, as Martin Luther King Jr. also spent a night in jail.
- Kirk won't help Luke go on one of "those" websites, because if they'll go after Pete Townshed they'll come after anyone.
- Rory went all Frances Farmer on the psychologist's couch.
- Lorelai thinks Tom Cruise would have taken issue with Rory popping pills.
- April wore a back brace during her phase of liking Deenie by Judy Blume.
- Significant Reference Date: June 3rd must have gotten stuck in Lorelai's head when it was Rory's court date, because she's making it her wedding date. Not to mention that it was her wedding date the last time she was engaged.
- Snow Means Love: Lorelai still believes this, so she declares it a sign that it starts snowing just when she tells Luke about the wedding plans coming together.
- Themed Party: The theme for Rory's 21st birthday is the number 21.
- Title Drop: Lorelai finds the perfect dress in a wedding shop.
