Season 1, episode 16
Star-Crossed Lovers and Other Strangers
Dean reads Anna Karenina at Rory's request. He thinks it's over his head, but Rory insists that Leo Tolstoy wrote for the masses. Dean invites her on a date for their three-month anniversary. Lorelai doesn't think she'll get out of Friday night dinner just to go on her three-month anniversary date, but to everyone's surprise Emily is fine with it.
Everyone's preparing a festival on Founder's Day. Luke's ex Rachel shows up at the diner. Lorelai tells Rory to bring home a meatball from the anniversary dinner, in reference to Lady and the Tramp.
Turns out Emily is fine with it because she wants to set Lorelai up with a guy. The guy turns out to be Chase Bradford, a thoroughly boring man who seems to think teenagers are small children and makes smalltalk about his job in the actuarial business. He calculates when people are going to die on a computer for a living. It ends with Lorelai escaping out her second-story bedroom window, and Richard sympathizing enough to cover for her.
Rachel and Luke discuss their relationship and Lorelai. Rory and Dean break up.
Maid of the week: Lee
Foods:
• Three kinds of pasta
• Tiramisu
• Roast
Tropes
- Alpha Bitch: Summer gives Paris a run for her money by being the less academic kind.
- Analogy Backfire: Rory finds the three-month anniversary to be like the Christmas when she got a full set of illustrated encyclopedias. Dean worries if that means the date sucks.
- Balcony Escape: Lorelai leaves the set-up through her bedroom window balcony.
- Blatant Lies: Lorelai denies that her dream about Max was dirty, then says she'll tell Rory the truth when she's twenty-one.
- Bookworm:
- Rory fondly remembers the Christmas she got a full set of illustrated encyclopedias.
- She brings the fiction issue of The New Yorker to the anniversary date.
- The Bore: Chase, enough so for Lorelai to risk her life climbing out her second-floor bedroom window to get away from him.
- Cannot Spit It Out: Becomes a plot point when Dean tells Rory he loves her and she can't bring herself to say she loves him.
- Compliment Backfire: "You said 'I love you' really well!" was not the response Dean wanted.
- Continuity Nod: Sookie mentions the time she singed off her eyebrows earlier in the season.
- Dissimile: Dean insists that his surprise for Rory at the junkyard is nothing like Christine.
- Feminine Women Can Cook: Lorelai suddenly wants to be the iron chef.
- Festival Episode: The first Founder's Day festival on the show.
- Genius Bookclub: Rory once wished for a full set of illustrated encyclopedias for Christmas.
- Hypocrite: Summer suggests Paris get bangs because they would "hide her long forehead". Summer and Paris have same-sized foreheads. Summer does not have bangs.
- The "I Love You" Stigma: Dean tells Rory he loves her. She can't bring herself to say it back.
- Lame Pun Reaction: Lorelai makes a pun on D.A.R. by adding an N. Chase doesn't get it.
- Literal-Minded: After Lorelai has a couple of mood swings in the diner, Luke calls her bipolar. Taylor and Miss Patty treat it like he's announcing news about Lorelai's medical state.Miss Patty: But you're so young!
- Names to Run Away from Really Fast: Chase's childhood dobermans were named Leopold and Loeb
. - Off Screen Break Up: While we get to see how it builds, we don't get to see the actual break-up, so we can't know for sure who broke up with who.
- Pet the Dog: Richard catches Lorelai trying to sneak out of the house to avoid the boring guy Emily set her up with. Lorelai apologises for the bad memories of her childhood seeing her like that probably brings up for him and for the fight the two had the previous week. She then begs Richard not to make her go back down to the table. After a moment, Richard shouts back down to Emily that he can't find Lorelai.Lorelai: Thank you, daddy.
- Plot Parallel: Both Lorelai and Lane are getting set up with a guy by their mothers in this one. At the same time Rory is on a date with her boyfriend and breaks up with him, so inverted there.
- A Rare Sentence: "I was almost crushed by a papermaché star!"
- Replacement Goldfish: Tristan's new girlfriend Summer looks a lot like Rory.
- Rule of Symbolism: In one scene, Luke and Rachel are sitting on a park bench. Rachel leaves, and Lorelai takes her place.
- Sarcasm Mode: Lorelai doing her impression of her mother in this mode, is this mode.
- Shout-Out:
- Miss Patty once danced in a cage for Tito Puente.
- Anna Karenina is too gruesome for Dean.
- Rory claims Leo Tolstoy wrote for the masses.
- Paris thinks Elizabeth Barrett Browning would put her head through a wall if she witnessed Tristan and Summer's make-out session.
- Rachel looks at Luke like he's Johnny Depp according to Lorelai.
- Lorelai expects Rory and Dean to reenact the spaggetti scene from Lady and the Tramp.
- Lorelai comments that Emily went a little Kathy Bates in Misery with the figurines.
- Lorelai claims she and Richard get on like they're on Maury.
- Rory claims Bambi is the only person who can ever eat cute.
- Dean says his surprise for Rory is nothing like Christine.
- Teen Pregnancy: Discussed in a roundabout way. Dean insists you don't get pregnant saying "I love you."
- Walk-In Chime-In: Lorelai suggests to Luke they both make fun of the next person who walks into the diner and asks, "Hey, how's it going?," to which Luke readily agrees. That's Rachel's cue to come in and asks, "Hey, how's it going?"
- Writers Cannot Do Math: Averted. Founder's Day in the States is on January 14, and since Rory's birthday party where she got together with Dean was the day after her actual birthday, that means she was born on October 13, which was totally on a Friday in real-life 2000.
