The Incredible Sinking Lorelais
The Dragonfly gets its horses and a lot of renovation. Rory and Lorelai are both busy and keep missing each other's calls. Dean asks Rory if she's okay with him working for Tom at Lorelai's inn. Jason and Lorelai spend time together, but they spend it talking to their jobs on the phone. Trix aka "the third Lorelai" aka Lorelai the first comes to visit her son and daughter-in-law. Lane has to leave Yale on grounds of not being enrolled. Rory is taking too many classes, and finding out makes her so upset that when she can't find her mother, she runs into her now-married ex and confides in him instead.
Maid of the week: an unnamed blonde woman.
Tropes
- Ask a Stupid Question...: Sookie doesn't understand why the delivery guys would send the sink back to Canada. Lorelai says that's where its mother is.
- Berserk Button: Much like senior year at Chilton, Rory "blabbing" about Paris's secret boyfriend is not something she takes kindly to.
- Big Eater: Luke thinks his customers eat so much it's disgusting.
- Blank Stare: Lorelai asks her hairdresser Leanne what she can do for her hair in two minutes and gets this reply.
- Blatant Lies: Rory plans to lie about being unable to read her own writing, as she tells Lorelai's answering machine. Ends up the professor she's lying to doesn't care either way.
- Captain Obvious: Tom thinks that if he doesn't pay his guys they'll stop showing up.
- Comically Missing the Point: Subverted. Lorelai tearfully informs Luke that she was going to ask for a thirty grand loan, he starts answering the loan request.
- Fictional Board Game: Rory wanted to play Monopoly as a child, but Lorelai insisted on making up their own games, such as Mimic your favorite hedgehog.
- Funny Answering Machine: Sookie and Jackson's answering machine has them trying to get the baby to say something.
- Gosh Dang It to Heck!: Sookie says "oh, shoot, oh, shoot, oh, Sugarfoot" when Lorelai thinks "the real word" would be more fitting.
- Hypocrite: Sookie thinks Michel is one for not doing her job for her when he always wants to be included the rest of the time. Which makes her one.
- Leaning on the Fourth Wall: Jason walks into Richard's office, walks over to the globe and talks about how every really important character in a movie has a globe in their office.
- Plot Parallel: Lorelai and Rory's separate plotlines are both about them feeling overwhelmed, in part because they are apart, and they even miss each other when they're both in Stars Hollow, telling a male friend about their troubles.
- Punny Title: On The Incredible Shrinking Man.
- Shout-Out:
- The episode title is a pun on The Incredible Shrinking Man.
- The horses are named Desdemona and Cletus.
- Janet's boyfriend's football shirt reminds Paris of Cirque du Soleil.
- Paris accuses Rory and Lane of skipping through meadows singing Carpenters songs.
- Glenn won't stop watching Taxi Driver.
- Jason argues on the phone about William Safire.
- Emily sarcastically considers inviting Eminem to a party.
- Lorelai's hair looked like the bird lady from Mary Poppins the last time Emily saw her.
- Lorelai has to get her bathrobe on before talking to her mother on the phone because "she can hear naked people".
- Sookie: Who chooses which horse to lose, Sophie?
- Paris accuses Klebold of leaving a crater in her couch that Gandalf the Grey is still falling down.
- Céline Dion is at Michel's other job so he can't come to the Dragonfly.
- Lorelai calls Sookie "Spiffy".
- Lorelai thinks the sink guy sounds like a Kids in the Hall character.
- Lorelai feels she's "living on a prayer" improvising her hairstyle.
- Rory thinks Charlize Theron would have played her in a movie.
- Trix thinks Richard looks like Adolphe Menjou.
- Jason thinks Trix is scarier that Nick Nolte's mugshot.
- Team Mom: Lane plays this role for Rory's dorm, but focuses most of it on Rory.
- Tempting Fate: Telling Lorelai to fix her hair before meeting Trix was bound to backfire.
