Season 5, episode 21
Blame Booze And Melville
Emily takes a ballet dancer home in an endowing program. Lorelai and Rory try to throw Sookie a baby shower. Rory finishes her last week of internship and Mitchum's review of her leads to an emotional breakdown. Sookie has a baby and decides two kids is a good compromise between the three she wanted and the four Jackson wanted. Luke challenges Kirk's claim to the Twickham house and wins it.
Maid of the week: Luminista
Ballet dancers Emily hosts: Pola and Mikhail
Provides examples of:
- Bait-and-Switch: Emily insists she did not get into a "bitch fight" with Jimmy Carter. It was Rosalyn.
- Brick Joke: Emily's talk about eating fruit gets back to Lorelai when she finds herself eating an apple.
- Brutal Honesty: How Mitchum feels about telling Rory she won't make it as a journalist. As far as Lorelai is concerned it was indeed brutal, but she thinks he said it in order to crush her, not because of its relationship to the truth.
- Call-Back: Emily still doesn't like feeling stalked by an elf. In this episode the elfin stalker is a Russian ballerina, but in a previous episode it was a maid that didn't make a sound when she walked.
- Can't Take Criticism: Rory. When exactly one person in her life tells her she doesn't have it she reacts by committing a crime.
- Captain Obvious: Lorelai helpfully informs Sookie and Jackson that Rory finds the fact that Sookie's going into labor thoroughly sickening, in case they couldn't tell from her body language and comments.
- Comically Missing the Point: Kirk, arguing his case before the town elders, refers to Luke as "the defendant", but what they're arguing about is who gets to buy a house.
- Compliment Backfire: Mikhail's hometown doesn't sound so lovely once he informs you that people there die young.
- Continuity Nod: Sookie mentions how she realized she was pregnant when she yelled at Norman Mailer.
- Double Standard: If Jackson had made a decision to have Sookie sterilized, every woman on the show and the audience would be at his throat, but Sookie making the decision to have Jackson sterilized right after giving birth is just accepted, even by the hospital staff.
- Easily Forgiven: For once, Emily forgives Lorelai for unfavorably comparing her to Pol Pot almost immediately.
- Godwin's Law: Deconstructed. Lorelai apologizes profusely to Mikhail, and insists that when she cracked a joke to a journalist about her mother being more of a dictator than Stalin, there is no way she could have known that a Russian man whose entire family was slaughtered by Stalin would be reading the article in front of her.
- Hypocritical Humor: Lorelai calls Rory from the maternity ward and tells her to be careful not to get pregnant, there are babies popping out all over the place.
- Literal-Minded:
- Kirk does not have a quarter of a million dollars. It's $247 868. Immediately subverted as Kirk is unlikely to have had fifteen thousand jobs.
- Kirk claims he has deep pockets, just not right now because he's wearing a towel.
- Mikhail has a problem with people who get unfavorably compared to Joseph Stalin.
- Magic 8-Ball: Pola likes Lorelai's old 8-ball. She keeps asking it if she'll be rich.
- Non Sequitur: Lorelai shows Luke the photoshoot of the inn and he declares that he needs a new pair of pants.
- Not Good with Rejection: Rory, whose first thought on learning that Mitchum is not exactly impressed with her is to go steal a boat to be at sea like in Moby-Dick.
- O.O.C. Is Serious Business: Sookie comments on Lorelai eating an apple with great surprise. Rory is also alarmed. Lorelai realizes it might mean she's pregnant. When she starts eating unhealthy foods again later that day she dismisses the suspicion.
- The Omniscient Council of Vagueness: We finally meet the town council, which consists of a group of old men in a sauna. The eldest elder is the most omnicient one.
- Parental Sexuality Squick: Subverted. Emily puts the picture of the sexy male ballet dancer in the "maybe" pile.Rory: You go grandma.
- Product Placement:
- Luke doesn't think he looks like Ebay.
- Mitchum talks about Captain Crunch.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: Kirk and Lorelai separately deduce that an additional ten cents for a sandwich is a ten percent increase, and remark that it's a hefty increase.
- Shout-Out:
- The title mentions Herman Melville.
- Rory doesn't think Noam Chomsky falls for the imperialist propaganda that ou should eat fruit every day.
- To Brian Eno. Lorelai would like to use her Spamalot tickets before Luke sends Manhattan to Europe.
- Rory accuses Lorelai of being Anne Sexton.
- Kirk is a fan of Marmaduke and comes up with a line for Dennis the Menace (US).
- Rory wishes she'd never heard Coming Round the Mountain and Drop it like it's hot.
- Sookie calls Lorelai Penélope Cruz.
- Sookie hallucinates Andy Dick.
- Lorelai's apple looks like Ben Stiller.
- Sookie had a dream that Norman Mailer told someone to shut up and read James Joyce.
- The midwife looks like Marlo Thomas.
- Lorelai being offensive was just her trying to be like Chris Rock.
- Moby-Dick is so full of life advice on healthy ways to deal with your feelings.
- Strange Minds Think Alike: You shouldn't ask Lorelai if she agrees with Kirk that a dime is a lot. Because she does. It's a 10% increase.
- Surprise Pregnancy: Lorelai warns Rory not to have any of these. Lorelai herself has only had one, and it was Rory's age plus nine months ago.
- Suspiciously Specific Denial: Perceiving that the possibility he and Lorelai will have children gives Luke an edge in the bargaining, Kirk shoots in that he could also bring children into the Twickham house, adding that they might not be his own.
- Themed Party: Sookie's planned babyshower will be Easter themed because those items are on sale now.
- The Talk: Lorelai gives Rory a talking to over the phone about birth control.
- Wacky Cravings: Lorelai recalls that the last time she had a hankering for fruit was when she was pregnant.
