Season 6, episode 7
Twenty-One Is The Loneliest Number
Richard asks for Lorelai's help to get Rory back to Yale. He suggests blackmail and bribes. She rejects both ideas. Halloween is coming up, but about three weeks before that there's Rory's birthday. In between there's Rory's birthday party.
Maid of the week: Mai-mai.
Tropes
- Arc Number: The theme of Rory's long-planned twenty-first birthday was going to be the number twenty-one. She and Lorelai were going to play 21 and buy 21 things with the winnings, and do something involving 21 guys that wouldn't really be appropriate now that they're in exclusive relationships.
- Ask a Stupid Question...: Zach to Logan: "So, you're like rich, huh?"
- Big Eater: When sampling cakes for her birthday, Rory starts eating the whole cake.
- Call-Back: Rory dreams a reenactment of the scene from Rory's sixteenth birthday, with Madeline Albright as Lorelai.
- Captain Obvious: The pastor informs Rory that she can't "re-gift" her virginity.
- Central Theme: Pre-marital sex.
- Continuity Snarl: Rory says she already gave her "virtue" to Logan. Rory did not give her "gift" (of virginity) to Logan, but to Dean.
- Dramatically Missing the Point:
- Lorelai gets invited to Rory's birthday party, but assumes it's just her parents trying to manipulate her.
- Emily and Richard believe Rory is still a virgin. Rory herself takes a while to understand what the pastor is talking about.
- Embarrassing Nickname: Impossible Girl. Lorelai wears it proudly.
- Gallows Humor: Babette and Morey set up a real gallows to hang Morey for the entertainment of kids at Halloween.
- Halloween Episode: Subverted. There are Halloween preparations though the episode takes place in the first half of October.
- Hypocrite: Lorelai's parents when they double-cross her, then get mad when she won't help them undo the double-cross.
- Idiot Ball: Emily feels like all her maids get handed this the moment they take the job.
- Irony:
- The drink they named for Rory is sickeningly sweet.
- As Paris and Doyle keep saying: last year she was sleeping with the editor of the Yale Daily News, and this year he is.
- Metaphorgotten: Rory figures her "gift ship" sailed so long ago it's probably in Fiji.
- Passive-Aggressive Kombat:
- Lorelai has been doing this to Rory for weeks.
- Emily turns the poolhouse into a storage unit to prevent Rory and Logan from having sex there. She has a list of things she can do to keep Rory out of the poolhouse.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Subverted, as Luke thinks Rory's drink is too pink and sweet, but no one is asking Luke to wear his drink.Emily: No one is asking you to wear it, it's not a skirt.
- Refuge in Audacity: Richard can't believe how little Lorelai cares about what he has to say.Richard Aren't you listening to a word I say?
Loreali: No. - Running Joke:
- People still get worried when they learn that Lorelai got a dog.
- Luke keeps asking what a "DAR" is and people keep thinking he's joking.
- Shout-Out:
- Rory plans tea parties like she's the Mad Hatter and Richard finds it disturbing.
- Madeline Albright visits Rory in a dream.
- Rory once again wonders if The Waltons ever celebrated a birthday by discussing the relevant mother's birth experience.
- Lorelai tries to be scary by saying that Girl, Interrupted is her idea of a feel-good movie.
- Pia Zadora making a come-back is the standard of probability to measure Luke's chances of participating in a horror show against.
- Richard is reading a biography of Winston Churchill.
- It seems to Sookie like it was just yesterday that Rory cried because Charlotte Brontë couldn't come to her sleepover.
- Rory counts the people left in the room when her grandparents go iron their dog by saying "…and then there were two".
- Rory figures the pastor would enjoy The 40-Year-Old Virgin.
- The rory drink tastes like liquefied My Little Pony
- Lorelai argues that martinis are a better fit for martini glasses than a rory, as the Rat Pack and James Bond drank martinis.
- Lorelai jokes that she and John O'Hurley are having construction work done at her house.
- Tastes Like Purple: The drink named The Rory tastes pink.
- Teen Pregnancy: Though Rory is twenty-one, Emily considers this the measuring stick of whether she's a lost cause.
- Too Much Information: Paris and Doyle's bit about sleeping with the editor.
