Nitpicking

[junienmomo]

Rewatched Face/Off from season 3, and while I enjoy Trix's appearances, her meeting of fellow art connoisseurs at Richard and Emily's is a nitpicking feast.

This has got to be the best list of unsung nitpicks since this thread started! Love it!

Moonb, are you channeling Paris in Bracebridge? There are so many non sequiturs here, and many of us just let them slide in favor of the shocking plot that Gran has a sex life.

Thanks, moonb.

[moonb]

Trix herself - who was born in the nineteen teens - dressed like a woman born fifty years earlier. She reminded me of Queen Mary, the present Queen Elizabeth's grandmother, in her fashion choices.

 

I'm beginning to understand how Richard was so attracted to bohemian, window-escaping, buy-me-a-boa Emily. Her Chanel suits are radical in comparison. :)

 

It's hard to imagine Trix as an energetic 50-ish new grandmother when Lorelai was born. She really does belong on Downton Abbey, at least style-wise.

[dustylil]

I'm beginning to understand how Richard was so attracted to bohemian, window-escaping, buy-me-a-boa Emily

 

That and the fact that Emily was dedicated solely to him and his interests. Not service to the community, politics or work - things Trix thought important.

[moonb]

Which reminds me - in So...Good Talk, when Emily is throwing her temper tantrum at Richard in the kitchen about his being the favorite, there is a truly hilarious amount of flowers and fruit arrangements on the counters and behind her. I can buy her arranging lots of flowers for display around the house. Perhaps the fruit is part of that? Do Emily's maids and cook live with her (shudder)? It doesn't seem like that house would have a wing for the help, but there is supposedly a servants' entrance around back.

[AllyB]

I've mentioned this before but I'm up to season 6 on my rewatch and the house remodelling storyline is just driving me crackers. Lorelai's house is not small, it is in fact a pretty big family home. Doing a big renovation job just to make more closet space in her bedroom and to enlarge the fine sized family bathroom we saw in Lorelai Out of Water was ridiculous when the house would surely have 2 more bedrooms upstairs. It's just insane. If the Palladinos wanted the story to be that Lorelai's house is small, they should have chosen small house for the exterior shots. Or else they should have just avoided mentioning the size of the house at all. Obviously it's still a house that she could never afford but it's easy enough to ignore that fact when your attention isn't constantly brought to the fact that everyone in universe thinks it's tiny.

[lulu1960]

Yes. How could a two story house only have one bedroom upstairs? Plus no bathroom downstairs.

[chessiegal]

Well, in the first few episodes there was a bathroom downstairs, but then it disappeared.

[txhorns79]

Yes. How could a two story house only have one bedroom upstairs? Plus no bathroom downstairs.

 

I think there is a downstairs bathroom.  I could swear it was either referenced, or seen at some point. 

[lulu1960]

I think there is a downstairs bathroom.  I could swear it was either referenced, or seen at some point.

 

In That Damn Donna Reed it appeared like Rory went off to the restroom downstairs. But we never saw that happen again. Plus in season 7 they showed a door that ended up being a closet. 

But thinking too hard about it would make your head swim. 

[txhorns79]

In That Damn Donna Reed it appeared like Rory went off to the restroom downstairs. But we never saw that happen again.

Plus in season 7 they showed a door that ended up being a closet.

 

LOL.  Now I am thinking that throughout the series Rory is using a closet as her personal bathroom, and we can expect some kind of horrific reveal in the revival series.  It certainly makes Rory seem more interesting! 

[JayInChicago]

Hahahhahahahahaha oh noooooo

[junienmomo]

Didn't drunk Rory cry over Logan in the downstairs bathroom? 

 

I suspect the real reason Lorelai could afford the house wasn't that it was in a miserable run-down condition, but because it's really a changeling house. It has spontaneous and mysterious room layout and function changes, expanding and contracting with plot points.

Everyone in Stars Hollow knew this, and banded together to make sure Lorelai got the house. Even Luke, who must be the fairy (not in a sexual orientation way) who stole the house so that the Gilmores would have a place to live.

 

Hey, give me a break. It's nearly as plausible as some of the other plot lines in the show. ;) 

Edited April 25, 2016 by junienmomo

[readster]

They never revealed when the Crapshack was actually built. My wife grew up in a house built in the mid 70s that had 4 bedrooms and only one upstairs bathroom for the entire house. Yet their previous house before that had two bathrooms (one up and one down) and only three bedrooms built in the 60s. My wife and I went through a house built less than 10 years ago that had two bathrooms upstairs with three bedrooms, but had no living room and only a kitchen/dinning room and a hall closet and it was a 2 story house. So, can I believe that Lorelai bought a house that wasn't practical in design? Sure. However, the way it kept switching for over 7 seasons on how it worked. They acted like it was the Room of Requirement from Harry Potter can could do whatever you wanted it to do if you needed it. So, a back entrance to a front porch. Why not? I do believe that shows need to have floor plans of how a fictional residence works because other wise it constantly changes and people go: "Wait!" "How is that suppose to work?" Kind of like Grey's Anatomy, the surgical, OBGYN and Trauma departments have been unchanged for 12 years. Yet the entire hospital has room, department and extremely weird security that changes episode to episode. Same happened on Dr. Ken and Last Man Standing recently. Their houses don't make sense outside the living room, basement and kitchen. It changes with whatever the story plot is for the episode. 

Edited April 25, 2016 by readster

[Kohola3]

Bracebridge was on the other day and I never caught it before but when the guests are arriving, Luke takes his coat off and hands it to the doorman twice.  Now I will never be able to unsee that.  Oh, well, no biggie.

[lulu1960]

Bracebridge was on the other day and I never caught it before but when the guests are arriving, Luke takes his coat off and hands it to the doorman twice.  Now I will never be able to unsee that.  Oh, well, no biggie.

 

I think at the end he puts it on twice too. I always chuckle when I see that.

[lulu1960]

In Lorelai Out of Water, Rory goes upstairs and finds Jayne Mansfield the fish in the tub. http://www.homeofthenutty.com/gilmoregirls/screencaps/displayimage.php?album=144&pid=170775#top_display_media

 

 

In To Live and Let Diorama. Rory drunk on the floor.  http://www.homeofthenutty.com/gilmoregirls/screencaps/displayimage.php?album=62&pid=73399#top_display_media

 

Looks like same tile and curtains to me.

Edited April 25, 2016 by lulu1960

[junienmomo]

In Lorelai Out of Water, Rory goes upstairs and finds Jayne Mansfield the fish in the tub. http://www.homeofthenutty.com/gilmoregirls/screencaps/displayimage.php?album=144&pid=170775#top_display_media

 

 

In To Live and Let Diorama. Rory drunk on the floor.  http://www.homeofthenutty.com/gilmoregirls/screencaps/displayimage.php?album=62&pid=73399#top_display_media

 

Looks like same tile and curtains to me.

 

Yep, but when I put myself in the position of looking in the Jayne Mansfield doorway, there's a sink. In the Live and Let Diorama, it's the toilet we see. I don't think Lorelai's butt is big enough to hide the toilet, and there's no room for the sink next to the toilet in the other pic. 

That logic, of course, has no bearing on the intentions of the writers. Sigh.

[txhorns79]

Yep, but when I put myself in the position of looking in the Jayne Mansfield doorway, there's a sink. In the Live and Let Diorama, it's the toilet we see. I don't think Lorelai's butt is big enough to hide the toilet, and there's no room for the sink next to the toilet in the other pic.

 

I think the obvious solution is that the bathtub is the toilet! 

[Taryn74]

Didn't drunk Rory cry over Logan in the downstairs bathroom? 

 

I suspect the real reason Lorelai could afford the house wasn't that it was in a miserable run-down condition, but because it's really a changeling house. It has spontaneous and mysterious room layout and function changes, expanding and contracting with plot points.

Everyone in Stars Hollow knew this, and banded together to make sure Lorelai got the house. Even Luke, who must be the fairy (not in a sexual orientation way) who stole the house so that the Gilmores would have a place to live.

 

Hey, give me a break. It's nearly as plausible as some of the other plot lines in the show. ;) 

 

Ha!  Nailed it.

 

In LaWaS, Rory specifically asked if Max used "her" bathroom, because she had stuff hanging in there - I'm going to assume underwear.  I remember it because that's the first thing that would pop into my mind too.  Heh.

[hippielamb]

I have major nitpicks with Lorelai's house. The problem is the exterior of the house doesn't match how big it is inside. Only one bedroom and bath on the first floor seems crazy. Also how strange that everytime a guest wants to use the bathroom they have to go upstairs. I do love the changeling house idea, seems to make the most logical sense.

[AllyB]

There is a bathroom upstairs. I remember at one stage Lorelai saying that her bedroom and the good bathroom were upstairs. Implying that there is another bathroom downstairs but that it's not as big or nice. Maybe a shower-room rather than bathroom. It just drives me nuts. I could ignore it as just one of those lazy set design things if the tininess of her house it wasn't a repeated plot point.

 

Tbh, I don't even think the Dragonfly exterior looks that different in size to Lorelai's house. And that has at least 7 bedrooms and bathrooms upstairs.

[nolieblue]

The layout of the house is wonky. If you're standing on the porch, the kitchen is on the left and the living on the right, but in Secrets and Loans, Lorelai twice goes out the side door of the kitchen to the porch but comes to the front around the living room side of the house. It would have to be a wraparound porch for that to happen but she would have to go all the way around the house instead of out the front door. Drives me crazy every time.

[chessiegal]

I think a lot of the wonkiness of the house had to do with the outside shots being of a structure, and the inside shots being on a sound/set stage. Same with The Dragonfly.

[junienmomo]

I have to reinforce the changeling house theory by disproving my own claim. When Rory comes out of the bathroom where she slept in eppy 5.19, the best screenshot shows that she probably came from the upstairs bathroom, and not from the magical closet/bathroom/Path to Sookie's house.

[lulu1960]

Quote

 and not from the magical closet/bathroom/Path to Sookie's house.

That tickled my funny bone

[clack]

Just how rich are Richard and Emily? One episode Richard has to put up his pension in order to fund his and Jason's new firm, another episode he's talking about donating the money for a new Yale building in Rory's honor -- a donation that would run into the tens of millions.

I also seem to remember talk of Richard and Emily donating money for entire hospital wings, and also donating art to museums. Again, we're talking tens of millions. And yet Richard is only an insurance VP, a position that pays at most $200,000 per year. I forget, was he also a junior partner?

I get that Richard comes from old money. How much did he inherit? At times it seems to be a very large fortune, in the hundreds of millions. But then why is he still content to be a junior executive answering to a boss?

[Kohola3]

They all attended the GG School of Finance. where two people eat every meal out but apparently have not a dime in savings for any emergency nor a credit rating high enough to get a loan under any circumstances.  

Although maybe their patronage is why Luke seems to have unlimited access to large sums of money - enough to buy entire buildings on a whim and hand his friend a check for 30 thou without blinking.  Let's see, 2 or 3 meals a day for two people over X numbers of years comes to.....

[junienmomo]

34 minutes ago, Kohola3 said:

They all attended the GG School of Finance. where two people eat every meal out but apparently have not a dime in savings for any emergency nor a credit rating high enough to get a loan under any circumstances.  

Although maybe their patronage is why Luke seems to have unlimited access to large sums of money - enough to buy entire buildings on a whim and hand his friend a check for 30 thou without blinking.  Let's see, 2 or 3 meals a day for two people over X numbers of years comes to.....

Don't forget the money he spent on first, repairs to the Crap Shack that never seemed to be completely repaired (can we say planned obsolescence? heehee), and second, the actual renovation costs for the house in Season 6. 

[clack]

Don't know why ASP couldn't have made Richard chief shareholder and CEO. An insurance company VP? Has the social cachet of a dentist ( and makes less money than a dentist).

And don't get me started on Lorelai and Rory dining out. Lorelai manages an inn, an inn which serves 3 meals a day, and her best friend is the chef. She can't eat for free at the inn? Why does she eat breakfast every day at Luke's? (Not to mention dinner).

It's like ASP and DP, when setting up GG, spent 10 minutes top in brainstorming the mechanics of how these characters function financially. "Lorelai comes from wealth, parents live within driving distance. What industries are native to Connecticut? Insurance! Let's make her father an insurance company VP. Next!"

[solotrek]

What got me is the episode when Lorelai gets a danish on danish day but Rory gets the coffee so Lorelai tries to bribe a kid to go to Luke's and get her coffee. She has a coffee maker at home and she has been seen to drink the inns coffee. Zero sense.

 

Didn't ASP choose insurance for Richard because she read somewhere that Hartford (or Connecticut ) had a large insurance industry? That was the only reason for that choice.I don't quite know how that qualifies him to be a professor at Yale, but whatever.

[dustylil]

14 minutes ago, solotrek said:

I don't quite know how that qualifies him to be a professor at Yale, but whatever.

 In economics no less, not business. And with just an undergraduate degree.

 

2 hours ago, junienmomo said:

Don't forget the money he spent on first, repairs to the Crap Shack that never seemed to be completely repaired (can we say planned obsolescence? heehee), and second, the actual renovation costs for the house in Season 6

Not to forget that necklace for Lorelai on Valentine's Day in Season 6. That didn't come out of a box of Crackerjack.

[Kohola3]

His burgers must have cost as much as Kobe beef.  Of course, Fifteen Thousand Jobs Kirk could afford them but not sure about the rest of the town.

[clack]

Now, Luke's finances did make sense to me. He lived in the diner, ate in the diner, had zero expenses, lives like a miser. Putting away $30,000 or so in the bank for 15 years, I can see him having plenty of surplus cash.

[txhorns79]

Quote

That was the only reason for that choice.I don't quite know how that qualifies him to be a professor at Yale, but whatever.

I'll say that I've had adjuncts for specialized classes whose main experience was through their work, rather than academia.  It's not like you have to have a graduate degree to teach a class, even at a high ranking school. 

Quote

Although maybe their patronage is why Luke seems to have unlimited access to large sums of money - enough to buy entire buildings on a whim and hand his friend a check for 30 thou without blinking.  Let's see, 2 or 3 meals a day for two people over X numbers of years comes to.....

Ha!  I'd love the idea of Lorelai having unwittingly financed her own safety net. 

Edited May 14, 2016 by txhorns79

[solotrek]

5 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

I'll say that I've had adjuncts for specialized classes whose main experience was through their work, rather than academia.  It's not like you have to have a graduate degree to teach a class, even at a high ranking school. 

Yeah, I've seen that for classes, seminars, or colloquiums specific to their work experience. But Richard was teaching what seems to be intro to economics, not quite something I'd bring someone like him in to teach.

[txhorns79]

Quote

Yeah, I've seen that for classes, seminars, or colloquiums specific to their work experience. But Richard was teaching what seems to be intro to economics, not quite something I'd bring someone like him in to teach.

True.  I think he called himself a "visiting lecturer," so there is some leeway.  I'm sure in reality, he would not be teaching it, and more obviously, even if he was, his granddaughter would not be his student.     

[junienmomo]

10 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

I'll say that I've had adjuncts for specialized classes whose main experience was through their work, rather than academia.  It's not like you have to have a graduate degree to teach a class, even at a high ranking school. 

Ha!  I'd love the idea of Lorelai having unwittingly financed her own safety net. 

Yep! Six years at ten bucks a day - $20,000. 

LOL.

[AllyB]

On 14/5/2016 at 8:09 PM, clack said:

Now, Luke's finances did make sense to me. He lived in the diner, ate in the diner, had zero expenses, lives like a miser. Putting away $30,000 or so in the bank for 15 years, I can see him having plenty of surplus cash.

Absolutely. Luke had almost no personal outgoings. He would have been drawing a salary from the diner and also sole owner of all profits. It made sense that he had a low 6 figure sum saved up by the time we met him.

[txhorns79]

Quote

Absolutely. Luke had almost no personal outgoings. He would have been drawing a salary from the diner and also sole owner of all profits. It made sense that he had a low 6 figure sum saved up by the time we met him.

I have never run a diner, but my understanding is that they are not hugely profitable businesses.  That isn't to say that Luke wouldn't be able to save a huge amount of money, essentially living like a hermit, just that his sources of income would be limited. 

[dustylil]

On ‎2016‎-‎05‎-‎14 at 3:09 PM, clack said:

Now, Luke's finances did makes sense to me. He lived in the diner, ate in the diner, had zero expenses, lives like a miser. Putting away $30,000 or so in the bank for 15 years, I can see him having plenty of surplus cash.

3 hours ago, AllyB said:

Absolutely. Luke had almost no personal outgoings. He would have been drawing a salary from the diner and also sole owner of all profits. It made sense that he had a low 6 figure sum saved up by the time we met him.

 

I agree completely. To say nothing of the fact that he and Liz  had probably inherited the family home and the building where the hardware store - and later the diner - were located. And even if he made a relative pittance at the diner, he would likely  be plenty flush, given his frugal and anti-consumerism nature.

However, by the second season he was beginning to spend  money at a good clip.  It was that change in habit and those substantial outlays that gave me pause. The nearby building he bought on a whim - Luke a whim? The abortive purchase of the Twickenham house. The renovations to Lorelai's home. The Valentine necklace. I will draw a veil over the multitude of monogrammed and unicorned items for Rory :)

[AllyB]

9 hours ago, txhorns79 said:

I have never run a diner, but my understanding is that they are not hugely profitable businesses.  That isn't to say that Luke wouldn't be able to save a huge amount of money, essentially living like a hermit, just that his sources of income would be limited. 

As a start up a diner won't be hugely profitable but Luke inherited the building so wouldn't have been paying rent/mortgage repayments making it much easier for his diner to be profitable, maybe $20-30K a year. He would have had his own salary paid to himself, which while not a huge amount of money, would be more than enough for a man with almost no personal outlay to save a significant amount each year. (When you have no housing and commuting costs, and no expensive habits/hobbies it's really easy to quietly accumulate a tidy amount in your bank account.) So that with added diner profits would amount to the kind of money we saw Luke having access to.

[2Old2BAFangirl]

Forgive me if this has already been mentioned,but my nitpick with Lorelai's house is where the laundry is done.  

They show Rory walking out the back door of the kitchen with her laundry when she comes home from Yale.  She pokes her head back in to yell at Lorelai for washing a sock.  Where exactly is the washer and dryer?  We've seen them go out that kitchen door plenty of times, they store the bottled water out there for Dean to bring in.  Jess goes out that door with his stolen beer and Lorelai walks out there to lecture him.

So, where's the dang laundry?! :)

[chessiegal]

Once again the Southern California writing mentality intrudes - where it's warm enough to keep a washer/dryer on the porch (that we never see), but you couldn't do it in CT where you have freezing temperatures. Same thing with them referring to an Interstate as "the 95" - only happens in California. In the east it would be "95" or "I-95".

[cantbeflapped]

Maybe the laundry machines are in the detached garage?  Not sure if that's doable in cold climates. 

[txhorns79]

Quote

Once again the Southern California writing mentality intrudes - where it's warm enough to keep a washer/dryer on the porch (that we never see), but you couldn't do it in CT where you have freezing temperatures. Same thing with them referring to an Interstate as "the 95" - only happens in California. In the east it would be "95" or "I-95".

I think it's more that the writers simply didn't give the idea of the washing machine much thought beyond the scene it was mentioned.  I mean, they are aware of winter, since the show set several episodes during the winter months each season.   

[Guest]

On 5/14/2016 at 11:18 AM, clack said:

Just how rich are Richard and Emily? One episode Richard has to put up his pension in order to fund his and Jason's new firm, another episode he's talking about donating the money for a new Yale building in Rory's honor -- a donation that would run into the tens of millions.

I also seem to remember talk of Richard and Emily donating money for entire hospital wings, and also donating art to museums. Again, we're talking tens of millions. And yet Richard is only an insurance VP, a position that pays at most $200,000 per year. I forget, was he also a junior partner?

I get that Richard comes from old money. How much did he inherit? At times it seems to be a very large fortune, in the hundreds of millions. But then why is he still content to be a junior executive answering to a boss?

The Gilmore fortune will give you a headache if you try to figure it out. Just nod and smile.

SOME of it could be explained that Trix held most of the wealth and Richard put up his pension prior to her death, but there is still far too many mental gymnastics moves needed for any of it to make anything resembling sense.  The concern about healthcare when he initially retired yet the ability to write a check for Yale tuition without a second thought.  Only flying to Europe at certain times of year due to cost but making donations to get parking spaces at Chilton.  Donating enough to Yale to name a building after your granddaughter but still working as a junior executive.

On 5/14/2016 at 2:19 PM, dustylil said:

Not to forget that necklace for Lorelai on Valentine's Day in Season 6. That didn't come out of a box of Crackerjack.

We never saw an indication that he repaid Logan for that, did we?

[dustylil]

5 hours ago, chessiegal said:

where it's warm enough to keep a washer/dryer on the porch (that we never see), but you couldn't do it in CT where you have freezing temperatures

Not necessarily, I had relatives in small towns in southern Ontario who had washers and dryers on unheated porches just off their kitchens well into the nineteen eighties. It was fairly common.

[Guest]

In Emily in Wonderland, Rory takes Emily around town, notably to Kim's Antiques, on a Saturday. In It Should Have Been Lorelai, Mrs. Kim says the store is open Sunday through Friday.

[hippielamb]

The washer/dryer on the porch has always bugged me. Anyone who has ever lived in a northern climate knows your pipes will freeze. As I recall, on the show Roseanne, they had a similar set-up and I found it just as implausible. 

[hippielamb]

7 hours ago, dustylil said:

Not necessarily, I had relatives in small towns in southern Ontario who had washers and dryers on unheated porches just off their kitchens well into the nineteen eighties. It was fairly common.

Really? I am also in Ontario and can't imagine it. Maybe Lorelai has some great insulation on that porch lol