Gilmore Girls Season One, Episode Four: The Deer-Hunters
Rory is shocked when she gets a D on an English paper. Paris and her minions make fun of her because they’re a bunch of bitches. Then Tristin acts like a jackass and makes Rory’s day even worse.
Lorelai is late to a parent-teacher meeting. All the other parents are really snobby about it and figure Rory must be a scholarship student. Lorelai flirts with Rory’s English teacher, Max Medina, and he tells her about Rory’s D, because of course Rory didn’t tell Lorelai about it herself. Ugh, the lack of communication between these two is incredible. Rory tells Lorelai she was too embarrassed to tell her about her bad grade, and she says she’s afraid she isn’t going to make it at Chilton. She has a test coming up that’s worth twenty percent of her grade, so Lorelai helps her study.
The night before the test, Rory stays up all night studying. She and Lorelai fall asleep at the kitchen table and oversleep the next morning. Rory takes Lorelai’s Jeep and starts driving to school, but when she stops at a stop sign, a deer suddenly runs into the Jeep. She tries to find it and make sure it’s okay, so then she’s late to school and Max won’t let her take the test. Rory gets epically pissed and goes off on everyone, asking Paris what the hell her problem is and screaming at Tristin that her name is Rory, not Mary. Lorelai gets called to school and she is livid about Rory not being able to take the test. She throws her own tantrum and Headmaster Charleston tells her another outburst from either Gilmore won’t be tolerated. In the end, Max is able to convince Charleston to let Rory do some extra credit work to make up for missing the test.
A food critic does a review of the inn and Sookie is upset when he calls her magic risotto “fine.” She eventually figures out the guy had the wrong wine with it, and she actually goes to his house with a plate of risotto and a glass of wine.
Lorelai: You once told me you loved Saved by the Bell. What could be more humiliating than that?
Notes: Rory is driving in this episode and it’s been mentioned that she’s sixteen years old on numerous occasions, but her sixteenth birthday doesn’t occur until the sixth episode.
All images in this post are from http://www.leavemethewhite.com/starshollow
Categories: Season 1Posted on November 25, 2009
I love that you are doing this.
I am watching each episode as you recap.
It always annoyed me that when Rory gets a bad grade, it is never because of her work. it’s always the teacher’s fault. Rory is just wonderful and the smartest person in the world of course.
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Shannon Reply:
November 25th, 2009 at 11:20 pm
Oh, I thought her bad grade was just due to her not having adjusted yet to Chilton. I may have misinterpreted that, though.
How fun that you’re watching the episodes as I recap them. I hope one episode every weekday except for holidays is going to be enough to sustain you!
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Wendy Reply:
November 26th, 2009 at 5:16 pm
You were right, it was because of the not having adjusted. But shetakes it all so to heart and it always annoyed me.
One episodea day is plenty. My three year old daughter watches with me. She sings along to the theme song.
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Shannon Reply:
November 27th, 2009 at 12:04 am
Oh, that’s so cute that she sings along!
I get a little annoyed with Rory’s freakouts about school, too. I was always a pretty good student, but I sure didn’t lose my mind over the occasional bad grade. I guess that’s why I never got to go to Harvard or Yale, ha.
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I loved Rory’s outburst. Especially the “ITS RORY!”
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Shannon Reply:
November 25th, 2009 at 11:22 pm
I also love her outburst, especially, “And just what the hell is your problem?” to Paris.
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Rory’s hissy fit is absolutely, without a doubt, my favourite Rory moment of all time. My favourite line: “Why so silent, Quippy?”
Also, I love how she got hit BY a deer, not the other way around.
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Shannon Reply:
November 25th, 2009 at 11:24 pm
Ha, that was a good line.
That poor deer. It must have been pretty confused.
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I like this episode a lot except for the whole Shakespeare test thing. I would think that a test on Shakespeare in high school (especially a school like Chilton) would involve essays and analyzing, not random trivia like the year Shakespeare was born. That always kind of bothered me.
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I think I remember this one from way back in the day. I remember thinking the whole Mary thing was super odd. And is it just me or is the fact that Tristin’s name is Tristin not Tristan super odd? I know that’s how it’s spelled on the show, but I’m so used to Tristan!
Also, I agree, ali. Though when I was in AP English language, our first test was a really random test about the Scarlet Letter including crap like, “What season was it in the opening scene of the novel?” Most everyone did poorly and my mom theorized that the point of that test was to put the fear of god into us because this was AP ENGLISH, not REGULAR ENGLISH.
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Shannon Reply:
December 1st, 2009 at 10:12 am
I absolutely hate that his name is spelled that way. I don’t know why, but it really annoys me.
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Where did you get that spelling? I always thought it was Tristan and the WB site (official, I think) spells it Tristan. I know it’s Tristin on IMDb but that isn’t official. Wikipedia has both (just for the record!)
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ali Reply:
December 1st, 2009 at 1:39 pm
Oops, cut myself off a bit. Meant to say, I know it’s Tristin in the credits (I never looked that closely before!) but it is listed different ways in different places. I’ve officially spent way too much time thinking about this… but I think Tristin looks wrong.
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Shannon Reply:
December 1st, 2009 at 4:54 pm
I’m using the credits for all name spellings. I figure it’s the most consistent way to go.
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Rory’s little tirade was the shiz. I loved Paris being put in her place, and her getting hit by a deer.
But Sookie and the food critic had to be the best part, lol.
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