S1. Episode 11: Paris is Burning

'Tis the Seal Despair–/An imperial affliction

Max Medina recites Emily Dickinson’s “There’s a Certain Slant of Light” as he strolls the classroom, clearly full of unearned self-assurance, and it fills me with rage. You do not look cool. Max, in the words of our fave, you are the damn seal of despair and imperial affliction. I am sure you’re all tired of me complaining about Mr. Medina by now, but unfortunately he doesn’t fully disappear for a while so you may need to get comfortable. Here are the reasons, in this episode alone, that Max Medina is a walking red flag:

1. He inexplicably lies about where he learned to make Osso Buco. Not only does he lie, but he makes up an elaborate tale about an old Italian woman teaching him. Like, say a friend taught you and leave it at that.

2. He insists on Rory calling him Max instead of Mr. Medina. I don’t know, just something about a grown adult man telling a teenage girl to call him by his first name makes me shiver in disgust.

3. He stops Rory at school, in the hallway, after class and inquires after her mother. Leave this child out of your sordid affairs!

4. During his Parents’ Night presentation, he makes an announcement that he normally would pull out his copy of Proust’s Swann’s Way to read a passage and impress the crowd, but his book is missing! This serves as a kind of pointed callout of Lorelai, in which she is supposed to feel ashamed. It’s also unnecessarily public—like, I realize only Lorelai knows she’s being called out, but come on. And, be for fucken real. You do not need your specific copy of Proust to read a damn passage from the book if that’s what you wanted to do for Parents’ Night.

5. Afterwards, Lorelai tries to break up with him. He ignores her attempt to break up, then closes in on her and they make out. Again, they are in school. In his classroom! The place where he teaches children! He closes the door, but it literally has a window in it, so of course any person walking by could see. Beyond being incredibly unprofessional and lightly predatory, I have to question his intelligence.

6. At the end of the episode, he has the gall to break up with Lorelai after she’s like “Sorry, I freaked out and shouldn’t have tried to break up.” Did you just not want to be dumped, sir? This is wild, unrestrained man child behavior.

I realize my bias is allowing me to fixate on Max Medina, so I’ll prove I’m completely, 100% objective by also dunking on Lorelai. It’s fine if you want to break up with Max Medina—in fact, it’s more than fine—but trying to push the copy of Swann’s Way on your daughter to return to her teacher who you’re dating so that you can avoid breaking up with him yourself? Horrifying. Even worse that Lorelai balked at the idea of Max involving Rory by asking her if she’s coming to Parents’ Night. Um, pot, have you met kettle? You know what, maybe these two deserve each other.

Of course, what we’re supposed to learn from this conflict is that Lorelai has commitment issues. The source of these commitment issues is still up for debate. Her baby daddy, Christopher, could certainly be the cause, as the flighty, unreliable boy she will always love but knows she shouldn’t be with. Maybe she can’t trust men because they’re all probably gonna be like Chris. But, this reason partially doesn’t make sense, as Lorelai was the one who insisted they not be together in the first place. She wasn’t abandoned by him, really, until after she pushed him away. Where did this inclination to push intimate partners away come from in the first place? Maybe the reason is just that she’s a stereotype: the very good looking woman in her 30s who has dating shenanigans and mostly picks other stuff over romance. But, also, this doesn’t wholly fit because the stuff these women normally pick over love is career. I wouldn’t say Lorelai is necessarily a careerist. Sure, she cares about her job because it has given her a sense of control and accomplishment, but she has not prioritized career above all else. Or, maybe the reason is that her parents are married WASPs and she is afraid to end up like them…or she unconsciously rebels by creating a reality opposite of the image of her parents. I mean, I’m using “opposite” broadly here, because I think despite Lorelai’s best efforts, she is still very clearly a New England WASP.

Lorelai should count herself lucky. Richard and Emily’s marriage could’ve gone the way of Paris’s parents! Public, messy divorce in the papers! They explain that her father is the head of a pharmeceutical company, and that’s why their divorce is in the papers, but to be honest, I’ve literally never read about a pharmaceutical executive’s divorce in the papers. He’s still a private citizen! Are they allowed to publish that stuff in the papers? If they do so anyway with no regard to privacy laws, I can definitely see why Paris is distressed and why she would lash out by spreading word of Mr. Medina’s scandalous conduct. Rory is upset by Paris’s gossipmongering, understandably, but I gotta say, putting the burden of secret-keeping responsibility on Paris is pretty unfair. I’d say the onus is mostly on Max Medina, as an employee of the school, to not eat face with his student’s parent. And, a large portion of responsibility falls upon Lorelai, too, to not stick her tongue down her daughter’s teacher’s throat on school premises. It’s the bare minimum, really.

The episode, surprisingly, is called “Paris is Burning,” even though I’d argue Paris is not the central storyline. When I tried to look up what this episode title references, I could find no definitive answers. Its etymology can be traced to WWII, when Hitler allegedly asks one of his guys, “Is Paris burning?” (“Brennt Paris?”) in August 1944 as the city fell to Allied forces. There have been a number of books and movies titled after this saying, none of which I’ve seen or read, but I cannot figure out in what instance someone would use this apparently idiomatic phrase. Is this the title of the episode because Paris, the character, is at some kind of turning point in the season? Like, she has to have a traumatizing family situation in order to burn down her current self and become… idk, a less terrible classmate? It’s a stretch, I’ll admit.

The other major search hit I got for this phrase is a documentary from the early 90s which, from my very light review, I gathered is THE preemiment (and the first? unsure, but I wouldn’t be surprised) film about drag, ballroom, and voguing. I read an 1993 NYTimes article from their archive about the documentary, and then a 2020 article from Hyperallergenic about the movie’s reissuing on Criterion Collection, and I feel both wary of its contents and irrepressibly curious. I feel sure this documentary is exploitative of its subjects, but it must also be subversive, as the very act of documenting impoverished queer people of color and immortalizing their subculture is in a way imbuing them with power. However, if this documentary is the reference Gilmore Girls is making with this episode title, I give up on trying to make sense of it.