Pete Campbell’s Proposal To Rory Gilmore: A Script
This morning's engagement news smashed Stars Hollow and Madison Avenue together in one fell swoop, brazenly tearing down the fourth wall in the process. Here's what went down, we guess.
Alexis Bledel and Vincent Kartheiser just got engaged. They met on the set of Mad Men, as Pete Campbell and Beth Dawes – but she’ll always be Rory Gilmore to us.
—
INT. DINING ROOM — EVENING
Pete Campbell sits facing Rory Gilmore. Table is set, with a platter of Twinkies at centre. Rory is checking her phone.
PETE:
Now honey, I specified that you prepare your favourite food for us to eat tonight, so my guess is you’ve realised that I’ve something important to ask you.
RORY:
Well, technically you can’t prepare Twinkies, or rather you can, but it’s more a case of unwrapping a pre-packaged thing than any actual preparation. You prepare for the S.A.Ts, you prepare for the birth of a child. Popcorn: popcorn requires some preparation, you have to read the microwave instructions and you have to wait in the kitchen, because if you leave them too long, they burn and nobody likes burnt popcorn–even while watching Schindler’s List where you feel you should suffer a bit, too–but if you take them out too early, you get all the hard bits down the bottom of the bowl that you accidentally eat and that crack your teeth and… Sorry, I’m rambling again.
Pause.
PETE:
What’s a microwave?
RORY:
We’re from such different worlds, Pete! It’s a good thing I grew up on television and novels, which taught me that opposites attracts and about star-crossed lovers, even though I never really understood the reference. I also learnt that Rosie O’Donnell plays a really bad retarded person. I mean, it’s borderline offensive. Can you say retarded without-
PETE:
(Frustrated, slams table)
Hell’s bells, Rory! You don’t give me a minute to speak! I am trying to propose to you, in spite of your overbearing mother, and your non-child-bearing hips, and this silly dream of finishing your degree at Harvard and writing fanciful stories for the paper. You continue to talk about silly nonsense while I am trying to present you with this ring that cost me three weeks worth of wages, not including overtime. So, Rory Gilmore: despite your obvious deficiencies and tendency to be wayward and fickle, will you marry me?
—
Nathan Jolly is the Editor of The Music Network, Australia’s number one music industry magazine/embedder of that video where Bieber raps.