Footnotes to the TV series
Drella is the harpist at the Independence Inn for the first few episodes of the show. She is named after Andy Warhol, oddly enough – he was given the nickname Drella by his friends. The nickname is a combination of Dracula and Cinderella, and perhaps that is meant to be a comment on Drella the harpist: she will go for your throat like Dracula, but sees herself as a poor put-upon servant like Cinderella. There will be many more references to Warhol and his circle during the run of the show.
The inn in Stars Hollow where Lorelai is the executive manager, Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy) is the head chef, and Michel Gerard (Yanic Truesdale) is the concierge. The name suggests the independence that Lorelai found for herself in Stars Hollow through working at the inn.
It is based on The Mayflower Inn (now The Grace Mayflower Inn & Spa) in Washington Depot where Amy Sherman-Palladino stayed during her visit to the town. The real life inn is rather more luxurious than the Independence.
When Joey hits on Rory at Luke’s diner, Lorelai scares him off by telling him that Rory is sixteen. In fact she is fifteen, as her birthday is still around six weeks away. Lorelai must be the only mother in the world to put her teenage daughter’s age up when she is approached by an adult male.
Age in the Gilmore Girls is very fluid, and almost meaningless. Lorelai is in her early thirties, but acts like a teenager, yet was a teenager forced to grow up too fast. Rory is a teenager who acts like she’s in her thirties, and often seems completely at sea with normal teenage activities and customs. Characters’ ages are almost never mentioned, and birthdays are rarely talked about or seen celebrated. The age of Stars Hollow itself is something of a mystery, despite the clearly marked sign in the town square.
Time is one of the major themes of Gilmore Girls, with weeks and seasons clearly marked, and yet age as a concept barely exists, as if cycles of time occur and recur without affecting anyone, or as if the characters and towns exist in a sort of ageless dream-time.
LORELAI (to Luke): Look, Officer Krupke. She’s right at that table, right over there.
Officer Krupke is a character from West Side Story. Originally a 1957 Broadway musical, it was made into a 1961 film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. West Side Story was the #1 film of 1961 and won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture.
In the story, Officer Krupke is a gruff policeman responsible for law and order on his beat. In the film, the role was played by William Bramley.
West Side Story is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, revolving around rival New York gangs. This is perhaps the first tiny hint that star-crossed young lovers will feature heavily in Gilmore Girls.
LORELAI: Wow, you’re crabby.
RORY: I’m sorry. I lost my Macy Gray CD and I need caffeine.
Macy Gray (born Natalie McIntyre in 1967) is an American R&B singer known for her distinctive raspy voice. The CD which Rory has lost is Gray’s debut album On How Life Is, released in 1999. Her best-selling album to date, it was widely praised by critics.
RORY (responding to Lorelai’s offer of cosmetics): God, RuPaul doesn’t need this much makeup.
RuPaul (born RuPaul Charles in 1960) is an American drag queen. In 1993 he found mainstream success with his dance album Supermodel of the World; several of its singles became hits, and two more albums followed in the 1990s. RuPaul was signed as a model with cosmetics company MAC, released his autobiography in 1995, and got his own talk show in 1996.
Author avatars for showrunners Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino, with their own relationship mimicking the high-energy Lorelai (Amy) and the quieter Rory (Daniel). The rapid-fire pop culture laden dialogue between Lorelai and Rory was partly inspired by Amy and Daniel’s own conversations.
In German popular culture the Lorelei is a water spirit which lures men to their doom, inspired by a dangerous rock in the Rhine River (the name literally means “murmuring rock”). It was Heinrich Heine’s 1824 poem Die Lorelei which personified the Lorelei as a beautiful siren, unwittingly distracting sailors so that they came to grief on the rock. The two Lorelais in Gilmore Girls are also alluring but somewhat dangerous. We cannot help but feel Joey makes a lucky escape in the first episode, being thoroughly out of his depth.
JOEY: Yeah, I’ve never been here before. Just, uh, passing through on my way to Hartford.
LORELAI: You’re a regular Jack Kerouac.
Jean-Louis “Jack” Kerouac (1922-1969) was an American novelist and poet, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac’s most famous work is On the Road (1957), based on his travels around America.
JOEY: Yeah, I’ve never been here before. Just, uh, passing through on my way to Hartford.
Hartford is the capital of Connecticut, with a population of around 125 000, making it the third largest city in the state. Founded in 1635, it is one of the oldest cities in the United States, and for many years in its history was one of the wealthiest. These days it is actually one of America’s poorest cities, so its glory days are behind it.
In the show, Hartford was the home of Richard and Emily Gilmore, and the birthplace of both Lorelai and Rory Gilmore. Lorelai attended college part-time in Hartford, while Rory went to private school there. It is one of the most important locations in Gilmore Girls outside Stars Hollow.
The owner of the town’s diner was originally meant to be a woman named Daisy, but the network thought the show needed another male character; there was supposedly a direct gender swap with the same dialogue being used.
In the original pilot, the male owner of the diner was named Duke – as a replacement for Daisy, you can see a Dukes of Hazzard reference. Luke was only meant to be a minor character, but after seeing his chemistry with Lorelai he was promoted to main character.
Luke always wears a baseball cap as reference to Scott Patterson’s former career in baseball. Before he was an actor, Patterson was a professional pitcher in the minor leagues from 1980-86.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 