VCR

LORELAI: Well there’s no messages on the machine, Mom.
EMILY: I don’t leave messages. If I wanted to talk to a machine I’d talk to my VCR.

A VCR is a video cassette recorder, a device which records analog audio and video from television onto a magnetic tape cassette. First sold in the mid-1970s, they boomed during the 1980s and ’90s. At this time videos were widely available for sale or rental, and blank cassette tapes were sold so people could record TV shows. They declined after the release of DVDs in the 2000s.

Big Dipper

MOREY: Let’s stay outside a while, baby. Look for the Big Dipper.
BABETTE: OK, I’d like that.

The mostly North American term for the seven brightest stars of Ursa Major (the northern hemisphere constellation of the Great Bear). In Britain these stars are traditionally known as The Plough.

Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton

LORELAI: You can’t always control who you’re attracted to, you know. I think the whole Angelina Jolie-Billy Bob Thornton thing really proves that.

Hollywood actors Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton married in May 2000 after a brief courtship. Their marriage was often in the gossip pages, due to their frequent public gestures of love for each other, including reportedly wearing vials of each other’s blood around their necks (Thornton later explained they were actually lockets containing a single drop of blood). They suddenly separated in 2002, and divorced in 2003.

Iran-Contra

LORELAI: I kept information from you … Information that would have come out eventually. Like the Iran-Contra scandal.
RORY: So you’re Oliver North.
LORELAI: No, I’m Fawn Hall.
RORY: Mom.
LORELAI: Well, she was much prettier.

The Iran-Contra affair was a political scandal in the United States which took place during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. They planned to fund the Contras in Nicaragua through the arms sale, while at the same time negotiating the release of several US hostages held in Lebanon.

Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North [pictured] devised the scheme to fund the Contras, and was convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal in the late 1980s; however all charges against him were dismissed in 1991. Fawn Hall was North’s secretary who testified against him in court and was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony.

Truly, Truly

This song plays during the scene when Dean apologises to Rory for annoying her, and she tells him that she is interested in him, before running off. It was a single from the 1998 album Jubilee by American rock band Grant Lee Buffalo, and reached #11 on the alternative music charts. The song was written by Grant-Lee Phillips, who went on to have a solo career, and played the town troubadour in Gilmore Girls. He isn’t related to Sam Phillips, who wrote the score for the show.

I Thought About You

This is the song that Morey plays on the piano at the wake, identifying it as “Cinnamon’s song”. It’s a 1939 song with lyrics by Johnny Mercer and music by Jimmy Van Heusen, which has gone on to become a jazz standard, covered by numerous artists. The narrator in I Thought About You tries to put someone out of their mind, but finds themselves continually thinking about them. The theme of feeling depressed at losing someone, and dwelling on sweet memories, is very suitable for a wake.

Cigarette

BABETTE: How is he in the sack? …
LORELAI: I’ll call you during the cigarette.

Lorelai is referring to a common trope in film and TV whereby a couple are shown in bed smoking to indicate that sex has occurred.

Mustang

We learn that Max drives a Mustang. The Mustang is a car made by Ford, and originally based on the Ford Falcon; it was first produced in 1965.

Morey’s concussions

LORELAI: How does Morey get around in here? [in Babette’s tiny house]
BABETTE: Oh, just fine. He had a couple of concussions his first year here but he never complains.

From this we learn that Babette lived in the Dells’ house (alone?) before marrying Morey, and that he moved in with her.

“They grow up so fast”

While talking with Lorelai, Babette mourns the death of her elderly cat Cinnamon, remembering the time when she was a tiny kitten. As she and Morey are a childless couple, Babette speaks of Cinnamon’s passing as if she and Morey have lost a child, even mentioning an Oprah episode about bereaved parents whose marriages didn’t survive.

Babette’s feelings for Cinnamon serve as a parallel to Lorelai’s for Rory’s (the cat and the girl are probably even of similar ages). I believe Cinnamon was changed from a male cat to a female one to make this parallel more obvious.

Lorelai must also face “losing Rory” one day – not to death, but to adulthood. She knows that Rory is growing up, and that she has to learn to let her go, and to find a way to make a life for herself that isn’t based around caring for Rory.

This helps to inform her decision about dating Max: Rory is growing up, and Lorelai can’t put her own life on hold forever.