Month: March 2018

Avon Lady

MAX: I mean I don’t see you for months and then all of a sudden –
LORELAI: Ding-dong, Avon lady.

Avon is an American cosmetics company founded in 1886, a direct selling multi-level marketing company which is one of the largest in the world. It uses door-to-door salespeople to advertise its products, otherwise known as Avon Ladies.

Avon’s television commercials in the 1950s and ’60s featured a doorbell going “Ding-dong”, and then the catchphrase, “Avon calling”; it’s one of the longest-running and most successful advertisements ever. Lorelai humorously likens her visit to Max with an Avon lady calling.

Everyday I Write the Book

This 1983 romantic pop song written by British singer-songwriter Elvis Costello plays in the background while Rory watches Tristan watch Summer with some sympathy for his plight; it’s the song that Henry first asks Lane to dance to, promising it will be a “short one” (the song is just under 4 minutes long).

The song is from the Elvis Costello and The Attractions album Punch the Clock, and was their first hit single in the US, getting to #33. It was slightly higher in the UK at #28. One of the most popular of Costello’s songs, it has several times been included on “best of” compilation albums.

The song, which is about a break up, compares the stages of a relationship with chapters in a book, a synonym that Rory would surely understand and approve of.

Madame Curie and Jennifer Lopez

PARIS: Yeah well, I doubt highly that Madam Curie was voted most likely to dress like Jennifer Lopez.

Marie Curie, born Maria Skłodowska (1867-1934) [pictured] was a Polish-born French physicist and chemist who conducted pioneering research on radioactivity. She was the first woman to win a Nobel prize, the first person and only woman to win it twice, and the only person to win it in two different sciences. The Curie family, including Marie, her husband Pierre, daughter Irène Joliot-Curie, son-in-law Frédéric Joliot-Curie, and son-in-law Henri Labouisse, has won more Nobel Prizes than any other family. She was the first woman to become a Professor at the University of Paris, and the first woman to be entombed at The Panthéon in Paris on her own merits.

Jennifer Lopez (born 1969) is an American actress, singer, dancer, and fashion designer. She began her career in 1991 as a dancer on television before branching into acting in 1993 (although she’d made her film debut as a teenager in a low-budget film). Her first starring role was in Selena (1997); she went on to star in other films in the 1990s, becoming the highest-paid Latina actress in Hollywood. She ventured into the music industry in 1999, with her debut album On the 6, which had two Top Ten singles. In January 2001, a few weeks before the events of this episode, she brought out her second album, J.Lo, around the same time as the release of her romantic comedy, The Wedding Planner, becoming the first woman to have a #1 album and #1 film in the same week.

We learn here that Paris’ ambition is to work in medical research toward the better understanding and treatment of cancer. It apparently doesn’t work out that way. Oddly enough, Liza Weil, who plays Paris, would later play a character who dies from cancer on medical drama Grey’s Anatomy.

Ms. Jackson

This 2000 song by alternative hip-hop duo OutKast begins playing in the background when we first see Tristan and Summer arguing; Summer identifies it as a “good song” before starting to dance to it.

Ms Jackson is a single from OutKast’s album Stankonia, which went to #1 in the charts and on the hip-hop charts. It won a 2002 Grammy Award for Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group, and is regarded as one of the best songs of the 2000s.

The song is about the difficulties of breakups, and the animosity that a woman’s mother often has for her daughter’s ex-boyfriend. It’s a hint of the anger that Lorelai feels toward Dean, although she hasn’t expressed it for fear of upsetting Rory.

“At least you had a boyfriend”

PARIS: So where is your boyfriend?
RORY: We, um, we broke up.
PARIS: Oh. Well, at least you had a boyfriend for a while.

Although she is socially awkward, I think Paris genuinely means this to be comforting. Notice that Paris has thin braided pigtails among loose hair – the same way Rory did her hair for the Bangles concert, where she and Paris bonded. Paris must admire Rory to some extent to copy her hair style. Also notice that Rory is willing to tell Paris the truth about her break up with Dean, whereas she avoided telling Louise when she asked the same question.

Madeline’s stepfather

RORY: Madeline, your house is beautiful.
MADELINE: Thanks, it’s my stepfather’s.

We learned in Paris is Burning that Madeline’s parents are divorced (she says her father gave her mother everything she asked for in the divorce settlement), which might explain why she was sent to a therapist. Now we know that her mother has remarried to a wealthy man. The fact that Madeline sees the house as her stepfather’s property rather than her home suggests that she hasn’t fully adjusted to the situation.

“Who’s watching the farm?”

MADELINE: You came!
RORY: Yeah.
LOUISE: Who’s watching the farm?

Louise continues to treat Rory as if she is some backwoods hick, even though she’s actually visited her and seen she lives in a normal house in a town – and was taken to a concert in New York by Rory’s mother. She really is quite a pain, and a bit of a ninny. (One of the reasons for her hostility may be that she and Rory appear to be wearing the same necklace, and have very similar red floral patterns on their dresses).

 

Sodom and Gomorrah

LANE: Oh my God, there’s a pool table.
RORY: And a deejay.
LANE: It’s like a teenage Sodom and Gomorrah.

Sodom and Gomorrah were two cities north of the Dead Sea mentioned in the Book of Genesis, and throughout the Old and New Testaments. They were destroyed by God in fire and brimstone as an act of divine judgement against them for their numerous sins, and have become synonymous with any decadent vice-ridden area which refuses to repent. It is possible that the story was inspired by a real-life earthquake in the area thousands of years ago, but that isn’t certain.

There is a general belief that the city’s main crime was homosexuality (hence the word sodomy), but it was a whole raft of sins, including cruelty, violence, blasphemy, stinginess, greed, idleness, pride, indifference to the poor, and any number of ill-defined sexual abominations. The Bible calls them lawless and depraved.