Footnotes to the TV series
SOOKIE: Plus she’s been sitting for an hour and her dress is perfect. Not a wrinkle? How does she do that?
LORELAI: She must be a witch.
Mädchen Amick went on to play a witch named Wendy Beaumont in the 2013 television series, The Witches of East End.
Sookie mentions to Sherry how smooth her dress looks, and Sherry says it’s the fabric. Sookie responds with scepticism, as if she’s convinced that Lorelai is right, and Sherry actually is a witch.
In this episode, we finally meet Christopher’s girlfriend, Sherry Tinsdale, that we first learned about in “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”.
Gilmore Girls is something of a homage to the television show Twin Peaks, so it’s no surprise that Mädchen Amick had a major role in that, playing Shelly Johnson. Shelly and Sherry even sound alike.
PARIS: Professor Bomar of Willamette University of Law has prepared a lengthy summary that I’d like to use in my remaining time.
The Willamette University College of Law is a private law school in Salem, Oregon, founded in 1883 and part of Willamette University, which was founded in 1842, and is the oldest university in the Western United States.
It is pronounced wil-AM-it; Paris mispronounces it to sound more like William-ette.
Professor Bomar is fictional.
EDIT: Huge thanks to blog reader Dan Gray, who is from Oregon, for correcting me on the pronunciation of Willamette.
PARIS: And referencing their last point, which erroneously cited South Carolina as a state that has neither a statute nor common law which prohibits assisted suicide when we know that North Carolina is the proper citation, their subsequent argument falls short of even a level of speciousness due to the fact that it doesn’t even have a ring of factual truth, let alone a substance. And after all, the absence of prohibition against assisted suicide is a far cry from a statute that actually legitimizes the practice, a state of affairs that exists only in Oregon, sadly enough, under the 1977 Death Without Dignity Act.
Paris mistakenly calls it the Death Without Dignity Act of 1977; it is of course the Death With Dignity Act. Her correction of the other team on legislation in North and South Carolina is correct, however.
PARIS: Mrs. O’Malley is impregnable but yesterday I complimented Mrs. Gladstone’s dumpy outfit and bought her an ice cream sandwich and she practically licked my hand in gratitude.
In North America, a slab of ice cream sandwiched between two chocolate cookies. The earliest mention of it dates to 1899.
MRS: O’MALLEY: On the Hillside Academy team, we have Brad Langford and Nancy Waterford.
Hillside Academy, a fictional coeducational private school, presumably in the Hartford area. Brad tells Rory that it is much more relaxed than Chilton, and he’s made a lot of new friends.
PARIS: Guess we’re going mano a mano today, huh?
BRAD: Oh God.
In Spanish, mano a mano literally means “hand to hand”, used to describe a duel between two opposing matadors in a bullfight. In informal American English, it’s used in the same sense as “one on one”, a direct confrontation between two adversaries on equal footing.
Some people wrongly think it means “man on man”, since the Spanish word for “hand” is so similar to the English word man.
SOOKIE: I’m looking for a guy that looks like a guy that you could be with, only I’m deducting seventeen years off his age and I’m adding an all-boys private school uniform and a Yankees cap.
Sookie is looking around for Christopher, until Lorelai points out Sookie doesn’t know what he looks like. It seems hard to believe Lorelai has never shown Sookie a picture of Christopher, but from the way Rory treasures an old strip of photos of Christopher and Lorelai, it appears they possess no photo of him.
Sookie explains that she’s been looking for someone Lorelai would go out with, but imagining him seventeen years younger and in a private boy’s school uniform. This may suggest that Lorelai and Christopher went to separate single-sex private high schools. In real life, there are no single-sex private schools in Hartford itself, but a few in the nearby surrounding suburbs and towns that Lorelai and Christopher could have easily attended.
I’m not sure why Sookie is mentally making him a teenager in a school uniform when he’s an adult though. Maybe she’s going to then mentally add seventeen years to his age?
She gives him a Yankees cap because that’s what Luke wears!
RORY: Yeah, sorry, Paris wanted to do a sound check and she found some problems with the acoustics in the room.
PARIS: It’s the layout on this row of seats that’s causing a bass problem. We’ve got to move this whole row over a foot. Esta! Just move these people out. Mueva esta gente, mueva, mueva!
Paris is speaking in both English and Spanish to a pair of Chilton maintenance staff, one Anglo looking, one of Hispanic appearance. The Spanish part is more or less the same thing she says in English: This one! Move it people, move, move!
RORY: I don’t know if I have time to pick it up.
LANE: What? Rory, do you wanna hear how I used up my five minutes of phone time today? Talking to Amazon.com trying to get them to overnight it to me in a plain package with a return address referencing something Korean and religious.
Amazon, previously discussed as the place Rory buys many of her books. Apparently it’s where Lane buys her new and used music as well.
I’m not sure why Lane couldn’t have just had the CD mailed to Rory’s address, except that I’m starting to think Lane actually enjoys devising zany schemes.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 