Footnotes to the TV series
PARIS: We dress up the kits with sparkles, colors, pictures of bands. Sport themes for the boys, animal pictures for the puppy and unicorn bunch, chess boards for the Bobby Fischer freaks …
Robert “Bobby” Fischer (1943-2008), American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. He was a chess prodigy, winning the 1958 US Championship at the age of 14. He withdrew from the public eye in 1975, with reports of increasingly erratic behaviour through the years.
GISELLE: Ah! Mon dieu, you are gorgeous! Come, come! Embrassez maman!
MICHEL: Maman, j’aime ton visite.
Giselle says, “Ah! My God … Give Mom a hug!”.
Michel replies, “Mom, I love your visits”.
Giselle has apparently visited Michel several times before, but this seems to be the first time she has ever been to his workplace, as Lorelai and Sookie have never met her before. Michel was going to pick his mother up from the airport, but she came on an earlier flight so she could buy him presents, which seems to explain why she has turned up at the Independence Inn unannounced.
In this episode we meet Michel’s mother, Giselle, who is visiting from Paris. She and Michel adore each other, and are “best friends” mother and son, who love to tease and joke with each other, using a banter that sounds like something out of a Noel Coward play.
This makes them seem quite similar to Lorelai and Rory, who are also self-proclaimed “best friends” with a comic patter between them. Janet Hubert is only fourteen years older than Yanic Truesale, suggesting she is supposed to be a very young glamorous mother like Lorelai.
Michel addresses his mother by her first name at one point, and you can hear the French pronunciation of it – ZEE-ZEHL. Giselle may have possibly been named with the French ballet Giselle in mind, one of the world’s most popular classical ballets.
MICHEL: You just okayed the vaccination of all those filthy ducks in the south pond.
LORELAI: Oh, aren’t I nice.
MICHEL: Yes, a regular Dr. Dolittle.
Dr Dolittle, previously discussed.
This is the second time Lorelai has been compared to Dr Dolittle (ironically, considering her terrible track record with pets).
RORY: So, have a good game. Do that pointing to the outfield thing, that’s always very popular.
Rory is referring to a famous incident in baseball history, when Babe Ruth pointed towards the outfield before hitting a home run, in the fifth inning of Game 3 of the 1932 World Series, held on October 1 at Wrigley Field, Chicago.
His gesture looked as if it was promising a home run, but initially Ruth said he was simply pointing at the dugout to remind them he had one more strike. It’s also been suggested he was actually thumbing his nose at the opposing team.
Once the story hits the papers, the media-savvy Ruth went along with it. Over the years, his story became more embellished, until he was planning the home run before the game even started, while talking with his wife.
Whatever the truth, it soon became an established baseball legend, and part of American popular culture.
[Picture is the 1976 painting The Mighty Babe by Robert Thom, depicting the “called shot”]
RORY: But if I’m doing my [Philosophy] homework, doesn’t that defeat the point of going to see you play?
DEAN: You can’t glance up in between nihilistic theories?
Nihilism is a philosophy that rejects fundamental aspects of human existence, such as truth, knowledge, morality, values, or meaning. Different nihilist positions hold variously that human values are baseless, that life is meaningless, and that knowledge is impossible. It often takes on a despairing tone.
Another reminder that Dean isn’t as stupid as the writers often make him look, he at least knows the word nihilism. It does seem a little disparaging towards Rory’s studies though, with the subtle implication that her homework is meaningless. He may be feeling a little despairing himself by this stage.
Dean plays softball on Saturday mornings during the spring, and this time last year, Rory would attend his games to support him. But it seems that it has been a long time since Rory bothered coming to a game – which is interesting, because the start of softball season just so happens to be around the time of the Bid-on-a-Basket Festival, and Rory’s “friend date” with Jess.
Instead of going to watch Dean’s game, Rory is shoe shopping with Lane. And afterwards, she has Philosophy homework to do (a new subject for Rory). Dean pleads with her to at least bring her homework to the game, which sounds like a terrible idea, and is. Rory reminds him they’re seeing each other that evening, and that’s all the Dean she feels like seeing that day.
It actually seems more healthy that Rory is making time for friends, and school, and Dean in her life, but both Dean and the viewer can feel that Rory is losing interest in him.
RORY: Lane, in ten years, we will be having lunch in Paris and we will not be discussing whether or not you made your quota.
Lane said she wanted to live in Philadelphia when she was older, so having lunch in Paris sounds like Rory’s dream rather than Lane’s.
LANE: Hello ma’am, I see you’re eyeing the Whip-o-Matic, nice choice! This baby’s right off the truck, and let me tell you, if you’re looking for something to fulfill all your whipping needs, you’ve come to the right place because as Devo says – if a problem comes along you must whip it, as long as you whip it with a Whip-o-Matic!
“Whip It”, a 1980 new wave song by rock band Devo, from their album Freedom of Choice. The lyrics, at first glance nonsensical, are a mocking collection of motivational cliches, in a satire on American optimism. The inspiration was apparently communist propaganda posters and the 1973 satirical novel Gravity’s Rainbow, by Thomas Pynchon. The music video plays with the idea that “Whip It” has sexual overtones.
Praised for its originality, and seen as a cornerstone of the new wave musical movement, “Whip It” was the band’s most successful song by far. It reached #14 in the US, and was most popular in Canada and New Zealand, at #11.
The cynical view of optimism revealed by “Whip It” that Lane gives voice to chimes in perfectly with Rory’s reading of Candide.
RORY: It’s just a stupid test.
LANE: Lane Kim, you have shown a genuine aptitude for sales.
Lane is dismayed to be told, for the fourth time in a row, that her aptitude test says she has an aptitude for working in retail, like her parents. She is unhappy with the news, but in A Year in the Life, Lane is working in a store, so the test knew where her skills lay.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 