LORELAI: You’re gone and the house is quiet and Bill Maher’s canceled. The name of the show was Politically Incorrect for God’s sake. Didn’t anybody read the title? He was supposed to say those things, dammit!
William “Bill” Maher (born 1956), comedian, actor, political commentator, and television host. He is known for his political satire and sociopolitical commentary, and his activism in support of animal rights and the legalisation of cannabis.
He hosted the award-winning late-night political talk show Politically Incorrect from 1993 to 2002; it was cancelled in June, with the final episode airing on July 5th. Many traced the show’s demise to comments Maher had made about the 9/11 attacks, where he disputed President George W. Bush’s claim that the attackers were cowards. Maher suggested that it was rather US policymakers who were the cowards. After this the show struggled to gain sponsorship. The show was replaced with Live! With Jimmy Kimmel.
In February 2003, Bill Maher began hosting a similar late-night show called Real Time with Bill Maher, which is still ongoing, so Lorelai only has six months before she can start watching this show instead.
LUKE: I’ll be home early, anything besides the Q-Tips?
LORELAI: Um, cotton balls, world peace, Connie Chung’s original face back.
Constance “Connie” Chung (born 1946), journalist who has been an anchor and reporter with many major news networks. In June 2002 she began hosting her own show on CNN, called Connie Chung Tonight. Although it had moderate ratings, it was cancelled the following year when the Iraq War broke out, and Chung was needed as a reporter.
Presumably Lorelai has been watching the show over the summer in her lonely hours, and dislikes the amount of cosmetic interventions Connie Chung has had done since she last noticed her. There were numerous references in the show to Lorelai not approving of cosmetic surgery – which in retrospect seem rather ironic after watching Lauren Graham in A Year in the Life.
In the film, Arthur, played by Dudley Moore, says, “I’m going to take a bath”. His English butler Hobson, played by John Gielgud, replies drily, “I’ll alert the media”. Dream-Luke is saying that he considers himself little more than Lorelai’s sarcastic butler. As this is Lorelai’s dream, it suggests that’s what she wants from Luke!
Dream-Luke’s comment that it’s not necessary to do an accent, the reference is enough, is a meta-comment by the writer (Amy Sherman-Palladino). Gilmore Girls referenced many, many films, but very rarely does anyone do the accent to match, or even attempt to reproduce how the line is said in the film (such as by shouting “Here’s Johnny” in a terrifying manner) . The writer is saying that a simple reference is enough for the intelligent viewer.
Q-Tips are a brand of what are known in the US as cotton swabs, and elsewhere as cotton buds, often used for make-up application and cleaning ears.
The first mass-produced cotton swab was developed in 1923 by Polish-American inventor Leo Gerstenzang, after watching his wife attach wads of cotton to a toothpick to clean their baby’s ears. The product was originally known as Baby Gays, then changed to Q-Tip Baby Gays, with the Q standing for “quality”, then just Q-Tips. In North America, the brand name is often used generically for any cotton swab (see Kleenex).
Season 3 begins with one of the most teasing, and notorious cold opens in the show. Lorelai is shown being woken up by a barrage of alarm clocks, wandering downstairs in a pretty pink nightgown, to find that Luke is making her breakfast, and trying to force her to drink decaf coffee.
At first the viewer might think that Lorelai and Luke somehow got together during the offscreen summer break, or that at least their friendship has got back on track and blossomed to the point that Luke is now cooking her breakfast in her kitchen, and offering to pick up household supplies for her.
But then Luke starts talking to Lorelai’s belly, because she’s pregnant! And she and Luke are having twins, no less. We know she can’t possibly be that far into a pregnancy after only a few weeks, and sure enough, not long afterwards she wakes up in the middle of the night with a start.
Lorelai immediately phones Rory to discuss her dream, and Rory gives the most obvious explanation: Lorelai wants to be with Luke and have his babies. But as Rory goes on to say, the dream is linked to Lorelai being upset about Sherry being pregnant with Christopher’s child, and Lorelai being lonely for Luke’s company (and missing his food!). The dream puts all these things together, and suggests a way to resolve all this tension – have Luke’s babies!
The (joke?) names Luke and Lorelai have for their unborn twins in the dream is darkly amusing. First, they were Sid and Nancy, a reference to the year-ago episode when Luke and Lorelai got into another terrible fight. Lorelai’s subconscious may be saying, “You got into a bad fight with Luke before and you worked it out, so you can do it again this time”.
Even darker, Lorelai says in the dream that the twins are named after child murderers Leopold and Loeb. Could this be an unconscious wish for Sherry’s baby to not exist, as if Lorelai’s pregnancy could cancel it out? Leopold and Loeb were the names of the Rottweilers owned by the parents of Lorelai’s repellant date chosen by her mother, Chase Bradford from Hartford. Just as Sid and Nancy link the twins to Luke, Leopold and Loeb seem to link them with Christopher, as if Lorelai’s unconscious has made her pregnant to both men at once.
At any rate, dreaming of being pregnant with twins suggests a conflict between Lorelai’s conscious and unconscious, and that she has two separate but related sources of stress in her life: the failure of her relationship with Christopher to get off the ground because of Sherry’s pregnancy, and the failure of her friendship with Luke. The twins may symbolise that on an unconscious level Lorelai is attracted to both Christopher and Luke, and at this point, deep down wants both of them.
And one final thing: dreaming about being pregnant is also due to the stress of not having Rory there, her “baby”. The dream overcompensates by giving her two babies to replace Rory. Lorelai is missing Rory even more than she misses either Christopher or Luke.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 