Category: S1Ep1: Pilot

Woodstock ’99

When Lane changes clothing on her way to school, she wears a tee shirt which reads WOODSTOCK ’99. In 1999 a large-scale musical festival was held in upstate New York to commemorate the thirtieth anniversary of the 1969 Woodstock Festival. Unlike the peaceful event of the 1960s, the 1990s festival was marred by incidents of  violence, fire, and rape. A CD was released in 1999, and a DVD in March 2000. It seems very unlikely that Lane attended the festival, but she may have got the tee-shirt included when buying either the CD or DVD.

Lane Kim (Keiko Agena)

Rory’s best friend is loosely based on writer, director and producer Helen Pai, a friend since childhood of Amy Sherman-Palladino and a co-producer of Gilmore Girls. Like Lane, Helen is a Korean-American who was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist family.

Lane Kim’s eclectic collecting and obsessive knowledge of popular music seems to be inspired by Daniel Palladino, who has been collecting rock and pop since early childhood, and now has a music collection numbering in the thousands.

Michel Gerard (Yanic Truesdale)

RORY: Come on, Michel. I’ll tell all the ladies what a stud you are.
MICHEL: Hm. I believe that memo has already been sent.

Throughout the original series of the show, viewers speculated on the sexuality of the ever-snarky Michel Gerard, the concierge at the Independence Inn. From Michel’s own vague statements, he could either be interpreted as a camp heterosexual man, or a closeted homosexual man (or one who just didn’t want to discuss his private life – Michel did come across as someone who valued his privacy).

Amy Sherman-Palladino originally intended Michel to be heterosexual, as this comment from him showed. He was meant to be an example of a heterosexual man who has camp mannerisms and stereotypically “gay” interests. At some point she changed her mind, and in the Netflix revival, Michel is confirmed as not only gay, but married to a man.

In fact it was Sookie (Melissa McCarthy) who Amy had planned to be a gay character, but the television executives would not countenance the idea.

In real life, when Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino stayed at the Mayflower, the inspiration for the Independence Inn, the concierge was a French woman.

X-Ray Eyes

LORELAI: What’s with the muumuu? [gestures to Rory’s baggy sweater.]
RORY: Stop.
LORELAI: No, I’m just saying, you couldn’t find one made of metal in case anyone has X-ray eyes?

A possible allusion to the 1963 sci-fi horror film The Man with the X-Ray Eyes, directed by Roger Corman and with Ray Milland in the title role. Made on a shoestring budget, it was nonetheless successful and well-received.

The teenage Rory is apparently self-conscious about her developing figure, and Lorelai teases her about it. Despite the lack of response from Rory, Lorelai’s criticism seems to have been taken on board: although Rory always dressed modestly, she never again wore anything this thick, baggy and shapeless to hide her body.

Capisce

DRELLA: Okay. I am a great harp player, and this is my great harp, okay. So if you’re looking for someone to just be nice to the guests, get a harmonica player, or maybe some guy who whistles through his nose. Okay? Capisce?

Capisce (said kah-PEESH) is an Italian word used in American slang to mean “got it, understand”.

In Italian, it is pronounced more like kah-PEE-shay, and would be used to refer to someone in the third person – such as “He understands”. In Italian, to say you understand is capisco.

Drella (Alex Borstein)

Drella is the harpist at the Independence Inn for the first few episodes of the show. She is named after Andy Warhol, oddly enough – he was given the nickname Drella by his friends. The nickname is a combination of Dracula and Cinderella, and perhaps that is meant to be a comment on Drella the harpist: she will go for your throat like Dracula, but sees herself as a poor put-upon servant like Cinderella. There will be many more references to Warhol and his circle during the run of the show.

Independence Inn

The inn in Stars Hollow where Lorelai is the executive manager, Sookie St. James (Melissa McCarthy) is the head chef, and Michel Gerard (Yanic Truesdale) is the concierge. The name suggests the independence that Lorelai found for herself in Stars Hollow through working at the inn.

It is based on The Mayflower Inn (now The Grace Mayflower Inn & Spa) in Washington Depot where Amy Sherman-Palladino stayed during her visit to the town. The real life inn is rather more luxurious than the Independence.

“She’s sixteen”.

When Joey hits on Rory at Luke’s diner, Lorelai scares him off by telling him that Rory is sixteen. In fact she is fifteen, as her birthday is still around six weeks away. Lorelai must be the only mother in the world to put her teenage daughter’s age up when she is approached by an adult male.

Age in the Gilmore Girls is very fluid, and almost meaningless. Lorelai is in her early thirties, but acts like a teenager, yet was a teenager forced to grow up too fast. Rory is a teenager who acts like she’s in her thirties, and often seems completely at sea with normal teenage activities and customs. Characters’ ages are almost never mentioned, and birthdays are rarely talked about or seen celebrated. The age of Stars Hollow itself is something of a mystery, despite the clearly marked sign in the town square.

Time is one of the major themes of Gilmore Girls, with weeks and seasons clearly marked, and yet age as a concept barely exists, as if cycles of time occur and recur without affecting anyone, or as if the characters and towns exist in a sort of ageless dream-time.

Officer Krupke

LORELAI (to Luke): Look, Officer Krupke. She’s right at that table, right over there.

Officer Krupke is a character from West Side Story. Originally a 1957 Broadway musical, it was made into a 1961 film directed by Robert Wise and Jerome Robbins. West Side Story was the #1 film of 1961 and won ten Academy Awards, including Best Picture.

In the story, Officer Krupke is a gruff policeman responsible for law and order on his beat. In the film, the role was played by William Bramley.

West Side Story is an adaptation of William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet, revolving around rival New York gangs. This is perhaps the first tiny hint that star-crossed young lovers will feature heavily in Gilmore Girls.