Category: S1Ep3: Kill me Now

Teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoon

LORELAI: You don’t care at all, do you?
MICHEL: To me you are the teacher in the Charlie Brown cartoon.

Michel is referring to the popular Peanuts cartoon strip by Charles Shultz, featuring Charlie Brown as the main character. In the original cartoons, adults were referred to but never drawn, and this continued with the first television special.

The 1967 Peanuts television special You’re in Love, Charlie Brown had a classroom scene which had interaction with a teacher named Miss Othmar. Her voice was represented with a wah-wah sound made by a trombone. Since then all adult voices have been represented by the trombone sound.

The reference is made by people to indicate that they’re not listening, or that what they’re hearing is going over their heads. It seems an odd thing for Michel to know about, but perhaps he watched a lot of cartoons when he moved to the US to improve his colloquial English.

 

Jordan almonds

MICHEL (to Lorelai): Guests are checked in, baskets are given out, and 200,000 tons of Jordan almonds have been delivered.

Jordan almonds are almonds with a pastel-coloured sugar coating. They are traditionally given as wedding favours. Originating in Italy, they may not have a connection with Jordan, but the derivation of the name is uncertain.

Antonio Banderas

LORELAI (to Mrs Shales): Why don’t you go up to your room and have a fabulous bubble bath, and I’ll send up some wine and a masseuse who bears a remarkable resemblance to Antonio Banderas.

Antonio Banderas (born 1960) is a Spanish actor. Successful in Spain during the 1980s, he made the transition to Hollywood in 1992 with The Mambo Kings. His breakthrough role was in Philadelphia (1993). His biggest success in the late 1990s was playing the title role in the action film The Mask of Zorro (1998).

Lorelai uses the term masseuse incorrectly: a masseuse is a woman who performs massage for a living; a man in the same role is known as a masseur.

Spoiled twins

Mrs. Shales (Meagen Fay) tells Lorelai that her daughters, twins Jackie and Jessica (Kelly and Ashley Cohen), were spoiled by their father. As a result, she can barely stand the sight of them, and is sick and tired of their quarrelling.

This provides an example to Lorelai of what could go wrong with her relationship with Rory: she could become spoiled by her wealthy grandparents to the point that it affects her relationship with Lorelai. It helps feed Lorelai’s fears during the episode.

Lunatic rich lady with the lion head

LORELAI: I’d rather get my face surgically altered to look like that lunatic rich lady with the lion head than go to the club with you.

Lorelai is referring to Swiss-American billionaire socialite Jocelyn Wildenstein (born 1940). She is infamous for the extensive cosmetic surgery she has had on her face, giving her a very unnatural appearance.

The surgery first began in the 1970s, but Jocelyn’s appearance became cause for comment in the late 1990s, after the Wildensteins had a very public divorce, which involved a gun. Reporters were apparently banned from attending court proceedings in the belief that Jocelyn’s appearance would frighten them.

According to her ex-husband Alec Wildestein, the surgery was intended to give her a cat-like appearance, and was done to please him, as he loved big cats. Jocelyn has a pet lynx, but also claims that the surgery was done to enhance naturally cat-like features that run in her family. She is reportedly very happy with her appearance and feels beautiful. Jocelyn is rumored to have spent over $4 million on surgery.

(Jocelyn Wildenstein’s appearance has become far more extreme and unnatural since this photo was taken in 1999, but this is the lion-head lady that Lorelai was thinking of).

“Well why don’t you just let Rory decide?”

When Rory says she has to learn a sport for school, with golf as one of the options available, Emily suggests that Richard teach her golf that weekend. Lorelai begs her mother privately not to manipulate Richard and Rory to go golfing together, as she believes Richard doesn’t want to teach her, and Rory doesn’t want to go.

At this point neither Richard nor Rory have displayed any enthusiasm for Emily’s plan, but neither have shown any real distaste for it either, so Lorelai’s views aren’t backed up by anything concrete. No wonder Emily calls her out on it, saying that Lorelai is frightened that Rory might enjoy herself with her grandfather.

Once again, we get the picture that Lorelai often doesn’t seek out Rory’s opinions because she believes she already knows how she will feel – she will feel just as Lorelai does. Emily’s pointed suggestion that Lorelai might actually try letting Rory decide for herself is a real slap in the face for Lorelai. She has always depicted her mother as controlling, but in this case it is she who is having trouble relinquishing control over her daughter.

Lorelai stops the conversation, unable to face the fact that she might be more like her mother than she realises.

Plato

RICHARD: Physical fitness is as important as intellectual fitness. So says Plato and so say I.

Plato (c428-c348 BC) was a philosopher of Classical Greece, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institute of higher education in the Western world. He is widely considered a key figure in the history of philopshy and science, one of those who laid the foundations of Western thought and culture.

Richard may be thinking of Plato’s philosophical and political dialogue The Republic, written around 380 BC, and his best known work. It depicts the philospopher Socrates speaking with a group of students about the perfect city-state, and how it might be achieved.

In Book 4, Socrates tells his students that education requires both the training of the body, and the training of the mind through what we would call the liberal arts. The type of exercise that Socrates has in mind is dancing, hunting, athletics, and horse racing.

Masquerade ball

Richard tells us that Lorelai the First was famous for her masquerade balls. These are formal dances where everyone attends wearing a costume and a mask to hide their identity. Originally they were entertainments for the aristocracy, and were traditionally held in the Carnival season before Lent.

Perhaps it is from Lorelai the First that Lorelai and Rory inherit their love of dressing up in costumes.