Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: We’re going to stage an intervention with the neon post-its and make them give up their wacky crazy ways.
An intervention is an attempt made to confront someone with an addiction or other serious personal problem by a group of concerned people, usually family and friends. Interventions are designed to persuade the addict to seek treatment or other professional help for their problems.
LORELAI: Now these erasers are on lithium so they may seem cheerful but we actually caught them trying to shove themselves in the pencil sharpener earlier.
Lithium (Li) is a chemical element; the lightest metal and the lightest solid element. Lithium salts are used as a psychiatric medication to treat major depressive disorders and bipolar disorders; it is not understood how they work to stabilise mood, but they reduce the incidence of suicide.
LORELAI: You need three highlighters?
RORY: Yes … One dries up, one gets lost, I have one left.
LORELAI: You have really thought this out.
RORY: Yes, I have.
LORELAI: What came first – the chicken or the egg?
The chicken or the egg is an ancient dilemma, whereby it isn’t clear which event occurred first, since chickens lay eggs, but the first chicken would need to come from an egg. Philosophers grappled with the problem for centuries, beginning with the ancient Greeks.
Evolutionary science tells us that the egg came first. Hard shelled eggs first appeared 312 million years ago, while the ancestors of the modern chicken arose perhaps 8000 years ago. Even the first chicken egg would have come before the chicken – laid by a creature that wasn’t a chicken.
Lorelai is jokingly saying that since Rory is so smart, she must be able to solve this ancient riddle.
RORY: I need legal pads.
A legal pad is a notebook of lined paper with gum binding at the top. To be classified as a legal pad, it must have a margin of 3.17 cm from the edge on the left hand side, in which comments can be written. Legal pads are commonly made from yellow paper with blue ruled lines, although as Lorelai soon finds, they come in other colours as well.
The episode’s title refers to the 1978 drama film The Deer Hunter, directed by Michael Cimino. The film is about a group of three friends, Russian-American steelworkers, and how their lives are changed forever by the Vietnam War. The Deer Hunter was the #9 movie of 1978, and won five Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director. It is notable as the first film which Meryl Streep received a nomination for, as she is the most-nominated actor at the Oscars.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 