Category: S1Ep5: Cinnamon’s Wake

Parallel Dating Lives

By the end of the episode, both Lorelai and Rory are in the same situation. They have both been romantically pursued by a male, and given him the impression they would prefer to be left alone. Both Girlmore girls have to tell the guy they actually are interested in dating him to keep him hanging around. Both of them have kept their romantic lives a secret from the other; Lorelai has been found out, while Rory keeps quiet about Dean – Lorelai is already getting suspicious though.

Throughout the first season, the relationship between Rory and Dean was constantly in parallel with Lorelai’s relationship with Max.

Aneurysm

EMILY (on phone): I’m looking up aneurysm in our medical dictionary to see if I just had one.

An aneurysm is a bulge in the wall of a blood vessel. They can occur in the heart, abdomen, legs and kidneys, but people often associate them with an aneurysm of the brain, which can cause a severe stroke. Aneurysms are often fatal.

VCR

LORELAI: Well there’s no messages on the machine, Mom.
EMILY: I don’t leave messages. If I wanted to talk to a machine I’d talk to my VCR.

A VCR is a video cassette recorder, a device which records analog audio and video from television onto a magnetic tape cassette. First sold in the mid-1970s, they boomed during the 1980s and ’90s. At this time videos were widely available for sale or rental, and blank cassette tapes were sold so people could record TV shows. They declined after the release of DVDs in the 2000s.

Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton

LORELAI: You can’t always control who you’re attracted to, you know. I think the whole Angelina Jolie-Billy Bob Thornton thing really proves that.

Hollywood actors Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton married in May 2000 after a brief courtship. Their marriage was often in the gossip pages, due to their frequent public gestures of love for each other, including reportedly wearing vials of each other’s blood around their necks (Thornton later explained they were actually lockets containing a single drop of blood). They suddenly separated in 2002, and divorced in 2003.

Iran-Contra

LORELAI: I kept information from you … Information that would have come out eventually. Like the Iran-Contra scandal.
RORY: So you’re Oliver North.
LORELAI: No, I’m Fawn Hall.
RORY: Mom.
LORELAI: Well, she was much prettier.

The Iran-Contra affair was a political scandal in the United States which took place during the second term of the Reagan Administration. Senior administration officials secretly facilitated the sale of arms to Iran, which was the subject of an arms embargo. They planned to fund the Contras in Nicaragua  through the arms sale, while at the same time negotiating the release of several US hostages held in Lebanon.

Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North [pictured] devised the scheme to fund the Contras, and was convicted in the Iran-Contra scandal in the late 1980s; however all charges against him were dismissed in 1991. Fawn Hall was North’s secretary who testified against him in court and was given immunity from prosecution in exchange for her testimony.

Truly, Truly

This song plays during the scene when Dean apologises to Rory for annoying her, and she tells him that she is interested in him, before running off. It was a single from the 1998 album Jubilee by American rock band Grant Lee Buffalo, and reached #11 on the alternative music charts. The song was written by Grant-Lee Phillips, who went on to have a solo career, and played the town troubadour in Gilmore Girls. He isn’t related to Sam Phillips, who wrote the score for the show.

I Thought About You

This is the song that Morey plays on the piano at the wake, identifying it as “Cinnamon’s song”. It’s a 1939 song with lyrics by Johnny Mercer and music by Jimmy Van Heusen, which has gone on to become a jazz standard, covered by numerous artists. The narrator in I Thought About You tries to put someone out of their mind, but finds themselves continually thinking about them. The theme of feeling depressed at losing someone, and dwelling on sweet memories, is very suitable for a wake.