Category: S1Ep6: Rory’s Birthday Parties

College fair

The day after her birthday, Rory takes the bus into Hartford to attend a college fair. College fairs are events held by schools and communities where representatives of colleges and universities can meet one-on-one with high school students and their parents to talk about their college, and answer questions. Representatives will have a booth or table where they can hand out brochures about the campus and academic programs. It seems that for some time Rory has been collecting the brochures from Harvard University.

Cold medicine

LORELAI: So I guess the whole pudding thing was just a fluke, huh? Trying to get to know us, easing up on the rules, smudging that bottom line of yours. It was just some weird phase. What, you were on cold medicine last week or something?

In the US, many over the counter cold and flu medications contain dextromethorphan, a psychoactive substance which can produce euphoria or hallucinations when abused; they can also contain the opioid codeine which acts as a sedative. This isn’t the case in some other countries, where cold and flu medicines treat symptoms in a far less interesting manner.

“Assume things”

LORELAI: You know what they say when people assume things.
EMILY: No, what do they say?
LORELAI: That – you shouldn’t.

Lorelai is referring to the phrase: “Never ASSUME, because when you ASSUME you make an ASS out of U and ME”. It became a popular catchphrase after being used in the episode, “My Strife in Court”, from the 1970s TV series, The Odd Couple. The writer on that episode, Jerry Belson, had heard a teacher say it many years before. Lorelai can’t bring herself to complete the saying to her already irritable mother.

Clorox

LORELAI: And I said something at the table about the pâté smelling like Clorox and one thing led to another and I wound up here. I hadn’t told anybody yet about me. And you.

Clorox is an American brand of household cleaning bleach, made by the Clorox Company, founded in 1913.

The pate would have smelled unpalatably bleach-y to Lorelai because she was pregnant; pregnancy can change the way you perceive odours and flavours. As Emily and Richard didn’t know she was pregnant, they probably thought Lorelai was being a rude brat, and sent her upstairs. Could this help explain Lorelai’s disdain for pâté?

Lorelai’s Last Birthday

Rory asks Lorelai if she remembers her last birthday in Richard and Emily’s house, and Lorelai says it was when she was pregnant with Rory, so April 1984. Later we find out that Lorelai didn’t leave home until Rory was almost two years old, so she would have had two more birthdays at her parents’ house.

Maybe she means that it was the last birthday party her parents threw for her, which is rather sad, but understandable – as a teenage mother she would have lost touch with old friends, and not had many opportunities to make new ones yet, quite apart from her parents wanting to keep their situation private. More likely the scriptwriter (Amy Sherman-Palladino) originally imagined that Lorelai left home at sixteen when Rory was a few months old before realising that wasn’t very realistic.

Lorelai’s Teenage Posters

There are four Duran Duran posters on the wall in Lorelai’s childhood bedroom, in the scene where Lorelai and Rory talk. Duran Duran are an English new wave band formed in 1978, with their classic line up being Nick Rhodes, John Taylor, Roger Taylor, Andy Taylor, and Simon le Bon. Their first album came out in 1981, and they found mainstream success by 1984. They are most famous for their 1980s hits such as Hungry Like The Wolf, Rio, and The Reflex.

There is a large Echo & The Bunnymen poster over the bed. Echo & The Bunnymen [pictured] are an English post-punk rock band founded in 1978, with the original line-up being Ian McCulloch, Will Sergeant, and Les Pattinson. Their first album came out in 1980 to critical acclaim, and they found mainstream success by 1983. Although a hit in the UK, they were not so well known in the US in the 1980s, perhaps suggesting that despite her Duran Duran mania, teenage Lorelai’s musical knowledge was a cut above her peers.

One wonders why Emily has left the posters up, or why Lorelai has asked that they be left up – her comment that time has stood still in the room makes it sound as if she hasn’t up here since she left home, which seems a bit unlikely. It is almost as if Emily has kept Lorelai’s (eerily untouched) room like a shrine, as if she died rather than ran away as a teenager.

Freaky Friday

RORY: I’m sorry I snapped at Grandma.
LORELAI: Yeah, huh? That was a pretty Freaky Friday moment we had back there.

Freaky Friday is a 1976 fantasy-comedy Walt Disney film about a mother and teenage daughter who switch bodies after wishing that they could trade places; the mother and daughter are played by Barbara Harris and Jodie Foster respectively. The film is based on the 1972 novel of the same name by Mary Rodgers, who wrote the screenplay for the movie.

In the movie, the daughter Annabel gains a new understanding of her mother’s life which brings them closer together, just as in this episode Rory gets an insight into Lorelai’s life growing up with Emily, and how difficult that must have been at times.

Lorelai would have been eight years old when Freaky Friday came out. Walt Disney did a made-for-television remake of the film in 1995 when Rory was eleven, so the movie could easily have been part of both their childhoods.

Christopher

LORELAI: He calls like once a week and we see him at Christmas, sometimes Easter. It’s all very civil.

This is the point where we discover that Rory has had some contact with her father throughout her life, seeing him at least once a year and sometimes twice a year. The weekly phone call, like the one to Emily, seems something of a polite fiction – it seems greatly out of character for Christopher to phone so regularly. Most likely he phoned whenever he thought of it, which probably wasn’t that often.

Shirley Temple

LORELAI: Here. [hands Rory a drink]
RORY: What is it?
LORELAI: Shirley Temple.
RORY: What are you drinking?
LORELAI: A Shirley Temple Black.
(Lorelai lets Rory smell her drink.)
RORY: Wow.
LORELAI: I got your Good Ship Lollipop right here, mister.

Shirley Temple (1928-2014) was a multi award-winning box office-topping American Hollywood child star who began her career at the age of three. In 1934, she became famous starring in the film Bright Eyes, written specifically as a vehicle for Temple. On the Good Ship Lollipop is Temple’s musical number from the film, which became her signature song.

Later in life after leaving Hollywood, Shirley married a wealthy businessman named Charles Black so that her name became Shirley Temple Black. Strongly interested in conservative politics, she was US ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslavakia, and was the first female Chief of Protocol of the United States.

The Shirley Temple Lorelai hands Rory is a non-alcoholic cocktail, made for children and named after the child actress. Traditionally it’s made from ginger ale with a splash of grenadine, decorated with a cocktail cherry. Modern versions may be made with lemonade, lemon-lime soda or orange juice. Shirley Temple herself disliked the cocktail, finding it too sweet.

Lorelai indicates that her own drink is the grown-up version of a Shirley Temple (or just a very grown-up cocktail). It is possibly a Dirty Shirley, a Shirley Temple with vodka or rum added to it.