SOOKIE: Oh, that makes me so mad. And so sad. I’m smad!
Smad is a portmanteau word that Sookie invents – that is, a word combining two or more words. Examples would be motel, brunch, smog, spork, sitcom, romcom, dramedy, mockumentary, cosplay, bromance, himbo, Bollywood, chillax, hangry, email, podcast, fanzine, infomercial, emoticon, and chocoholic.
Portmanteau words are a feature of Lewis Carroll’s Alice Through the Looking Glass, previously mentioned. In fact, it was Carroll who invented the term “portmanteau word”. A portmanteau is an old-fashioned suitcase that has two parts hinged together [pictured], just as a portmanteau word has two words hinged together.
LORELAI: I offered to fund the instant invention of a molecular transport device but they just didn’t go for it.
A reference to the 1975 musical comedy horror film, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, based on the 1973 stage musical. In the film, the mad scientist Dr Frank-n-Furter (played by Tim Curry) has a Sonic Transducer in his laboratory – an “audio-vibratory-physio molecular transport device”. It is capable of breaking down solid matter and projecting it through space, and possibly time.
A transducer is something which converts energy from one form to another (such as light into an electrical signal). A microphone is an example of a transducer – indeed, a sonic transducer, since it changes sound waves into electrical signals. In the musical, it’s basically a teleportation device. See Beam me up, Scotty.
(Picture shows Dr Frank-n-Furter standing against the Sonic Transducer).
LORELAI: They’re snowed in. SOOKIE: Who’s snowed in? LORELAI: The Bracebridge group. They’re stuck in Chicago. The dinner’s off.
In real life, December 2001 was warmer than average in Chicago, and it only snowed once, which took place close to Christmas, after the events of this episode.
The writer, Daniel Palladino, must have been thinking of the previous year – there was a terrible blizzard on Tuesday December 11 which raged for hours, with very heavy snowfalls. The storms continued on and off for the rest of the month, making it one of the heaviest snowfalls of all time for the city, an entire season’s worth.
Not being psychic, of course Palladino could only refer to a past blizzard, he didn’t know what the weather would be like in the upcoming December.
(The picture shows a plane grounded at O’Hare Airport in December 2000; flights really were cancelled).
EMILY: I don’t know. The man is so sensitive. He reads so much into every little perceived slight. LORELAI: Yeah. I remember one time when I was a kid, Dad had put on some weight, and he bought a new suit to try to cover it up. And he wore it for us and he said, ‘How do I look?’ and I said, ‘You look fat.’ [pause] But I guess that wasn’t really a perceived slight … so, I’ll think of another example.
This episode was written by Daniel Palladino, so naturally we have to have Lorelai be nasty about someone’s weight. This time it’s her own father, and apparently she was cruel to the overweight even in childhood! He’s just determined to turn her into a hateful character.
RORY: Oh, well yeah, it can be really nice just to stay at home sometimes because you can do fun things that you normally wouldn’t have time for. LORELAI: Yeah, like play Running Charades, and get out that Slip ‘N Slide.
Running Charades is a charades game played in teams. Each team has a list of titles (of books, movies etc) that must be acted out to a team member, who is then meant to guess what it is, before another team member runs in to guess the next charade. Whichever team finishes all their charades by guessing correctly the fastest wins the game. It was brought out as a board game in 2000, suggesting that Lorelai bought a copy.
Slip ‘N Slide is a children’s toy brought out in 1961. It’s a long strip of plastic, which when sprayed with water, becomes incredibly slippery so that a child can slide right down to the end of it. Safety warning: they are only suitable for children, there have been several cases of teenagers and adults hurting their backs or necks, or even becoming paralysed, while playing on a Slip ‘N Slide. Lorelai’s joke seems slightly cruel in that context.
LORELAI (to Richard): You and Mom, you always go out of town this time of year. RORY: Last year it was the Bahamas.
Last year we discovered it was Richard and Emily’s annual tradition to hold a Christmas party in mid-December. This year we discover another tradition: they go out of town around Christmas time (presumably after the party, but possibly before).
I’m not sure whether they actually go away for Christmas, or if they travel in the week or so before Christmas, and get back in time for the 25th. Richard and Emily spoke about only seeing Lorelai and Rory at Christmas and Easter, so did that just mean attending the Christmas party each year? As that was attended by their friends, it doesn’t seem as if they spent much time together as a family at all, even in the holidays. Perhaps they meant the entire Christmas season – the party, and then Christmas itself.
Richard and Emily went to the Bahamas in December 2000, after Richard had been hospitalised for an angina attack. As Christopher’s parents, Straub and Francine Hayden, live in the Bahamas, it seems very likely the Gilmores either stayed with them, or visited them, during their vacation. It was only a couple of months later that Christopher’s parents come to Hartford just as Christopher arrives for a visit to Stars Hollow, suggesting it was a plan that the elder Gilmores cooked up to bring Lorelai and Christopher together – with devastating results.
Christopher is listening to the harps playing in the background, although teasingly, it could also be understood as Christopher addressing Lorelai as Heaven.
Note the bowl of ripe, rich red pomegranates on the table. They are potent symbols of fertility, as a possible foreshadowing of what is to come. Red often seems to be a danger signal of love triangles in Gilmore Girls, and there could be two such triangles here – Lorelai, Christopher and Sherrie, and Lorelai, Christopher and Rory.
More pertinently, they are a reminder of the Greek myth of the fertility goddess Demeter, who lost her beloved daughter Persephone to the god of the Underworld, Hades. It was decreed that Persephone should be returned to her mother – but only if she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in the Underworld. She had eaten six pomegranate seeds, so spent six months of every year with her husband, and the other six with her mother (thus explaining the cycles of the seasons, for nothing will bloom or grow while Demeter mourns the annual loss of her daughter).
Likewise, Christopher’s phone call brings up Lorelai’s fear of losing Rory. Already worried that her parents might lure her away into their life of luxury, she now grows afraid that she could lose Rory to her father. This seems unlikely, as Christopher is far less interested in Rory than Richard and Emily are. But as Harvard University is near Boston, it must be causing Lorelai a little anxiety for the future. The six month pomegranate deal sounds an awful lot like a shared custody arrangement.
CHRISTOPHER: Now it’s totally your call and I don’t want to step on any plans you’ve already made, but I know Rory has a break in school coming up, and I was wondering if you’d be cool with her coming to visit for a couple of days.
Christopher finally shows some interest in his daughter, inviting her to spend a couple of days of her Christmas break with him in Boston. The fact that he mentions Sherrie had fixed up the spare room for her suggests that it might be his girlfriend encouraging him to make contact with Rory.
Although Lorelai said she’d always left the door to Rory open for Christopher, she doesn’t sound thrilled with this plan. She never seems to have considered it might mean leaving the door to Rory open for another woman as well.
Note the picture on the wall of the ominous all-seeing eye and the word OBEY on it – does Christopher feel as if he is under Sherrie’s surveillance, that he is doing her bidding? Is the phone call something she instructed him to do? It’s a hint that Christopher may be finding his first committed domestic relationship rather confining.
(I’m not sure, but I think the artwork might be by Shepard Fairey, a graphic artist and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene in the mid-1980s. He would later become well known for his picture of Barack Obama together with the word HOPE).
SOOKIE: We are crazy for doing this. LORELAI: We’re beyond crazy. We are ‘Anne Heche speaking her secret language to God and looking for the spaceship in Fresno’ crazy. SOOKIE: Oh Quiness, Nakka dune notta.
LORELAI: Il el nostra doska don.
Anne Heche (born 1969), actress, director, and screenwriter. First became known as a soap opera actress, before gaining mainstream recognition in the late 1990s in films such as Donnie Brasco (1997) and Six Days, Seven Nights (1998). She was also famous for her high-profile three-year relationship with comedian Ellen De Generes, who came out to the press shortly after she and Anne began dating.
On August 19 2000, the day after her relationship with Ellen ended, Anne drove from Los Angeles to Cantua Creek, near Fresno, parking her vehicle on a roadside. She walked for more than a mile through the desert wearing shorts and a bra before knocking on a stranger’s door and asking for a shower. As she seemed reluctant to leave, the homeowner called the sheriff’s department. When deputies arrived, Heche told them that she was God, and would take everyone up to Heaven in a spaceship (she later said she had taken ecstasy). She was admitted to a psychiatric unit in Fresno, and released after a few hours.
While promoting her 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy, Anne told interviewers that she had been mentally ill for the first thirty-one years of her life due to horrific sexual abuse by her father (a closeted gay man who died of AIDS when Anne was thirteen), which began when she was only a baby. Her surviving family strongly reject those claims, although even without that, her childhood doesn’t sound like a picnic.
Anne said that she created a fantasy world called The Fourth Dimension and had an alter ego named Celestia who was the daughter and reincarnation of God, spoke her own language, had special powers, and was in contact with extraterrestrials. It seems likely Lorelai read Call Me Crazy, as it is the sort of camp celebrity memoir she could not resist (like Mommie Dearest and Tears and Laughter), although all the information could be gleaned from the press at the time.
Anne Heche stated that she had no further mental health issues after the episode at Cantua Creek, and she has gone on to have a successful career in film and television.
Sookie’s statement means, “Oh God, I cannot do this” in Anne Heche’s invented language. Lorelai replies, “It’s too scary for me now”, in the same language. Anne said this when she believed God wanted her to heal a friend’s injured ankle, however she says she did go on to heal her friend through laying on of hands. Anne shared this information, including the example of her language, with Barbara Walters on 20/20 in early September 2001.
Like Lorelai and Sookie, and many others at the time, Amy Sherman-Palladino mocked Anne Heche mercilessly after going public. Their tone was completely mainstream for the time.
UPDATE: Anne Heche passed away after a car accident on August 12 2022, under the influence of narcotics.
LORELAI: Okay, this is the last on our list. We’ve already got our trumpets, our madrigal singers …
A madrigal is a Renaissance-era secular musical composition for unaccompanied voices, usually three to six singers. It first arose in Italy, but became very popular in England in the 16th century, as well as continental Europe.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 