Footnotes to the TV series
PARIS: Well, where’s the local bar?
RORY: In Woodbridge.
In real life, Woodbridge doesn’t exactly have a bar either – they’ve got a restaurant with a bar area attached to it, and it looks very respectable. What the situation was in 2002, I’m not sure.
Paris would never have been allowed into a bar anyway, being underage and in a school uniform.
RORY: This is the town Paris, this is it. It’s not seedy, it’s not rundown, it’s just Stars Hollow.
In fact, there’s a lot of shady stuff going on in Stars Hollow, as becomes apparent in later seasons. I feel that if Rory was a born journalist, she would be equally as interested in digging for a human interest story, rather than covering everything up.
PARIS: I think I got rabies.
RORY: It’s just a bus, Paris.
Rabies is a viral disease causing inflammation of the brain. It usually begins with a fever, progresses to nausea, vomiting, confusion, and loss of consciousness, and almost always ending in death. It is spread from bites from an infected animal, such as a dog (globally, the most common cause of infection). In North America, where dogs are usually vaccinated against rabies, it is nearly always spread by bats. Most deaths are in Africa and Asia.
All the stores, especially Le Chat Club
The park
The giant slinky on Klump Street (never seen on the show)
The one-hundred-year-old oak tree (never seen, is this the historic tree Lorelai saved?)
The life-size yarn person (never seen on the show)
Babette’s house, to see her gnome collection
RORY: Paris, Stars Hollow doesn’t have a seedy underbelly. We don’t even have a meter maid.
In North American lingo, a female parking inspector who writes tickets for parking violations. Sometimes applied to males as well.
RICHARD: Is that your second cup of coffee?
LORELAI: Uh, third. Why?
RICHARD: No reason. That’s a lot of coffee first thing in the morning.
A callback to Richard’s earlier scene with Emily. He’s learning just how much coffee Gilmore girls like to drink!
RICHARD: Oh, I always start my breakfast off with half a grapefruit.
LORELAI: Hm, do the Florida people know about you? Because Anita Bryant left this huge gap that has yet to be filled.
Anita Bryant (born 1940), previously mentioned. Singer who had a string of hits in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and was Miss Oklahoma 1958.
In 1969, she was chosen as the ambassador for the Florida Citrus Commission, with commercials featuring her singing Come to the Florida Sunshine Tree, and saying the tagline, “Breakfast without orange juice is like a day without sunshine”.
In 1977 she became a controversial figure as an anti-gay rights activist, leading a coalition of conservative Christians who wished anti-discrimination legislation to be repealed. They were successful, but earned the ire of gay-rights activists, who organised a ban against orange juice. She became an object of ridicule, and after her divorce in 1980, the Florida Citrus Commission allowed her contract to lapse. This is the “huge gap” that Lorelai suggests Richard might like to fill. It also seems to be another comment about censorship.
LORELAI: It’s going to be horrible. It is going to be a bad, depressing Lifetime movie and Nancy McKeon will be playing me. I am Jo.
Nancy McKeon (1966) is an actress best known for playing Jo Polniaczek on the sitcom The Facts of Life, a spin-off of Diff’rent Strokes which ran from 1979 to 1988, making it one of the longest-running sitcoms of the 1980s. The show was set at a private girl’s school, and Jo was an extremely intelligent but rebellious tomboy who rode a motorcycle to school and often got into trouble before graduating as class valedictorian. Jo must have been a role model for the ambitious yet wayward young Lorelai (another TV heroine with a motorcycle!).
Nancy McKeon appeared in television movies based on real life stories, as well Afterschool Special episodes with titles like, “Schoolboy Father”, and “Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom”. She starred in the 1989 domestic violence drama, A Cry for Help: The Tracey Thurman Story, and the 1992 kidnapping drama, Baby Snatcher. These are the types of “bad depressing” movies Lorelai probably has in mind.
Nancy McKeon has only ever been in one Lifetime movie, and it aired in 2003, after this episode was broadcast. Called Comfort and Joy, it’s a quirky romantic Christmas film, and not depressing at all.
LORELAI: I was kicked out of summer class for refusing to call the camp counselor Peaches because I thought the entire concept of the counselors choosing summer fruit names was stupid. So they called my dad and he came to get me and it was just the two of us alone in the car all the way from Maine with nothing to talk about but my camp failure. Luckily I had also flashed the swim team or even that subject would’ve gotten stale.
Maine is a New England state, the most north-eastern state in the US, the only state to have one-syllable name, and the only state that borders only one other US state (it borders New Hampshire, Canada, and the Atlantic Ocean). It is also the most rural of all the states of the US, with many farms. It is known for its rocky coastline, forests, smooth mountains, and picturesque lakes. It is famous for its maritime culture and seafood cuisine, especially lobster.
There are many summer camps for children and teens in Maine, and quite a few are exclusive and very expensive – only for the children of the wealthy and powerful, a few with a rigorous application process (one is known as “the Harvard of summer camps”), and a couple that require a uniform. It seems likely that Richard and Emily would have sent Lorelai to one of them.
It takes five to six hours to drive from Maine to Hartford. That’s bad enough, but Richard and Emily always vacation in Martha’s Vineyard during the summer. If Richard had to drive Lorelai back to their summer house in Massachusetts, the drive is even longer – six to seven hours. Considering that Richard might have had a fourteen hour drive that day to pick up his errant daughter and take her home, I can imagine he would have been in a very bad mood.
EMILY: You owe me! … I pay for Rory’s school! …And I co-signed your loan! You still have a house because of me!
LORELAI: Are you hearing yourself?
EMILY: I’m sorry but I’m desperate. I just need one day of peace and I will do anything to get it, anything.
Lorelai always feared that allowing her parents to help her would give them the opportunity to emotionally blackmail her later. Now her fear comes true – but it isn’t some cunningly-planned scheme of Emily’s. She’s stressed and desperate, and says anything she can think of to get Lorelai’s assistance.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 