“I had a really lousy night”

LORELAI: Hey Sookie. Is there any coffee left? I had a really lousy night.
SOOKIE: Oh sorry. Ya know, I’ve been so busy I didn’t even think about it.

This scene takes place on the day following the night where Lorelai had a fight with Emily – oddly, they both take place on Saturdays. We know this because the fight took place the day after Friday Night Dinner, and the engagement party is also on a Saturday. But instead of those things being a week apart, they happen within 24 hours of each other.

Boca Burger

MICHEL: Go back to the cooking room.
SOOKIE: Not until you eat these and tell me what you think!
MICHEL: Sookie! I only eat fifteen hundred calories a day. If I eat that, I cannot have my Boca Burger later.

Boca Burger is a vegetarian burger patty made from soy protein and wheat gluten, first manufactured in 1979. Boca Burger products have been owned by Kraft Foods since 2000.

We learn here that Michel eats only 1500 calories a day. One Boca Burger has around 70 calories, while macaroon has over 400 calories and a chocolate praline cookie over 300. Clearly if Michel eats both cookies, as Sookie wants him to, he’s going to have to give up more than a Boca Burger – he will have eaten around half of his daily calorie intake on just two cookies!

Maybe he’s including the bread and salad to accompany the patty, although even that would only be around 400 calories. Or maybe he is calculating the calories of just one bite from each cookie, since he would only need a taste of each to decide which one he prefers.

1500 calories a day is about the lowest amount of food recommended for a man, and it probably wouldn’t be recommended long term, especially for someone who’s already a healthy weight. Even men on calorie restriction diets usually eat around 1800 calories a day, and still lose weight doing so. We never actually see Michel lose much weight on his strict diet, so maybe he’s having a few cheat days.

Lorelai seems to eat as much as she wants while remaining slim, while poor old Michel apparently starves himself just to maintain a normal weight.

Macaroons and Chocolate Pralines

SOOKIE: Just pick a cookie.
MICHEL: I don’t want to.
SOOKIE: Michel, for the rest of their lives, Lorelai and Max are gonna think back on their engagement party and they’re gonna talk about three things. They’re gonna talk about the friends who came, and that special song they danced to, and the cookies that they ate.
MICHEL: Their world is very small, isn’t it?
SOOKIE: Macaroons or chocolate pralines?

Macaroons are small biscuits originating from Italy, and made since medieval times. They are typically made from ground almonds and egg whites, and are light and fluffy with a crisp outer coating. Macaroons made with coconut are common in both the UK and US, and they are a favourite treat for the Jewish holiday of Passover.

Chocolate praline cookies are chocolate biscuits that are often filled with nuts such as pecans, walnuts, or almonds, and may be covered in a rich chocolate icing or filled with chocolate paste.

We learn later in the episode that Sookie decided on the macaroons. The one she is showing Michel does not look like the standard Italian macaroon, as it is very large with pink icing on it. These massive decorated macaroons are an American interpretation of the Italian biscuit.

Lorelai Confronts Her Mother

LORELAI: Do you know how it felt for me to tell you that I was getting married and to have you just brush it off like that? Do you know?
EMILY: No I don’t, I don’t know! Possibly very similar to finding out from a complete stranger that my only daughter was getting married and had told every other person in the world before she bothered to tell her own mother. Possibly it felt something like that. Now if you’ll excuse me, it is late, and I am going to bed.

Lorelai finally gets to tell her mother how she felt about having her engagement news treated so coldly. But in return, Emily gets to tell her that she already knew Lorelai was getting married, having heard it from someone she barely knows (she exaggerates by saying “a complete stranger”; she already met Sookie at Rory’s second birthday party).

A shocked and chastened Lorelai walks out of the house, for once having to consider someone else’s feelings more than her own.

Castro

EMILY: And this is what we need to discuss right now?
LORELAI: These [Emily’s maids] are women from countries that have dictatorships and civil wars and death squads and all of that they survived, but five minutes working for Emily Gilmore, and people are begging for Castro.

Fidel Castro (1926-2016) was a Cuban communist revolutionary and politician who governed Cuba as Prime Minister from 1959 to 1976, and as President from 1976 to 2008. He was also First Secretary of the Communist Party of Cuba from 1961 to 2011. Under his administration, Cuba became a one-party communist state, industry and business were nationalised, and socialist reforms implemented. Castro was the longest-serving non-royal head of state in the 20th and 21st centuries.

More than a million Cubans left their country to emigrate as political refugees, mostly to the United States, with Florida being the US state with the most Cuban-Americans. Lorelai suggests that at least a couple of Emily’s maids were Cuban-American, and there are more than 10 000 Cuban-Americans in Connecticut, with the highest number in Bridgeport.

“Thirty-two years”

EMILY: And what about me confuses you Lorelai?
LORELAI: Well, so many things. I mean, for example, why can’t you keep a maid in this house? I mean, there must’ve been a thousand women who’ve gone through here in the thirty-two years that I’ve been alive, and not one of them could stick it out.

In fact, Lorelai had her birthday about two months ago, and is now thirty-three. It’s possible that at this stage Lorelai’s birthday had not been settled on, and it might have been imagined as later in the year.

Poor Max is left to stand uncomfortably by the door, unwelcome and completely unacknowledged by Lorelai and Emily while they have their fight. It’s an inauspicious meeting with his prospective mother-in-law, and demonstrates he is little more than a sideshow in Lorelai’s life.

Max’s Parents

While they are on a dinner date together in Hartford, Max tells Lorelai that he has told his parents about their engagement. They were absolutely thrilled, and insisted on paying a small amount toward the wedding, just so they could feel involved. (From Max’s description, it sounds as if his parents live fairly close).

Mrs Medina cried with happiness before saying Lorelai can call her “Mom” if she wants to, and offered her own wedding dress for Lorelai to wear. Apparently Max’s mother is quite large, because Max says it would take three Lorelais to fill her dress out.

All this is such a contrast to Emily’s frosty reception to her news that Lorelai becomes angry and upset. She and Max leave the restaurant (another meal out that Lorelai didn’t finish eating), and she forces him to take her to her parents’ house so she can confront her mother, ignoring Max’s pleas to be more reasonable, and to try to see things from Emily’s viewpoint

Eye candy

MAX: Is something wrong?
LORELAI: No.
MAX: You can tell me. That’s what I’m here for.
LORELAI: I thought it was just for eye candy.

Eye candy is slang for a person or object which is attractive and pleasing to look at; a treat for the eyes. Lorelai’s joke probably has some truth to it – that her attraction to Max is mostly physical.

“I will not be ignored”

RORY: Time is ticking.
LORELAI (imitating Dean): “Rory, I love you, Rory. Rory, I will not be ignored, Rory…”
RORY: Leave.

Lorelai is slightly misquoting from the 1987 thriller film Fatal Attraction, directed by Adrian Lyne, and written by James Dearden, based on his short film Diversion. The film is about a married man named Dan (Michael Douglas) who has a brief affair with a woman named Alex (Glenn Close). Alex becomes obsessed, and stalks Dan and his family.

At one point, Dan confronts Alex at her apartment, and they end up in a physical altercation. Alex says to him, “Well, what am I supposed to do? You won’t answer my calls, you change your number. I mean, I’m not gonna be ignored, Dan!”

Fatal Attraction was a massive box-office hit, the #2 film of 1987 in the US, and the #1 film world-wide, leading to more psychological thrillers being made in the 1980s and ’90s. It received fairly good reviews, and much discussion around feminist and mental health issues.

It is notable that Alex’s surname is Forrest – very similar to Dean’s surname of Forester, as yet another hint of Dean’s obsessive stalker tendencies.

Froot Loops

LORELAI: Okay, well, I’m not gonna be home late. And listen, I would reconsider calling Dean. It’s not his fault that you’re so fabulous he can’t think about anything else.
RORY: Bye Mom.
LORELAI: I mean, he just sits in his room, eating Froot Loops out of the box, saying your name over and over and over.

Froot Loops are a brand of breakfast cereal made by Kellogg’s since 1963, consisting of sugary, flavoured and coloured ring-shaped cereal pieces. They don’t actually have any fruit in them.