Zagat’s

RORY: I’ll look it up in Zagat’s.

The Zagat Survey, commonly known as Zagat, an organisation which collects and correlates the ratings of restaurants by diners, established by Tim and Nina Zagat in 1979. Their first guide was only for New York City, with reviews written by their friends; at its height in 2005, it covered 70 cities, based on the input of more than 250 000 people, rating not only restaurants, but also hotels, shopping, nightlife, zoos, museums, music, movies, theatres, golf courses, and airlines.

Zagat was published in a number of books and guides, and had a website you could subscribe to. Zagat was bought by Google in 2011 and is fully integrated into Google services such as Google Maps and Google + Local. Most of the staff were laid off, and production of Zagat in book form is looking “bleak”. They sold it to The Infatuation in 2019, with promises of a comeback, new website, and apps.

Chateau Jean Georges la Jean Georges in Paris

RORY: You’re the graduate. You get to be pampered.

LORELAI: Okay, then I would like to go to Chateau Jean Georges la Jean Georges in Paris.

Lorelai refers to French chef Jean-Georges Vongerichten (born 1957), who arrived in the US in 1985, and moved to New York the following year, earning immediate plaudits for his innovative approach to classic French cuisine. Having already opened ten restaurants around the world, his first American venture was the bistro JoJo in New York, opened in 1991. He has since gone on to command numerous other restaurants in the US and internationally.

His restaurant Jean-Georges opened in the Trump Tower, Manhattan in 1997 to critical acclaim, and his Paris restaurant opened in 2001, the year before this episode broadcast. It is actually called Market, and it serves French-Asian fusion food.

I don’t think it’s quite as fancy as Lorelai imagines – it is decorated simply, and the dishes are fairly reasonably priced (considering it’s a tourist trap in Paris). I think she is imagining it to be like the Jean-Georges in Manhattan, which is haute cuisine, very sophisticated, and costs hundreds of dollars per meal.

Rory’s Fashion Advice

RORY: Take light layers. Wear your turquoise and tan dress that you just got that’s cool and it’ll look good without your gown on, and wear your turquoise vintagey sweater over it because it’ll look great with the dress and it’ll keep you warm if it’s cold in the auditorium.

LORELAI: You are a fashion genius.

RORY: Well, you’ve taught me everything I know.

Rory’s fashion advice to Lorelai is a callback to “Kiss and Tell” in Season 1, when a panicked Rory can’t decide what to wear for her first date with Dean until Lorelai picks out a top for her. Now it is Rory’s turn to help out her mother when she is too keyed up about graduating to select an outfit.

I’m not sure whether we’re meant to think Rory has become a full-blown fashion expert in the past 18 months, or just that either Gilmore girl is capable of getting the odd brain freeze, and needs the other to help out so they can get dressed. The shows seems to be leaning towards the former, because Rory was so stunned at the way her mother could instantly pick the right top.

Also note, Rory Gilmore’s fashion genius advice – wear layers, no headwear over curls. You got that for free.

David Lee Roth

JESS: It’s where David Lee Roth got busted.

David Lee Roth (born 1954), retired musician, singer, songwriter and radio personality, best known as the lead singer of the rock band Van Halen, previously discussed.

In 1993, Roth was arrested for buying $10 worth of marijuana from an undercover police officer in Washington Square Park, and paid a $35 fine. The incident made headlines and became something of a punchline.

Central Park and Washington Square Park

JESS: Just hanging out . . . in the park, mostly.

RORY: Central Park?

JESS: Washington Square Park.

Central Park, a 843 acre park in Upper Manhattan, New York, the fifth-largest park in the city. Opened in 1858, it is the most visited park in the US, and the most filmed location in the world.

Washington Square Park [pictured], a 10 acre park in the Greenwich Village district of Lower Manhattan, New York. One of the best known of the city’s public parks, it is a cultural icon and popular meeting place. It is notable for its arch, modelled after the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and its fountain. The ground was first made into a park in 1849.

Jess says that Washington Square Park is “cooler” than Central Park. Apart from its location in fashionable Greenwich Village, it has a history of street performers, and protests and demonstrations. It has been a focal point for students, artists, musicians, and writers in the Beat, folk, and hippie movements. Robert Louis Stevenson once met Mark Twain here. Buddy Holly spent time here helping guitarists with their technique, and Barack Obama held a rally here. It’s a popular spot for filming, and Amy Sherman-Palladino’s show The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel has filmed scenes here.

Washington Square Park, with its Beatnik and counter-cultural heritage, seems like the perfect place for Jess to hang out. I’m not sure if this is meant to suggest that he and Liz live in this area (if so, only with the kind of magical rent control that appears in TV shows like Friends!).

Jess obviously isn’t attending school, because he went back to New York right near the end of semester and its too late to start at a new school. This is breaking the law, but I guess he’s fallen through the cracks in the system as nobody knows where he really lives.

Jess Phones Rory

Jess phones Rory out of the blue – conveniently it’s at a time that Lorelai is celebrating the end of her exams and too drunk to notice or care, so they are able to talk privately in Rory’s bedroom. And Lorelai is playing loud music in the living room, so there’s no chance of Lorelai overhearing their conversation. Jess has been extraordinarily lucky in the time he chose to phone up!

It’s now two weeks since Jess left Stars Hollow, and he makes contact with Rory, but neither of them know what to say to each other – and Jess soon says he needs to go when he learns that Lorelai is in the house with Rory. (He’s on a payphone on a pavement, so can’t really talk properly anyway). This intriguing yet unsatisfying phone conversation is what propels Rory into one of her rare, yet surprisingly regular, moments of madness.

Notice that when the phone rings, Lorelai jokes that if it’s Mick Jagger to blow a whistle and hang up. She’s earlier said she wanted to keep her children away from Mick Jagger, and suggests using a whistle to deter him – in other words, activating an anti-rape device designed to raise an alarm and gain people’s attention to your plight. Jess is definitely someone Lorelai wants kept away from her kid, and the suggestion of rape seems like a foreshadowing of later events.

Dance This Mess Around

The is the song that plays while Rory is on the phone to Jess, she shuts the door to block out the noise of the song. It’s another track from The B-52’s album, released as its third single. It’s a fan favourite, often played live in concert, and like “52 Girls“, is regarded as one of the band’s finest songs. “Dance This Mess Around” went to #24 on the Hot Dance Club Play chart in the US, and was most popular in New Zealand at #35.

Mick Jagger

RORY: Okay, here’s an interesting question for you – “Have you given any thought to how children will work into your future plans?”.

LORELAI: Oh, well, uh, they’re not gonna stand in my way, that’s for sure. I mean, I plan to have some, of course, but I’m just gonna knock ’em out and, uh, have Nanny catch ’em and care for ’em, make sure Mick Jagger doesn’t come anywhere near them and then just return them to me when they’re twenty-one.

Sir Michael “Mick” Jagger (born 1943), English singer, songwriter, actor, and film producer who has achieved international fame as lead vocalist and founding members of the Rolling Stones, previously mentioned. His songwriting partnership with Keith Richards is one of the most successful in history. Jagger’s career has spanned over six decades, and he is known for his distinctive voice and energetic live performances. He gained press notoriety for his romantic involvements which is why Lorelai says she’ll make Nanny keep him away from her (imaginary) children.

He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1989 and in 2004 into the UK Music Hall of Fame with the other band members. As both a member of the Rolling Stones, and as a solo artist, he has reached #1 13 times, made the Top Ten 32 times, and the Top 40 70 times. He was knighted in 2003 for his services to popular music.

Of course, this casual attitude to children is the exact opposite of Lorelai’s real mothering style, which is deeply protective, and, if anything, rather too involved in her daughter’s life. Although even in a joke, she is concerned about shielding them from unwanted influences.

52 Girls

This 1979 song is playing while Lorelai celebrates her exams being over with margaritas. It’s by new wave band the B-52s, from their debut album The B-52’s.The kitschy lyrics and hook-laden harmonies helped give the band a fanbase, and they released several chart-topping singles. The album received mostly positive reviews from critics, who noted that it cleverly recycled early funk and Chicago blues into an eminently danceable party album. The album went to #59 in the US, was most popular in Australia at #7, and is regarded as one of the greatest albums of all time.

This is a callback to “The Deer Hunters”, when Lorelai wore a B-52s tee shirt to the parent-teacher meeting. She told Max Medina she wasn’t really a big fan, it was just something to wear because she spilled coffee on her blouse. Now we see she is enough of a fan to own this album, and to put it on when she’s in a celebratory party mood.

By the way, the song’s title doesn’t refer to a particular number of girls, but is a tribute to those women, both famous and obscure, who rocked the beehive hairdo, otherwise known as the B-52, or just “the 52” (and are therefore “52 girls”). It is this hairstyle that the band is named after.

School Pageant

RORY: I had a school thing once, and I wasn’t sure if Mom would want to go so I didn’t invite her. It was my kindergarten “Salute to Vegetables” pageant and I was broccoli and I did a tap dance with a guy that was playing beets and the entire number I was just thinking, “Mom’s not here” and it was my fault that she wasn’t there and, well, it was kind of a life lesson for me.

We already know that Rory studied ballet with Miss Patty when she was a little girl, but apparently she did tap dancing even in kindergarten! I’m guessing Miss Patty also taught tap to the kindergarten class. In A Year in the Life, Rory takes up tap dancing again as a way to relieve stress.

Rory’s little anecdote about the school pageant is actually one of the more plausible things we hear about her childhood. Most things make her seem either too old for her age or too young, but it’s perfectly believable that the thoughtful young child of a single, working mother who’s a maid at an inn would be hesitant at asking her mother to come to a school pageant.

Little Rory would know how hard Lorelai works and that there’s no other parent to fall back on if she’s unavailable. I can imagine her feeling that a school pageant isn’t important enough to pull Lorelai out of work for, yet missing her horribly when the moment arrives, and seeing all the other mothers there.

The fact that she blamed herself entirely for the situation shows that even as a young child, she was already placing herself as the responsible person in the relationship with her mother, and taking on the parental role.