The Breakfast Club

LUKE: Where’s Jess?
LORELAI: Outside, working on his Breakfast Club audition.

The Breakfast Club is a 1985 American coming of age teen comedy, written and directed by John Hughes, in his directorial debut. The story involves five teenagers from different high school cliques who spend a Saturday together in all-day detention, writing on essay on “who you think you are”. In the process, the students share secrets, bond, and learn more about themselves and each other.

The Breakfast Club was a box-office success. It is considered to be a quintessential 80s film, one of Hughes’ most memorable works, and one of the best teen films of all time.

When Lorelai is talking about Jess, she is probably specifically thinking of the character John Bender (Judd Nelson), a rebellious punk known as “The Criminal”. He is the only one of the students to stand up to the harsh Vince-Principal. During the course of the film, John becomes close to a pretty, popular girl called Claire Standish known as “The Princess” (Molly Ringwald), and they share a kiss. Jess has only spoken to Rory for a few minutes, but already the genre-savvy Lorelai is worried they will have a natural good girl/bad boy attraction.

Doctor Laura

JESS: You know, you don’t know anything about me, or my life, or my mom, or Luke, so why don’t you Doctor Laura someone else?

American talk show host and author Laura Schlessinger (born 1947), best known for her radio show, The Dr Laura Program. With a background as a marriage and family counsellor, Schlessinger typically answers callers’ requests for advice, and gives short monologues on social and political topics.

Her show was highly popular, but around the early 2000s began losing listeners because Schlessinger was giving less relationship advice and more lectures on morality and conservative politics, in particular, her opposition to homosexuality. No doubt this comparison would have infuriated Lorelai, as it was intended to.

Cream Pies

LORELAI: Ugh. There have been very few moments in my life where I have actually wished I had one of those enormous cream pies you can just smash in someone’s face, but this is definitely one of them.

Cream pie attacks and fights have been a staple of slapstick comedy since the days of the English music hall. English comedian Fred Karno (1866-1941) is credited with popularising the pie-in-the-face gag, and they were often used in films by his proteges, Charlie Chaplin, and Laurel and Hardy. A cream pie in the face is a staple of traditional clowning. The cream pies are, these days, usually canned whipped cream or shaving cream in an aluminium pie plate.

“In heels, yet”

LORELAI: Yes, I have. I’ve also done the ‘chip on my shoulder’ bit. Ooh, and the surly, sarcastic, ‘the world can bite my ass’ bit, and let me tell you, I mastered them all, in heels yet.

Lorelai is referencing a famous saying about Ginger Rogers, who was Fred Astaire’s dancing partner in many musical films: “Sure [Fred Astaire] was great, but dont forget that Ginger Rogers did everything he did … backwards and in high heels”. If it did not originate with him, it was at least popularised by Bob Thaves in a 1982 Frank & Ernest cartoon.

The quote is used to imply that women often have to work harder than men to gain a similar recognition, or have to do so while maintaining a “feminine” image which requires a lot of discipline and upkeep.

In this context, it doesn’t quite make sense, unless Lorelai thinks that being a snotty ungrateful teenager counts as some sort of “work” that gets you somewhere in life, and which is made harder for girls than boys.

Jess and Lorelai’s Fight

LORELAI: Ugh, Jess, let me give you a little advice. The whole ‘my parents don’t get me’ thing, I’ve been there.
JESS: You have, huh?

Lorelai follows Jess again, and for the third time finds him doing something in her house on the sly. This time, it’s taking a beer from her fridge.

Lorelai handles this awkward situation rather neatly, and it’s only after Jess balks at coming in to dinner and mocks her cosy small-town life (“Well geez, Ms. Gilmore … that sounds plum crazy”) that she starts handing out unsolicited advice. It’s (mostly) well-intentioned and she is genuinely trying to help Luke if not Jess, but it goes down very badly.

It’s hard not to have some sympathy with Jess here, because Lorelai is very patronising saying that “she’s been there”. Yes, she was a smartass, misunderstood, and misbehaving teenager like Jess, but their lives were hardly parallel.

Lorelai grew up in a wealthy, privileged household, her father didn’t leave them, her mother wasn’t unreliable and impractical. Nor did her mother give up on her and basically throw her out to live with a relative she barely knows in a small town hours away from her home. In fact, it was Lorelai who rejected her parents and ran to the sanctuary of Stars Hollow.

Lorelai has the rare experience of taking someone on who is intelligent enough to match her in wits, and confident enough to stand up to her. It obviously comes as a shock, and by the end of the argument, Jess has made a crude yet insightful attack on the possible sexual relationship between she and Luke, and Lorelai has sunk to playground levels of retaliation, showing that she hasn’t grown up much since being a teenager.

It is Lorelai who retreats inside while giving a parting shot, so it’s round one to Jess, but Lorelai gets the last word.

NOTE: Edited with the kind assistance of helpful reader Daniel A Huth, who stopped me from imagining a fridge which wasn’t there.

The Secret History of Ham

SOOKIE: You know ham was originally made out of rice?

It definitely wasn’t – ham is, and always was, made out of pig. It is hard to know how ham even could be made from rice.

As a professional chef, Sookie must surely know this. I’d like to think that Sookie is making a “look how dumb I am” joke, in protest at Lorelai and Jackson putting her intelligence down. If not, perhaps she’s taken it to heart that Jackson prefers his women dumb, and is trying to give him what he wants.

Tuesday night in Stars Hollow

RORY: Because it’s Tuesday night in Stars Hollow. There’s nowhere to bail to. The 24-hour mini-mart just closed twenty minutes ago.
JESS: So we’ll walk around or sit on a bench and stare at our shoes.

A confirmation that it is now Tuesday, and the previous day was Monday, which doesn’t actually make much sense. Also, we’ve gone from Stars Hollow being the small town that never sleeps and gets up super early, to having a 24-hour mini mart that closes at 7 pm.

Is the 24-hour mini mart a joke, just referring to Doose’s Market? Because Taylor only seems to fear competition from supermarkets in neighbouring towns, so presumably there is nowhere else to shop in Stars Hollow.

By the way, one of the most befuddling essays I’ve read on Gilmore Girls is one categorically stating that a grocery store like Doose’s Market couldn’t possibly survive in a town of only 9000 odd people, with graphs and pie charts and so on to prove its economic unfeasibility. This is despite the fact that Washington Depot, the real life original inspiration for Stars Hollow, only has about 3000 people, yet has managed to maintain a successful grocery store (Washington Depot Food Market) much like Doose’s for decades.

“Hooked on phonics”

JESS: [looking at bookshelf] Wow, aren’t we hooked on phonics.

Hooked on Phonics is a brand of educational materials. First marketed in 1987, it was originally designed to teach reading through a system of phonetics.

Jess could have just said, “You must like reading”, or, “It’s great to meet someone else who’s into good literature”. But instead he makes a snarky, superior-sounding comment.

Hey, a snarky quip using a slightly out-of-date cultural reference that implies he’s smarter and better than most people? He sounds just like Lorelai! (It’s almost like the same people are writing their dialogue). Naturally this resonates with Rory. She just met her mother in teenage boy form, and will doubtless find him irresistible. See the entry on Freud.

Rory Meets Jess

While Jess is in the kitchen being introduced (he never bothers to greet Sookie and Jackson), he notices that Rory’s bedroom door is open, and just as he quietly slipped into the living room without being invited, he now wanders into Rory’s room. She is sitting with her back to the door, so she doesn’t immediately know he is there. As with the photos, he gets a chance to check Rory out without her knowing, and before she can look at him.

There is a parallel with Rory’s boyfriend Dean at this point. Both Dean and Jess were invited to the Gilmore home for dinner by Lorelai, and both of them went into Rory’s bedroom without asking, as a sign of their interest in her. Dean had been asked as a date for Rory, and they had previously kissed, but Jess has never even met Rory before. It’s a bold and presumptuous move to explore her personal space.

In case there is any doubt what’s going on here, Rory is wearing a cardigan decorated with pinkish-red love hearts, made to look as if they are the fluttering petals of flowers (fluttering heart, hearts and flowers!). The cardigan is buttoned up though, to show that this flower has not yet opened to Jess. Meanwhile, Jess has a large number 2 on the back of his (bad boy) hoodie. The show uses costume a lot to make a point, and in this instance, it seems impossible not to mention it.

Once again, Lorelai follows Jess to see what he’s up to, and this time she isn’t quite so smiling when she asks both of them to come to dinner. I think Jess can now count himself as being on Lorelai’s radar.

Meyer lemon

SOOKIE: That is a great lemon.
JACKSON: Try it, it’s a Meyer.

A Meyer lemon is not a true lemon. It’s a cross between a citron and a mandarin/pomelo hybrid. Hardy and easy to grow, Meyer lemons have a sweeter flavour than lemons.

Native to China, it was introduced to the US in 1908 by agricultural explorer, Frank Meyer. It became popular as a food item in the 1970s as part of the rise in Californian Cuisine, and was later championed by Connecticut-based Martha Stewart.

Meyer lemons need a greenhouse in cooler climates like Connecticut, and generally have mature fruit in winter. Jackson already has one fruiting in early September, no doubt because it’s from a greenhouse.