LORELAI: I don’t get it. For the last week, every five minutes she’s calling me checking on shoe fittings and curtsy progress, and have I talked Rory into putting her hair up yet, and then tonight, nothing.
A reminder of all the preparations Rory’s been having for the ball, under Emily’s supervision, that we don’t see onscreen. It seems uncharacteristic of Emily that she’s left everything to the last week though – Rory’s had almost two weeks to get ready. And strangely enough, she’s gone silent, the very day before the ball.
LORELAI: I don’t know about that girl. I don’t know how she’s ever gonna make it in society. At this rate, she’s gonna actually get a job and only marry once.
Don’t worry, Lorelai. Fast forward to A Year in the Life, and Rory can’t find or hold down a job, and becomes an unwed mother, probably to a man engaged to someone else, although there are a number of candidates. Her life wasn’t as boring and stable as you feared after all.
DEAN: So, how do you know how to do this? [tie a bow-tie] CHRISTOPHER: Seventeen cotillions, a dozen debutante balls, and a brief but scarring experiment with the Children of the American Revolution.
In the US, cotillions are the classes given in dancing and etiquette to prepare girls and boys for society. A cotillion ball is given at the end, which is not only a celebration, but also a preparation for the debutante ball which will come later. This ball itself is often known as a cotillion. I’m not sure, but I think Christopher means that he attended seventeen of such balls while he was growing up, as well as twelve debutante balls.
The National Society Children of the American Revolution, founded in 1895, is a youth organisation for those under the age of 22 who are descended from someone who served in the American Revolution, or gave material aid to its cause. The Daughters of the American Revolution is thus one of its parent organisations.
Lorelai, Rory, Christopher and Dean have Chinese takeout for dinner on the night before the ball. It includes Kung Pao chicken and egg rolls.
Kung Pao chicken (in Mandarin, Gongbao jiding) is a spicy stir-fried Chinese dish traditionally made from cubed chicken, peanuts, spring onion, and chilli peppers. It is a classic of Szechuan cuisine dating to the 19th century. It’s thought to be named after Qing Dynasty official Ding Baozhen (1820-1886), and his title of Gongbao (“palace guardian”); his surname Ding sounds like jiding (“chicken”), but also can be read “small cube”, like the cubes of chicken in this dish. Westernised versions of Kung Pao chicken can be much sweeter and stickier than the original, with more vegetables, and sprinkled with roasted peanuts; it’s a standard of Westernised Chinese cuisine.
Egg rolls are an appetiser, part of American Chinese cuisine. They are cylindrical rolls filled with shredded cabbage and chopped pork, encased in a thick wheat-flour wrapper, fried in hot oil. Oddly enough, there isn’t any egg in an egg roll. Similar to the Chinese spring roll, they are thought to have arisen in the Chinese-American community of 1930s New York, and are a staple of American Chinese cuisine, often served free by Chinese restaurants.
CHRISTOPHER: I’m working for this firm that helps those overblown tech companies scale back and stay afloat now that they’re facing leaner times.
Christopher is still working in the technology industry after his failed internet start-up, and once again it seems as if his job is something quite sketchy and fly-by-night. A shadowy industry based on helping those who soared too high and are now in danger of failing, and an occupation that doesn’t have a name or description – there’s nothing solid to Christopher’s work life, even when he manages to find and commit to a job.
Christopher says he’s been trying to figure out what he wants in life for the past ten years, so only since he was 23, and has had a string of failed business ventures. It’s in sharp contrast to Lorelai, who began working in her teens, and has remained with the same business, gradually climbing the ladder until she became the executive manager.
Christopher’s only conclusion that he shares with Lorelai is that he doesn’t want his parents’ life, which is a very nebulous, and negative, ambition. He doesn’t have a solid occupation, employment history, or life goal. There’s something so barely there about Christopher, all smoke and mirrors and shifting sands.
CHRISTOPHER: Ooh, I gotta say, this isn’t like the chai lattes in Boston. LORELAI: Yeah, well, expecting Luke to make a chai anything was completely insane.
Chai tea is a tea beverage originating in India; in Hindi it is called Masala chai, or “mixed spice tea”. Recipes vary, but it’s based on strong black tea combined with spices such as cardamom, pepper, and ginger, with milk and sugar added. A cinnamon stick is often added for a sweet-spicy flavour. A chai latte is produced by steaming and frothing the milk before adding it to the spiced tea. The drink became popularised in the west in the 1990s.
Did Luke really not know how to make chai tea, or did he deliberately sabotage Christopher’s drink? Lorelai suggests he just put an old stick in a cup of tea, which seems like more than simple incompetence (especially as he could have said the diner didn’t provide chai lattes). Seeing Lorelai happily walking around town with Christopher while he was visiting Stars Hollow must have been deeply annoying for Luke, especially as Lorelai and Christopher had sex the last time he was there.
CHRISTOPHER: Imagine what we could do if we freed up the brain space that holds onto the Viennese Waltz. LORELAI: Yeah, it’s right up there in between old Brady Bunch reruns and the lyrics to Rapture.
Christopher and Lorelai mention things they learned and experienced during their teenage years they can never forget. It’s a none-too-subtle reference to the fact that they can never really forget each other or let each other go.
Viennese Waltz
A type of ballroom dance, the original form of the waltz. It emerged in the second half of the 18th century from a German baroque dance and an Austrian folk dance. The American style of the waltz allows for much greater freedom of movement.
The Brady Bunch
An American sitcom about a large blended family which aired from 1969 to 1974, but is still popular today as re-runs. There are also numerous specials, spin-offs, and television movies based on the show. It later turns out that Lorelai and Rory often watched them.
Rapture
A 1981 Blondie song which combines new wave, disco, and rap. From the album Autoamerican, it went to #1 in the US, and was successful around the world. It was the first song with rapping in it to get to #1, and the first rap song to original music.
The lyrics are:
Toe to toe Dancing very close Barely breathing Almost comatose Wall to wall People hypnotised And they’re stepping lightly Hang each night in Rapture
Back to back Sacroiliac Spineless movement And a wild attack
Face to face Sadly solitude And it’s finger popping Twenty-four hour shopping in Rapture
Fab Five Freddy told me everybody’s fly Dj spinnin’ I said, “My, my” Flash is fast, Flash is cool François c’est pas, Flash ain’t no dude And you don’t stop, sure shot Go out to the parking lot And you get in your car and drive real far And you drive all night and then you see a light And it comes right down and it lands on the ground And out comes a man from Mars And you try to run but he’s got a gun And he shoots you dead and he eats your head And then you’re in the man from Mars You go out at night eatin’ cars You eat Cadillacs, Lincolns too Mercurys and Subaru And you don’t stop, you keep on eatin’ cars Then, when there’s no more cars you go out at night And eat up bars where the people meet Face to face, dance cheek to cheek One to one, man to man Dance toe to toe, don’t move too slow ‘Cause the man from Mars is through with cars He’s eatin’ bars, yeah wall to wall Door to door, hall to hall He’s gonna eat ’em all Rapture, be pure Take a tour through the sewer Don’t strain your brain, paint a train You’ll be singin’ in the rain Said don’t stop to punk rock
Well now you see what you wanna be Just have your party on TV ‘Cause the man from Mars won’t eat up bars when the TV’s on And now he’s gone back up to space Where he won’t have a hassle with the human race And you hip-hop, and you don’t stop Just blast off, sure shot ‘Cause the man from Mars stopped eatin’ cars and eatin’ bars And now he only eats guitars, get up
Lorelai must have sung along to this a lot to have learned all the lyrics off by heart! Maybe this is the song Lorelai was thinking of when she told Max she is into rap music?
Lorelai and Chris dance together beautifully, symbolically showing that they have sexual compatibility. See how happy they look together, enjoying each other’s physicality and natural playfulness, while Miss Patty presides over them approvingly.
In contrast, Rory and Dean dance awkwardly together, looking nervous and unsure of themselves. It suggests that they are not sexually fluent, being inexperienced teenagers, and is perhaps a sign that there is something lacking in Rory and Dean’s relationship. Tellingly, Miss Patty worried that Rory might hurt Dean with her bad dancing – a foreshadowing of the pain she will cause him.
RORY: At one point Miss Patty thought Dean was gonna get hurt, she made me sit in the corner and watch. LORELAI: Hey! Nobody puts Baby in the corner.
A reference to the 1987 dance film, Dirty Dancing, starring Jennifer Grey as Frances “Baby” Houseman, a girl who falls in love with her dance instructor Johnny Castle, played by Patrick Swayze, while on vacation with her parents at a resort. (Faithful reader lujza0317 has reminded me that Baby’s mother is played by none other than Kelly Bishop, aka Emily Gilmore!).
At one point, Johnny stands up for Frances when her parents stop her from dancing by forcing her to sit at a table in a corner, saying, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner”. He then pulls out her out of the corner so they can perform together on the dance floor. He lets Frances know that she doesn’t deserve to be hidden away, but should be in the spotlight so that her talents can shine. It’s commonly misquoted as “Nobody puts Baby in the corner”, as Lorelai does.
Although reviews were mixed and the studio had serious doubts about releasing the film, it became one of the highest-grossing of 1987, and the #1 film in the US, with many audience members going back to see it again and again. That re-watch value made it a hit on home video and DVD, and it still sells over a million DVDs a year. It is the #1 on the list of films watched by women, earning it the title, “Star Wars for girls”.
LORELAI: So how’s it going? RORY: Actually, I’m not very good [at dancing]. DEAN: Yeah, which is really holding me back, because I’m a natural. LORELAI: Well, maybe you just need a glittery glove and a really freaky face.
A reference to pop singer Michael Jackson (1958-2009), known for being an extraordinary dancer.
He famously wore a “glitter glove” on one hand for the first time he did the “Moonwalk” while performing Billie Jean in 1983. This leather glove studded with diamantes became an iconic look for him.
Jackson was also known for the amount of cosmetic surgery he had on his face – perhaps as many as ten operations by the early 1990s on his nose, cheekbones, chin, forehead, and lips. Over time, his face became more and more unrecognisable.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 