Category: S3Ep10: That’ll Do Pig

Southern Connecticut State

DEAN: Yeah. You know, um, I wanted to tell you I applied to Southern Connecticut State …

RORY: Wait a minute, you do know that Southern Connecticut State is a four-year college?

DEAN: Yeah, I read that in the brochure.

RORY: But what happened to ‘I’m going to community college’?

Southern Connecticut State University, previously mentioned. It is located in New Haven, the same city as Yale. It feels as if the show was setting up a future plot line where Rory and Dean were both at university in the same city, but nothing ever came of it. Perhaps Dean changed his mind, or perhaps Jared Padalecki’s commitments to filming Supernatural meant that this idea fell by the wayside.

History Class

DEAN: Not bad. I’ve got McKellan for History.

RORY: Oh, has he done his Napoleon having dinner with Charlemagne bit yet?

DEAN: Catherine the Great shows up for dessert.

RORY: Oh, wow, he’s revised it. Good for him. He’s a unique man, but a decent teacher.

Napoleon, previously discussed.

Charlemagne, or Charles the Great (747-814) [pictured], King of the Franks, King of the Lombards, and the first Holy Roman Emperor. Charlemagne has been called the “Father of Europe” as he united most of Western Europe for the first time since the classical era of the Roman Empire, as well as uniting parts of Europe that had never been under Frankish or Roman rule. His reign spurred the Carolingian Renaissance, a period of energetic cultural and intellectual activity within the Western Church.

Catherine the Great, previously discussed.

Rory hasn’t been a student at Stars Hollow High since she was a freshman in 2000, but apparently Mr McKellan is still using the same material on his senior students. And it’s taken Dean two years to also have him as a History teacher. How many History teachers does little old Stars Hollow High actually have?

Toledo

KIRK: Today we have … various marzipan fruits made by a sect of cloistered nuns in Toledo.

Toledo is a city of around 80 000 people in central Spain on the Tagus River, known as the “City of Three Cultures”, for the influences of Christians, Jews and Muslims on its history. There are several convents of cloistered nuns in the city, and many of them do indeed specialise in making sweets such as marzipan.

Weston’s Bakery Specials

KIRK: Today we have an almond torte, an apple pandowdy, and various marzipan fruits made by a sect of cloistered nuns in Toledo.

Almond torte: an almond cake, rich and sweet, which may be simple or multilayered.

Apple pandowdy [pictured]: pandowdy is a New England term for something similar to cobbler, a pudding which has a fruit filling covered with a batter or biscuit topping before being baked. A classic pandowdy is covered in little scraps of pastry and cooked in a skillet, hence “pan dowdy”. Pandowdy sometimes has a crust on the bottom as well, so that it resembles a deep dish pie.

Marzipan: a confection consisting primarily of sugar, honey, and almond meal (ground almonds), sometimes augmented with almond oil or extract. It is often made into sweets; common uses are chocolate-covered marzipan and small marzipan imitations of fruits and vegetables. Marzipan is mentioned several times in Gilmore Girls as something of a strange, European novelty food.

Note that Weston’s has thirty different types of pie, and thirty-two flavours of ice cream.

Dean Asks Rory for Coffee

DEAN: Hey, you wanna get a cup of coffee? … Maybe talk a little? Of course, if you prefer, we can both just head over to Weston’s and randomly bump into each other.

RORY: No, uh, that’s okay. I can get coffee.

While Rory is browsing in the window of Stars Hollow Books, she runs into Dean. Apparently, they have been “randomly” bumping into each other for some time now. And if you believe that, then I’ve got a mighty nice bridge for sale!

The upshot of all this creepy stalking (I mean innocent random encounters) is that Dean asks Rory to have coffee with him at Weston’s Bakery – Luke’s Diner being out of the question for obvious reasons.

Chuck Berry Live

RORY: Chuck Berry live at The Fillmore on vinyl.

LORELAI: Oh my God, that’s perfect. He loves Chuck Berry. How did you come up with that?

RORY: I called him and asked him what he wanted.

Live at the Fillmore Auditorium, a 1967 live album by Chuck Berry recorded at The Fillmore, a historic music venue in San Francisco. During the 1960s, it was a focal point for psychedelic music and the counterculture in general, mentioned in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. The Steve Miller Blues Band (later the Steve Miller Band) were one of its regular acts, and they provide the backing music for this album.

Aramis

LORELAI: It’s a tie for my father’s birthday.

LUKE: What, no Aramis this year?

Aramis, luxury fragrance brand introduced by US cosmetics company Estée Lauder in 1964. It was the first prestige men’s fragrance widely available in department stores, and is now sold in 120 countries. Aramis was created by perfumer Bernard Chant.

Quaalude

RORY: He’ll like whatever you get him.

LORELAI: If I slip him a Quaalude, he’ll like whatever I get him.

Quaalude is the old brand name in the US for the sedative Methaqualone; Quaalude is a portmanteau word combining “quiet interlude”. It was so readily available in the US that it was handed out at semi-legal “stress clinics” in the 1970s and ’80s. The drug was discontinued in the US in 1985 due to concerns about recreational abuse of the drug, which gave it a very bad reputation.