Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: She’ll be on C-SPAN if she does … You’re a hell of a lot more interesting than that usual shit they have of all the white men walking around that big empty chamber with the numbers all over them.
RICHARD: That’s a televised house vote, and I find that fascinating.
Richard refers to the voting in the US House of Representatives, broadcast on C-SPAN (it’s now streamed live).
LORELAI: I ran into Max …. He’s back now, for a little while at least, and I am happy to report that either he’s forgiven me for treating him so badly or it wasn’t that bad and I just built it up worse in my head.
RORY: Oh no, you treated him like crap.
Max was so civil to Lorelai when they met that she begins to wonder if she was really that bad to him, and perhaps she’s exaggerated her behaviour in her own head. Other characters are quick to confirm that she really did treat Max horribly.
RORY: Hi. Did you hear about the strokes?
LORELAI: Yes, stay away from whiskey and the DAR.
In a later season, Rory does actually join the DAR. In A Year in the Life, Rory is shown drinking whiskey on the sly during the day at work.
RICHARD: Liesl … Our East-German maid. She was much more masculine-looking than me.
LORELAI: Right, the muttonchops.
Mutton chops, extravagant sideburns that are grown down to the chin, as favoured in the 19th century. You can see from the photo of Liesl that she had nothing of the sort.
RICHARD: Oh, and you’re forgetting Liesl … Our East-German maid. She was much more masculine-looking than me.
We saw Liesl in “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”. She wasn’t masculine looking at all. Unless there was some other Liesl. There’s quite a few jokes about East German women being masculine in this show.
RICHARD: It’s chaos here. The second maid called in sick, the first is busy with dinner, and your poor mother is at the hospital. Her DAR group suffered a surfeit of strokes this week.
Richard and Emily started out with a cook and a maid, then the maid seemed to do the cooking as well … now they have two maids. Perhaps one of the maids does all the cooking, and nothing has changed.
MAX: She’s young, she’ll move on, she’s got college next year.
LORELAI: Great. Frat boys, I cannot wait.
MAX: Just get a keg, keeps them distracted.
LORELAI: Oh, well, thanks for the advice. I’m gonna lock her up in a tower when I get home.
A reference to the fairy tale Rapunzel, previously discussed.
MAX: Well, I’m glad to hear it. And Rory’s good?
LORELAI: Oh, yeah, she’s the Encyclopædia Britannica definition of good.
Encyclopædia Britannica, (Latin for “British Encyclopædia”) is a general knowledge English-language encyclopædia, first published in the 18th century in Edinburgh, Scotland. Though published in the US since 1901, the Britannica has for the most part maintained British English spelling. Since 2016, it has been published exclusively as an online encyclopaedia.
If you look up “Good” in the Encyclopædia Britannica, you will find an article on Gnostic philosophy and spirituality, where the Good is a transcendent deity. Probably not what Lorelai was thinking of!
LORELAI: So, California, huh?
MAX: Stanford, actually. I was teaching a class there.
LORELAI: Well, good. It’s about time that dump got some decent teachers.
Stanford University, in the San Francisco area, previously discussed.
MAX: I’ve been in California.
LORELAI: Well, cowabunga dude.
Cowabunga, a phrase of unknown origin which was popularised (as Kowa-Bunga) on the children’s TV show Howdy Doody in the late 1940s and early 1950s, where it was used by a character named Chief Thunderthud as a fake Native American greeting [picture shows it as Cowabonga, just to confuse things]. It became associated with the surfing subculture, who spelt it cowabunga, and used it to express delight or satisfaction.
By the early 1980s it was used as a catchphrase by Cookie Monster on Sesame Street, and became more widely known in the late 1980s and early 1990s due to its use by the cartoon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. Bart Simpson from animated series The Simpson gave it even broader recognition in the 1990s.
Lorelai presumably thinks of it as a particularly Californian phrase because of its use by surfers. It seems as if almost everyone who leaves Connecticut goes to California! Max is Lorelai’s second ex to move to San Francisco.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 