Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: Plus, we got the whole mother/daughter gimmick going for us. The crowd’ll eat that up.
It’s a dance marathon based on nothing but stamina. They don’t actually need a gimmick to win. Perhaps Lorelai thinks that if the crowd is supporting them, they’ll be more likely to last until the end, although she may be saying anything to get Rory to agree.
RORY: Well, what’d you hear?
LANE: Quadrophenia.
RORY: Classy, but not date-like.
Quadrophenia, the sixth studio album by English rock band The Who, released as double album in 1973. It is the group’s third rock opera, the two previous being A Quick One, While He’s Away and Tommy. Set in London and Brighton in 1965, the story follows a young mod named Jimmy and his search for self-worth and importance.
The album went to #2 in both the UK and US, and has received critical acclaim. It had a strong influence on the mod revival of the 1970s.
DEAN: I know this is a stupid question, but why can’t you just talk to him?
LANE: Because yesterday he called to say that they were still looking for a rehearsal space and, uh, that he’d call when he had more news. So now I have to wait until he calls about the band – and in between, I call and hang up on him. Pathetic.
Lane has been calling Dave and hanging up when he answers, just so she can hear his voice. She and Dave are in regular contact even though the band has apparently gone on a break while they look for a suitable rehearsal space (he phoned her just the day before). However, lovesick Lane is still calling him multiple times a day.
Dean finds this behaviour ridiculous, and then he discovers Rory used to hang up on him before they were dating. I’m not sure how she got his number when they’d only spoken a few times, maybe Dean gave her his number straight away (which would surely be a clue he liked her?). Also, why doesn’t Dean remember someone ringing him all the time and then hanging up two years ago?
JAMIE: I flunked a pop quiz in poli-sci because I couldn’t stop thinking about you.
Poli-Sci, short for Political Science. A social science discipline dealing with governance and power, constitution and law, and the analysis of political thought, power, and behaviour.
It’s possible that Jamie is doing a Political Science major at Princeton, with plans to work in government and politics when he graduates.
JAMIE: Yes, talking to you would’ve been a distraction.
PARIS: I know. I heard you already. My God, find a pirate to sit on, okay?
Paris refers to the popular stereotype of pirates having a pet parrot sitting on their shoulder (meaning that Jamie is repeating himself, like a parrot). It stems from the character of Long John Silver in Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson [pictured] – for ever after, the idea that pirates and parrots go together has sunk firmly into our collective imagination.
Although there are no accounts of pirates having parrots in real life, exotic birds would have been very valuable at that time, and well worth stealing. It’s more likely that pirates had parrots as profitable cargo, rather than as pets.
PARIS: Look, you don’t have to be nice, you don’t have to tie up loose ends. I get it, I’m a distraction. Now either pull a Boxing Helena, or give me back my hand.
Boxing Helena, a 1993 mystery thriller and body horror film directed by Jennifer Lynch, the daughter of David Lynch. It stars Sherilynn Fenn as Helena, a woman kept captive by a surgeon, played by Julian Sands, who amputates her limbs while holding her captive. The film did poorly at the box office, and received negative reviews, being branded both disturbing and tedious.
Sherilynn Fenn, who was in Twin Peaks, was reportedly Amy Sherman-Palladino’s preference to play Lorelai in Gilmore Girls. She later appears in the show in two different roles.
While Paris is still at Chilton, she sees Jamie, the Princeton student she had a date with in Washington DC. Jamie had her phone number but never called, thinking he didn’t need the “distraction” of having a girlfriend. Unable to think of anything but Paris, he has still not phoned her, but turned up at Chilton to see her.
Characters love showing up impulsively as a romantic gesture on the show – as is the way, Jamie waits patiently until Paris comes outside, and she hasn’t been kept back by a teacher or school meeting, and nobody from the school tries to move him on or report him to the police for hanging around the school gates.
Although Paris is shocked and flustered that Jamie has appeared three months after their date in August (confirming that it is now November), she is quickly persuaded to listen to him, and they go to have coffee together.
MADELINE: So there’s only gonna be one seventy-fourth anniversary issue ever and we didn’t do anything special for it.
LOUISE: I think the cover was of a deep-fried Mars bar.
A deep-fried Mars Bar is one which has been battered then deep-fried in oil. The dish has been claimed as originating at a chip shop in Stonehaven, Scotland in 1992, although this has been disputed, with others saying it had been sold elsewhere in Scotland in the 1980s. It became a media sensation in the mid-1990s and through the early 2000s as a symbol of unhealthy eating.
The dish isn’t common in the US, and the American Mars Bar is not the same as the one sold in the UK. The Mars Bar sold everywhere else in the world is caramel and nougat coated with milk chocolate. The US version is nougat and almonds covered in milk chocolate. At some point which nobody seems able to identify, caramel got added in there, but the bar was discontinued in 2002. When it was brought back in 2016, it was the “original” recipe without caramel.
Presumably the Franklin was covering the deep-fried Mars Bar as part of the media interest in it.
MADELINE: But you guys already have some decent stuff planned out, right?
PARIS: Madeline – or may I call you Spicoli?
Paris references the 1982 coming-of-age comedy-drama Fast Times at Ridgemont High, directed by Amy Heckerling (in her directorial debut). The screenplay is by Cameron Crowe, based on his 1981 book Fast Times at Ridgemont High: A True Story – Crowe went undercover at a high school in San Diego and wrote abut his experiences.
The ensemble cast includes Jennifer Jason Leigh, Brian Backer, Robert Romanus, Phoebe Cates, and Sean Penn as Jeff Spicoli [pictured], a permanently stoned surfer – Paris is suggesting Madeline is out of touch with reality as if she is on drugs. The film also marks early appearances by several actors who later became stars, including Nicolas Cage, Eric Stoltz, and Forest Whitaker (the first two in their feature film debuts).
The film initially had modest commercial and critical success, but was a sleeper hit due to word of mouth, and over time became more popular through television broadcasts and home video releases. It is now regarded as a classic and iconic film, and one of the best comedies, as well as one of the greatest high school movies.
The soundtrack to the film peaked at #54 on the album charts and features the work of many quintessential 1980s rock artists, including Jackson Browne, The Go-Go’s, and Jimmy Buffett.
PARIS: I think we need to work. The seventy-fifth anniversary issue of the Franklin comes out next month and I want it to be amazing.
In an earlier episode, Paris said the Franklin was almost a hundred years old. In this episode, we discover it is seventy-five years old, and was therefore founded in December 1927.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 