Category: S3Ep9: A Deepfried Korean Thanksgiving

Nordstrom’s

LORELAI: Oh, wow, it’s a piano player.

EMILY: That’s Brad. I found him at Nordstrom’s.

LORELAI: Was he on sale?

Nordstrom is a luxury department store headquartered in Seattle, Washington, and founded by John W. Nordstrom and Carl F. Wallin in 1901. The original Wallin & Nordstrom store operated exclusively as a shoe store, and a second Nordstrom’s shoe store opened in 1923. The growing Nordstrom Best chain began selling clothing in 1963, and became the Nordstrom full-line retailer that presently exists by 1971.

There is a Nordstrom at Westfarms Mall in West Hartford.

Cold War

RORY: You ready for this? … Even with the Cold War?

LORELAI: That’s been going on for thirty-four years? I can manage.

The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term cold war is used because there was no large-scale fighting directly between the two superpowers, but they each supported major regional conflicts known as proxy wars.

The conflict was based around the ideological and geopolitical struggle for global influence by these two superpowers, following their temporary alliance and victory against Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan in 1945. Aside from nuclear development and military deployment, the struggle for dominance was expressed via indirect means such as psychological warfare, propaganda campaigns, espionage, embargoes, rivalry at sports events, and technological competitions such as the Space Race.

The end of the Cold War is dated to the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. President George H.W. Bush claimed that America therefore “won the Cold War”.

According to Lorelai, the “cold war” between she and her parents began almost at birth!

“The whole town is watching”

RORY: I know, but now I just feel like everybody’s watching me … The whole town is watching.

Rory still does not feel comfortable kissing Jess in front of others, even at a private gathering where Dean cannot possibly see them. She feels as if everyone in town is scrutinising and judging her behaviour, and the fact that Jess was so unpopular in town that there was a secret meeting set up to get rid of him cannot have escaped her attention. She’s always been the town’s sweetheart, and now she’s made a choice that she fears will make her unpopular.

Smallpox-Infested Blankets

LUKE: Shouldn’t we give thanks first?

JESS: Thanks for what?

LUKE: Well, that we’re not Native Americans who got their land stolen in exchange for smallpox infested blankets.

Luke refers to the commonly held belief that British colonists gave Native American tribes blankets that were infected with smallpox, as an act of genocidal biological warfare. There is only one recorded instance of this actually being planned, in Pennsylvania. It is unknown whether this cruel scheme was ever put into operation, and if so, whether the blankets made anyone ill – they were old, and may have no longer been infectious.

Nine months later, smallpox was raging in the community, but it was everywhere by then, and cannot be traced to a blanket. There is no suggestion that land was traded in exchange for the blankets (if they were given at all).

However, while Luke’s statement isn’t strictly correct, there is no denying the overall truth that Native Americans had their land taken from them, often brutally, and that their population was devastated by smallpox, to which they had no immunity.

Thunderdome

[Jackson pushes open the door and holds up the turkey]

JACKSON: Did someone say . . . Jackson?

[the crowd cheers]

LORELAI: Wow, it’s like Thunderdome in here.

Thunderdome is a fight-to-the-death gladiatorial arena in the 1985 Australian post-apocalyptic dystopian film Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome. It is the third instalment of the Mad Max series, and is directed by George Miller and George Ogilvie, starring Mel Gibson and Tina Turner. The film was a modest commercial success and received mostly positive reviews, with praise for the lead actors, and for the creative action and fight scenes.

Sookie’s Turkey Plans

SOOKIE: A couple of days ago, Jackson asked me if he could cook the turkey. I thought he was gonna roast it, stick a couple of onions around it, something simple. So I said yes, figuring that the minute he put it in the oven and leaves the kitchen, I can sneak in and give it a nice herb butter rub and stuff it with a pancetta-chestnut stuffing.

Sookie allows Jackson to cook the Thanksgiving turkey when his family come for dinner, but with this couple’s typical rotten communication, what Sookie actually means is that as soon as she gets a chance she will secretly rub the turkey over with herb butter to keep it moist, and stuff it with chestnuts and pancetta (an Italian salt-cured pork belly meat product).

Although this sounds lovely, Jackson’s plan is actually to deep fry the turkey in peanut oil, much to Sookie’s dismay. Of course, he doesn’t share his plans with Sookie, and she doesn’t tell him how unhappy she is about it.

Visigoths

RORY: What is the oil for?

LORELAI: For pouring on Visigoths.

The Visigoths, an early Germanic people. Under their first leader, Alaric I, they invaded Italy and sacked Rome in 410. They later settled in southern Gaul and Hispania (modern France and Spain), and maintained a presence there from the 5th to the 8th century AD.

Lorelai refers to the popular idea of medieval castle defenders pouring boiling oil onto their assailants in order to protect themselves during a siege. There are only a few known instances of it actually happening (none against the Visigoths).

Historians think that the oil would have been hot, rather than boiling, and that it had the added advantage of making everything too slippery to climb. It probably wasn’t used very often, as oil was so expensive that hardly anyone had enough of it in stock. Boiling water and hot sand were far more commonly used.