Dean Obsessively Calls the House

DEAN [on answering machine]: Hey, it’s me. Uh, it’s four o’clock, call me when you get home. [beep] Hey, uh, it’s four thirty. I’m home, call me. [beep] It’s quarter to five – where are you? I’ll try paging you. [beep] It’s five-thirty. Did you get my page? Call with the answer … Hey, I totally forgot you were getting home at six …Hey, it’s five forty-five and I just thought I’d see if you got home early.

Dean has always had an obsessive streak and a trigger-finger when using the phone – something which Rory originally found endearing, and accepted with complacence. But now that four calls during a study session while she’s home alone has ballooned into fourteen calls while she’s staying late at school to work on a group project, she’s starting to see that Dean is not so much clingy as stifling. Even after he remembers Rory is staying back until 6 pm, he still calls her, on the off-chance she got home early!

Dean the Determined

LORELAI: Dean the determined.

An obvious play on epithets historically given to royalty – Ivan the Terrible, James the Just, Alfred the Great, Gerald the Fearless, Philip the Handsome, and so on.

There was a real royal with this epithet – Antonio the Determined [pictured], who managed to rule Portugal as Antony I for at least twenty days during a succession crisis. Although Philip II of Spain prevailed, Antonio did not gracefully admit defeat, but attempted to rule Portugal from the Azores, where he established an opposition government that clung on for three more years. He went into exile in France and England, taking the crown jewels with him.

In Antonio’s case, “determined” seems to be a polite word for “desperate”, or even “delusional”. Dean will likewise do his darnedest to grimly hang onto Rory, even when he knows he’s lost.

Mötley Crüe Book

LORELAI: Uh, you’ve gotta read this Mötley Crüe book. I swear, you get to the point where Ozzy Osbourne snorts a row of ants and you think, it cannot get any grosser, and then you turn the page and oh, hello, yes it can! It’s excellent!

Lorelai is reading The Dirt: Confessions of the World’s Most Notorious Rock Band, a 2001 collaborative autobiography of Mötley Crüe by the band members – Tommy Lee, Mick Mars, Vince Neil, and Nikki Sixx. The gritty tell-all book received rave reviews and was on the New York Times Bestseller List for four weeks. It was made into a film in 2019.

The next page, where it gets “grosser” than snorting ants involves Ozzy Osbourne, from Black Sabbath, licking urine (his own and someone else’s) from the pavement.

Lorelai is a heavy metal fan who loves scandalous and outrageous autobiographies, so this book is a natural fit for her.

Business Fair Pitches

Louise – a lipstick tracking device (rejected as not unisex enough)

Madeline – locker robot to help with homework and carry stuff (rejected as too complex)

Paris – flashy locker first aid kits

Richard says that he loves Paris’ idea, and Rory, as group leader, immediately accepts it as the product they are running with. We never get to hear Brad and Chip’s ideas, which seems rather unfair. Neither of them protest though. Probably because they’re too frightened of Paris.

The Pigeon Sisters and Opus

PARIS: I’m sorry, group leader, could you ask the Pigeon sisters if there is a point to this opus?

The Pigeon sisters are characters from the film The Odd Couple, previously mentioned. They are English sisters named Cecily and Gwendolyn Pigeon who live in the same building as Felix and Oscar. They were played by cousins Monica Evans and Carole Shelley in the original Broadway play, the film, and the 1970 sit-com, although their roles were gradually phased out in the television show.

The Pigeon sisters are friendly, flirtatious, ditzy, and as their name suggests, slightly bird-brained, rather like Louise and Madeline. Paris has no problem tearing down her friends in public; no wonder that Rory isn’t sure whether Paris is her friend or not.

An opus is an artistic work, especially one on a grand scale.

LoJack

RORY: Louise, what’s your idea?

LOUISE: A lipstick LoJack.

LoJack is a recovery system for stolen cars that uses GPS to locate vehicles, notifying police of its location and allowing recovery in less than half an hour. The LoJack system was created and patented in 1979 by William Reagan, a former police commissioner. Its name is meant to be the opposite of hijack.

Although we haven’t developed a LoJack system for lipsticks, there are now similar systems in place to find computers, laptops, and phones, and even lost car keys can give off a sound to alert the owner to their position, so Louise’s idea was ahead of its time.

Bobby Fischer

PARIS: We dress up the kits with sparkles, colors, pictures of bands. Sport themes for the boys, animal pictures for the puppy and unicorn bunch, chess boards for the Bobby Fischer freaks …

Robert “Bobby” Fischer (1943-2008), American chess grandmaster and the eleventh World Chess Champion. He was a chess prodigy, winning the 1958 US Championship at the age of 14. He withdrew from the public eye in 1975, with reports of increasingly erratic behaviour through the years.

“Ah! Mon Dieu”

GISELLE: Ah! Mon dieu, you are gorgeous! Come, come! Embrassez maman!

MICHEL: Maman, j’aime ton visite.

Giselle says, “Ah! My God … Give Mom a hug!”.

Michel replies, “Mom, I love your visits”.

Giselle has apparently visited Michel several times before, but this seems to be the first time she has ever been to his workplace, as Lorelai and Sookie have never met her before. Michel was going to pick his mother up from the airport, but she came on an earlier flight so she could buy him presents, which seems to explain why she has turned up at the Independence Inn unannounced.

Giselle Gerard (Janet Hubert)

In this episode we meet Michel’s mother, Giselle, who is visiting from Paris. She and Michel adore each other, and are “best friends” mother and son, who love to tease and joke with each other, using a banter that sounds like something out of a Noel Coward play.

This makes them seem quite similar to Lorelai and Rory, who are also self-proclaimed “best friends” with a comic patter between them. Janet Hubert is only fourteen years older than Yanic Truesale, suggesting she is supposed to be a very young glamorous mother like Lorelai.

Michel addresses his mother by her first name at one point, and you can hear the French pronunciation of it – ZEE-ZEHL. Giselle may have possibly been named with the French ballet Giselle in mind, one of the world’s most popular classical ballets.