Footnotes to the TV series
RORY: What are you doing here?
DEAN: I just dropped by to say hello.
Phoning dozens of times per day and arriving on the doorstep unannounced is no longer enough to satisfy Dean’s stalker instincts – now he’s following Rory to the diner before school starts and hanging around until Lorelai invites him to breakfast. Because all cool moms like to decide for their daughter who she eats with, right?
RORY: No, he didn’t vandalize it. He wrote in the margins, thoughts and stuff.
LORELAI: Like what, like play basketball, eat a sandwich – stuff like that?
RORY: No, stuff, like margin stuff. People like Mark Twain wrote in margins.
LORELAI: Pilot a steamboat, write Huckleberry Finn?
Mark Twain, author of The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, often mentioned. As a young man, Mark Twain trained to be a pilot on a steamboat on the Mississippi River. His pen name comes from the cry “mark twain”, meaning that the river is twelve foot deep, a safe depth for a steamboat to travel in.
Mark Twain is famed for the barbed comments he wrote in the margins of books he read – his own books, I might add. Saratoga in 1901 by Landon D. Melville seems to have drawn his ire; Twain re-named it Saratoga in 1891, or The Droolings of an Idiot, and wrote in the margin that the author was “little-minded”.
Rory’s comment may suggest that Jess’ scribblings in the margins of Howl were likewise of a sarcastic nature.
LORELAI: I know. Look how hard he worked on that sign and everything. Look at the handwriting, it’s so precise, so determined. It’s focused-Luke.
RORY: That’s Jess’ handwriting.
LORELAI: Really? How do you know Jess’ writing?
RORY: Oh, well, I lent him a book and he wrote some stuff in it.
Lorelai’s examination of Jess’ handwriting is a sign of how much more careful, focused, and determined Jess really is, deep down. That boy has hidden depths. Is it possible that it was Jess who convinced Luke to put a new special on the board – and if so, was it a tease for Rory, knowing that she usually orders French toast?
Lorelai also discovers that Rory can recognise Jess’ handwriting, and that’s because he wrote in her book – “vandalised it”, as Lorelai says. Rory is careful to say that she “lent” her book to Jess, not that he took it without asking, the very first moment he met her.
Note that the sign next to the chalkboard is for the Howland Mercantile Co., a reminder of Jess writing in the margins of Rory’s copy of Howl and Other Poems.
Surprisingly, Lorelai doesn’t seem to be able to tell Luke’s handwriting from Jess’, even though Luke writes on the chalkboard all the time. Unless Jess and Luke have the same handwriting?
LORELAI: Luke’s special omelette. That is brand new.
RORY: A new special? His four-slice French toast has been up there since I was born!
An obvious exaggeration. Luke’s Diner didn’t exist when Rory was born, and Rory didn’t live in Stars Hollow until she was two. It shows just how much Rory dislikes change – in “Like Mother, Like Daughter”, Rory bewails being forced out of her cosy little rut at Chilton to make friends.
French toast seems to be Rory’s go-to breakfast at Luke’s Diner, apparently because it is always on the specials board.
RICHARD: I’ll be right back.
LORELAI: Right back, Dad, like right back. In fact, change on the way upstairs. And make it a Navy shower – quick soap, quick rinse and no excessive posing!
A Navy shower is a method of showering that saves water and energy by turning off the water while lathering, and then turning the water back on to rinse off. The total running time of this kind of shower can last less than two minutes. Navy showers originated on naval ships, where supplies of fresh water were often scarce.
In US naval parlance, the opposite of a Navy shower is a Hollywood shower, which is a long shower that uses up a lot of water – I think this is what Lorelai is referring to when she says “no excessive posing” (like a movie star posing for photographs).
Most likely, Lorelai talks about a Navy shower because Gomer Pyle, previously mentioned in this episode, became the star of his own show, Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C., which ran from 1964 to 1969. In this spin-off sit-com, the good-hearted Gomer Pyle joins the Marines, where he exasperates his drill sergeant with his frequent mistakes and misunderstandings.
EMILY: Stop!
LORELAI: Gomer said!
Lorelai is referring to Gomer Pyle, a character from The Andy Griffith Show, played by Jim Nabors. Gomer was the slow-witted, naïve mechanic who worked at the local filling station; at first very ignorant about cars, his knowledge increased until he was quite competent.
Lorelai calls Richard “Gomer” because he’s dressed in overalls and doing a mechanic’s work on his car.
LORELAI: Hey, no one told me it was casual Friday.
Casual Friday, a custom in some offices which allows for a more relaxed style of dress at work on certain Fridays of the year. It began in Hawaii in the mid-1960s, called Aloha Friday, with the idea that workers could wear traditional Hawaiian dress to the office on certain days. By the 1970s, it became acceptable to wear Hawaiian dress every day, but the idea of a more relaxed dress code on certain days spread to California, then to all of the US, and eventually throughout the West by the 1990s.
LORELAI: You know, you’re bound by the rules of the Geneva Convention, Mother, just like everyone else.
The Geneva Conventions are treaties and protocols that establish international legal standards for humanitarian treatment during war. The singular Geneva Convention refers to the agreements of 1949, negotiated in the aftermath of World War II. Lorelai melodramatically compares her being asked to wait for a meal to someone being tortured during wartime.
Paul Cézanne (1839-1906), French artist and Post-Impressionist painter whose work laid the foundations for the transition from the 19th century to the 20th in art, and a major influence on both Matisse and Picasso.
Richard may have taken up oil painting because it was the favoured hobby of Winston Churchill, who we know Richard admires. Churchill began in watercolours, but soon switched to oils, becoming known as a talented amateur painter.
RORY: When did he get that antique car anyhow?
EMILY: A couple of horrible weeks ago.
It’s now around the middle of April, so Richard bought his antique car at the beginning of the month. It seems that Richard has gone through several hobbies since he retired earlier in the year – even though Emily urged him to try new things, she doesn’t seem that thrilled with any of his choices.
In real life, Edward Hermann, who played Richard, was a car enthusiast and did restore antique cars as a hobby.
(Technically it’s possible that this is the same Friday the previous episode ended on, but it doesn’t seem likely, because that finished with a big community feast at the diner. Lorelai and Rory shouldn’t be so hungry if they’d eaten only an hour earlier).
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 