Footnotes to the TV series
[Rory walks past the video store, which her picture is in the window. As she stares at it, Jess walks over to her.]
JESS: Nice picture.
Oh, very smooth. We already know how much you like Rory’s pictures, Jess!
Rory has been named Citizen of the Month in Stars Hollow, which is why her photo is up in the window of the video store. It shows her in her Chilton uniform against a blank background, and may be from school photo day.
Rory wonders where Taylor and Kirk got the photo from. Good question!
RICHARD: I am an annoyance to my wife and a burden to my daughter. Suddenly I realize what it feels like to be obsolete. I hope that you never have to learn what that feels like.
Richard has always been so focused on his job and career, he never thought about what would happen when he retired. And he’s rather young to retire as well, making it even harder for him. Just as Emily’s visit to Stars Hollow is soured by her discovery that Lorelai was so unhappy she preferred to live in a shed rather than at home, Richard is left with the unhappy realisation that Lorelai has only bothered to see him as a favour to Emily, to get him off her hands for one day.
RICHARD: You have never once invited me to your house Lorelai, never. And I can hardly point to an event that would prompt you to do so except my recent employment situation.
Richard has been to Lorelai’s house before, for Rory’s sixteenth birthday party, but in that case, it was Rory who invited him.
LORELAI: Rory’s my kid and I make the rules, so if she comes home one day and says, ‘Hey, uh, I’m gonna spend the weekend with Patricia Krenwinkle’ and I say, ‘Okay, grab a sweater’, you just have to deal.
Patricia Krenwinkel (born 1947), murderer and member of the Manson Family. She is now the longest-incarcerated female inmate in the Californian penal system. Krenwinkel was on death row in 1971, but in 1972 her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment after all death sentences were invalidated prior to that date. She has expressed remorse for her crimes, and is a model prisoner, having received a Bachelor degree in Human Services from the University of La Verne.
RICHARD: I guess you can’t take constructive criticism.
LORELAI: Nothing that came out of your mouth today might, in any universe visited by Kirk or Spock, be construed as constructive.
A reference to the original series of Star Trek, previously and frequently mentioned. In the episode “Mirror, Mirror”, Captain Kirk and other members of his crew visited a parallel universe they called the Mirror Universe, where they meet alternate versions of themselves. It is regarded as one of the best episodes of the original series, and the Mirror Universe was explored further in subsequent Star Trek shows.
RICHARD: How tall are you?
DEAN: Why, you wanna dance?
Edward Hermann is 6 foot 5, and Jared Padalecki is 6 foot 2 (although in the show, Dean is 6 feet tall, so maybe Richard is 6 foot 3?).
[Dean and Richard get in their cars and drive off.]
LORELAI: Don’t you feel like one of us should’ve been standing between them waving a flag or something?
A reference to the 1978 film Grease, previously mentioned. When Danny Zuko’s (John Travolta’s) gang the T-Birds have a drag race with rival rang the Scorpions, Cha-Cha (played by Annette Charles), one of the Scorpion’s girlfriends, starts the race by standing between the two cars waving a “flag” – actually a scarf or bandana.
RICHARD: And drive behind me. I don’t want that thing blowing up right in front of the Jag.
DEAN: No problem. Try to keep your electrical system working long enough to get there.
Jag is short for Jaguar, a luxury British vehicle company headquartered in Coventry, originally founded in 1922 as the Swallow Sidecar Company. The current name was chosen in 1945. It holds royal warrants from Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, and has manufactured cars for the British Prime Minister.
There isn’t a good shot of Richard’s Jaguar, it’s behind Rory’s car. I have been informed by a trustworthy source that the car appears to be a Jaguar XJ6 sedan, possibly a 1974 model, based on its hood ornament, chrome bumper bar and paint colour. That’s a classic car known for its performance and superb handling.
Dean mocks it for being unreliable, probably because the 1970s XJ6 sold to the US market is notoriously difficult and expensive to restore and maintain, due to its complexity and numerous issues with the electrics. However, Richard is later shown to be very interested in old cars and has a lot of money (and a chauffeur … hey, whatever happened to Lance, anyway?), so he would be well positioned to take care of an old Jag properly.
You can see Richard is being slightly hypocritical about Rory’s car, since his own vehicle is old, and probably has more safety and reliability issues than the one that Dean has rebuilt.
DEAN: Mr. Gilmore, I understand you want Rory to be safe, but so do I. I would not give this car to her if I did not know for a fact that it was a hundred percent safe. I checked it, my father checked it, and Gypsy at Hewes Brothers checked it.
We are now introduced to a new character in Gilmore Girls – the local mechanic, Gypsy, who works at Hewes Brothers. This is slightly confusing, because in an early episode, Lorelai refers to the local garage as Musky’s, then in “Love, Daisies and Troubadours”, she says that Maven Hewes bought the garage from Jim Dunning.
Musky’s may be a completely different business, an auto body shop which does smash repairs rather than a garage. I suppose it is just possible that Maven and Musky are the two Hewes Brothers, or Musky is Maven’s nickname. In either case, we never see the Hewes Brothers, who seem to have left everything in the capable hands of their mechanic (or perhaps she bought the business from them, including the name).
Gypsy is left as an intentional cypher in the show. We never discover her surname, or find out if Gypsy is her real name or a nickname. We learn nothing of her backstory or why she came to town. We don’t find out her ethnic heritage, or her sexual orientation.
All we need to know is that she’s a sarcastic, straight-talking mechanic who is extremely good at her job and highly respected for it. Nobody ever questions her skills, and it is said that if Gypsy can’t fix a vehicle, then nobody can.
LORELAI: Dean, now that you’re done with that, will you build me a plane? One that looks like Shamu?
Shamu is the name given to various killer whales (orcas) at Seaworld parks. The first Shamu was captured in 1965 and died in 1971. Her name means “friend of Namu” – Namu was a male orca captured in 1965, named after a fishing port in British Columbia, Canada, close to his site of capture. The whales named Shamu were always the “star” of the killer whale show.
In 1988, Southwest Airlines designed a plane called Shamu One, a Boeing 737 painted to look like a killer whale, to promote travel to Seaworld in Texas.
Southwest Airlines ended their relationship with Seaworld in 2014, after the release of the 2013 documentary Black Fish focused on the mistreatment of orcas in captivity. In 2016, Seaworld discontinued its orca breeding program.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 