The Businessmen Scene

[Lane watches Henry in Act 3, interpreted as businessmen with cell phones]
HENRY: I am hurt. A plague on both your houses! Oh, I am sped. What, is he gone and hath nothing?

Henry’s speech is from Act 3, Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet. He is playing Mercutio, a close friend of Romeo, and a relative of Count Paris, who Juliet is betrothed to. It is he who persuades Romeo to attend the Capulet’s party where he meets Juliet and falls in love with her.

Something of a wild party animal, Mercutio is lively and witty, making him a memorable scene stealer in the play. Romeo refuses to duel with Juliet’s cousin Tybalt, as he now sees Tybalt as one of his kin, through his secret marriage to Juliet.

Mercutio is incensed at the dishonourable way Romeo has refused to fight, and duels Tybalt himself, getting stabbed to death for his troubles. As he dies, he furiously denounces both the Montagues and the Capulets, crying, “A plague on both your houses!”.

A grief-stricken Romeo kills Tybalt to avenge his dearest friend, leading to him being banished from the city, and setting the tragic portion of the play in motion.

“You might want to hold a phone up to your face”

RORY: I think act three is starting up.

LANE: Henry’s act. Um, how do I look?
RORY: You might want to hold a phone up to your face so he’ll recognize you.
LANE: Okay. [walks away]

Quite a bitchy comment to your best friend from “the sweetest kid in the world“. I think we can now assume that Rory has had enough and isn’t going to be helping Lane and Henry any more.

The Caveman Scene

BOY: Ooh, ooh. He jests at scars that never felt a wound. But, soft! What light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun.

The quote is from Act 2, Scene 1 of Romeo and Juliet, the famous “balcony scene” where Romeo hides in the orchard after the Capulet’s party where he met Juliet, then sees her leaning out of her window. He compares her beauty to that of the sun, moon, and stars.

Chuck E. Cheese

LUKE: You running around with that kid.
LORELAI: I wasn’t running, he’s not a kid. We had dinner. You say Chuck E. Cheese, I’ll break your nose.

Chuck E. Cheese is a family restaurant chain specialising in pizza and entertainment such as arcade games and animatronic stage shows, founded in 1977 by a co-founder of Atari. The first restaurant opened in San Jose, California, and the mascot is a rat named Chuck E. Cheese. They are popular places to hold children’s parties.

Jerry Lee Lewis

LORELAI: I go on one stupid date, and suddenly I’m the female Jerry Lee Lewis.

Jerry Lee Lewis (born 1935), wild man pioneer of rock and roll and rockabilly music who shot to fame in 1957 with his worldwide hit, Whole Lotta Shaking Going On, followed by other hits such as Great Balls of Fire. His career was struck by international scandal when he married his thirteen-year-old cousin once removed, Myra Gale Brown, despite still being married to his first wife. After his divorce went through, he and Myra remarried (or … married?) in 1958. Myra filed for divorce in 1970, saying she had been subjected to every form of abuse imaginable.

Lewis has had a career spanning decades of success. His 2006 album Last Man Standing is his best-selling to date, he has a dozen gold records in both rock and country music, four Grammy Awards including a Lifetime Achievement Award and a Hall of Fame Award. He’s been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, the Rockabilly Hall of Fame, and the Memphis Hall of Fame. A film about him was made in 1989 starring Dennis Quaid (based on a book written by Myra), and he is considered one of the greatest musical artists of all time.

Doogie Howser

LORELAI: Business school has to indicate some kind of maturity, right?
LUKE: Doogie Howser was a doctor at sixteen.
LORELAI: Doogie Howser was not real.

Dr Douglas “Doogie” Howser (played by Neil Patrick-Harris) is the protagonist of the television medical comedy-drama, Doogie Howser, MD (1989-1993). A child genius, Howser graduated from Princeton at the age of ten, and completed medical school at fourteen. The show opens on Doogie’s sixteenth birthday, and shows the challenges he faces practising medicine as a resident surgeon while also coping with the usual teenage problems.

The show was abruptly cancelled due to low ratings, but has made its mark as a cultural reference, as anyone young and very smart is generally dubbed “Doogie Howser”. This year it was rebooted as Doogie Kameāloha, MD, about a sixteen-year-old Hawaiian girl working as a doctor, with Peyton Lee in the title role.

In real life, Balamurali Ambati has the Guinness World Record for obtaining his medical license at the age of 17, graduating from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City in 1995. He thus became the youngest qualified medical doctor in the world, so not too far off Doogie Howser. (Dr Ambati disliked comparisons to Dr Howser, and as he was six feet tall at age fourteen, fit in with the other medical students and was popular with his peers).

“It makes me think about our first kiss”

TRISTAN: Well, it’s just, with this being our last kiss and all, it makes me think about our first kiss. You know, at the party.
RORY: What? …
TRISTAN: You remember the kiss. In Act 1 at the Capulet’s masked party?

Tristan promised not to say anything to Dean about the kiss he and Rory shared at Madeline’s party. However, he finds a fiendish way to allude to it, by talking about the first kiss their characters shared at the Capulet’s masked ball in Act 1, and suggesting that perhaps Juliet should cry during their kiss. This serves to delay the actual kiss, as he leaves Rory dangling while he pops up to ask for opinions. She’s clearly dreading being kissed in front of Dean, and he doesn’t let her get it over with quickly.

Rory naturally panics at where this slow reveal may be going, and begs Dean to leave, as he is making rehearsal more difficult. This situation is basically all Dean’s fault. He shouldn’t be at rehearsal – Rory is doing schoolwork, and he is at best a massive distraction. Dean knows perfectly well that he and Tristan get on each other’s nerves, they almost had a fist fight the first time they met. The rehearsal could never be anything but a disaster with Dean there.

Once Dean is gone, Tristan ends up storming out of the rehearsal in a temper, ready for trouble, and they have lost their Romeo the night before they have to perform the scene. By doing so, Tristan never does kiss Rory again. On some level, was he quitting as Romeo in order to protect Rory from a kiss she never wanted to have, to save his own pride if nothing else?

Beanie with a Propeller

RORY: How much older could [Paul] possibly look?
LORELAI: A lot! He’s usually a little scruffy, and then the baseball cap hides the funky hair thing.
RORY: He should’ve been holding a yo-yo and a lollipop and wearing a beanie with a propeller on it.

Rory is describing a stereotypical little boy as depicted by cartoonists in the 1960s and ’70s in particular, although it’s never quite gone away.

The helicopter beanie comes from the 1962 animated television show Beany and Cecil, based on the puppet show Time For Beany (1949-1955). Beany was a cherubic-faced blonde boy who wore a cap with a propeller on it that allowed him to fly, and as a result, similar caps became popular marketing novelties. Beany and Cecil had a revival in 1988, The New Adventures of Beany and Cecil, by the same people who made Ren and Stimpy.

Rory and the rest of the town tease Lorelai mercilessly for dating someone who is, at most, ten years younger than she is. Fans often say they wouldn’t have teased her for dating someone ten years older, which I think is correct, except in the case of Luke. He told her Ian Jack, the Chilton dad, was “too old” for her, and the actor playing him is ten years older than the age Lorelai is supposed to be. As Luke never even saw Ian, I’m pretty sure he would have objected to him whatever his age!