“Make way for Rory”

BOUNCER: It’s twelve bucks. And it’s eighteen and over.
SOOKIE: Oh, she’s eighteen.
RORY: That’s right. Last week. So it’s a new eighteen, but it’s eighteen, yup.
BOUNCER: You got some ID?
LORELAI: Hey, uh, sir, make way for Rory. That’s her name. And her only name. Rory. Single name, she’s that important. Internationally known international supermodel and sometimes spokesperson for international products.

An in-joke – Alexis Bledel, who plays Rory, was a model before she began acting on Gilmore Girls. She first modelled for Seventeen magazine, and did have to travel as a model.

In real life, it is extremely unlikely that a bouncer would allow a 16-year-old girl without any identification into a nightclub that is 18+, even when accompanied by her parent; the penalties for doing so in the US can be quite strict. Lorelai’s way of getting people to make new rules for Gilmores is really getting quite unbelievable.

Alexis Bledel was almost 20 in this scene, so in real life actually would have been old enough to get into an eighteen and over nightclub.

Duluth

MAX: Anyway, he didn’t make it [Max’s brother trying to jump over a parking meter].
LORELAI: Ugh. Ouch. How drunk was he?
MAX: He claims he wasn’t drunk. He’s saying that the parking meters in Hartford are taller than the parking meters in Duluth, so he just miscalculated.

Duluth is a major port city in Minnesota on the shores of Lake Superior, with a population of over 85 000. Once an industrial city, its economy is now geared towards finance, retail, medicine, and tourism. (There is a Duluth in Georgia too, a suburb of Atlanta, but that seems less likely, as people usually identify the city they live in rather than the suburb).

It is not known whether Duluth is where Max is from originally, or if his brother moved there. Because of the superior way Max says, “Middle child”, it sounds as if Max is the eldest of three siblings. As Max says, “My brother”, instead of, “One of my brothers”, it suggests the youngest sibling is Max’s sister.

Duluth receives a slight mention in A Year in the Life: on one of the many wedding cakes that Sookie makes for Lorelai and Luke, there is a bridge with DULUTH printed on it. That might be a little callback to the preparations for Lorelai’s first planned wedding.

“Poor Jan”

MAX: We’re coming out of the restaurant and we’re heading toward our next stop when my brother decides to leap frog over a parking meter.
LORELAI: Why did he do that?
MAX: Middle child.
LORELAI: Poor Jan.

Lorelai is referring to Jan Brady, played by Eve Plumb, a character from the sitcom The Brady Bunch, which showed the daily lives of a large blended family. In the show, Jan was the middle of three girls, and often portrayed as being jealous of her popular older sister Marcia (Maureen McCormick), or otherwise worried about her awkward position as the middle daughter, which sometimes led her into attention-seeking behaviour.

The Brady Bunch originally aired from 1969 to 1974. It was never a big success during its original run, but became a popular staple when it went into syndication, especially among children and teenaged viewers. This success led to several TV reunion movies, and two satirical comedy films in the 1990s. It is now seen as a cultural icon, and is still on American TV in reruns.

401(k)s

SOOKIE: Just try to look older [to get into the nightclub].
RORY: How?
SOOKIE: Look like you’re thinking about retirements or 401(k)s and stuff.

In the United States, a 410(k) is a pension account where retirement savings receive contributions from the employer, and is tax-deferred until retirement. In other countries, it might be called a personal pension scheme or superannuation fund.

Pokey

MICHEL: This is a felony, you know, corrupting a minor. We’ll all end up in the pokey [for trying to get Rory into a nightclub].
RORY (imitating Michel’s pronunciation): He’s right. We’re all going to the pooky.
LORELAI: Sweetie, don’t say “pooky”. It’s creepy.

Pokey is American slang for “gaol”, dating to the early 20th century. It’s a variant of pogey, 19th century British slang for a poorhouse.

Ducks

LUKE: It’s not biologically natural for people to mate for life. Animals don’t mate for life. Well, ducks do, but who the hell cares what ducks do?

In fact ducks don’t mate for life – most duck species, such as mallards, are monogamous, but for only for a single breeding season (a possible foreshadowing of the length of Max and Lorelai’s bond).

Some sea ducks are thought to return to the same partner when they make their way to the breeding grounds, but this is hardly the same as what a human marriage is generally like. In a few species of stiff-tailed duck, polygamy is the norm, with one male mating with several females.

Furthermore, even within pair-bonded duck couples, promiscuity is reasonably common – they are socially monogamous, not necessarily sexually monogamous.

Max and Lorelai Fight

Max tries to do what Dean never bothered to do with Rory – demand to know exactly what role Lorelai sees him having in her life when they are married. He was all prepared to be a good stepfather to Rory (and probably a stricter parent than Lorelai), but is now told that it won’t be necessary – Rory is almost grown, and already “brought up”.

Upon asking what exactly his role in Lorelai’s life will be, it turns out that pretty much all Lorelai sees him doing is the cooking, answering the phone, and servicing her sexually. For some reason, he isn’t satisfied with being her personal chef-secretary-gigolo, and is horrified to discover that Lorelai has given precisely zero thought to how their lives will work as a married couple, even though it’s just two weeks until their wedding.

Anyone can see there are rocks ahead in this union. The fight ends when Max realises he broke Dean’s rule not to discuss anything serious late at night, during the “cranky hour”. Is he already being trained into the sort of dumb obedience that Gilmore girls demand?

At the end of the fight, Lorelai looks miserable and thoughtful. She must surely be realising she is not ready for marriage, and wondering what to do.

“Robot kid in A.I.”

MAX: Say you’re not here, I come home, there’s Rory and Dean in the dark all alone after eleven. I mean, how do I handle stuff like that?
LORELAI: Oh, Max, Rory is very low maintenance. Kind of like that robot kid in A.I., only way less mother-obsessed. Oh my God, that kid was so annoying. I would’ve pushed him out of the car while it was still moving.

Lorelai is referring to the 2001 science-fiction film A.I. Artificial Intelligence, directed by Steven Spielberg and partly based on the 1969 short story Supertoys Last All Summer Long by British sci-fi author Brian Aldiss. Development on the film was first started by Stanley Kubrick in the 1970s, but the film was not completed until after his death; the film is dedicated to Kubrick.

Set in the late 22nd century, the film is about an artificial boy named David (Haley Joel Osment), who is programmed to have an enduring love for his human mother, Monica Swinton (Frances O’Connor). The film is primarily about David’s search for reassurance that Monica returned his love.

A.I. Artificial Intelligence was a commercial success, and the 4th highest-selling film world-wide, although it did less well in the US. It received mixed reviews, with most critics seeing it as brilliant, if flawed.

This is the second time Lorelai has called Rory “low maintenance”. The first time was in regard to school, where her “low maintenance” included enormously high school fees that required wealthy family members to chip in. Now she is calling Rory emotionally low maintenance, even though Rory in fact needs her mother to face most challenges. “Low maintenance” can join “sweetest kid in the world” as one of Lorelai’s least convincing descriptions of Rory.

Puce

MAX: How ya doing?
LORELAI: Mm, I’m stable.
MAX: You’re a lovely shade of puce.
LORELAI: Don’t say puce. It sounds too much like another word I don’t wanna hear right now.

Puce is a dark red or purple-ish brown colour. The word comes from the French word for “flea”, and is supposedly named for the colour of bloodstains on bed sheets after a flea has been crushed.

Lorelai moans that the colour reminds her of the word “puke”.