Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story

This 1994 television movie directed by Oz Scott is the movie Lorelai and Rory watch with Dean. It has been previously mentioned as a biographical drama film in which Joan and Melissa Rivers played themselves, recreating key moments in their lives together.

Lorelai mentions some of these, such as the suicide of Melissa’s father, Edgar Rosenberg in 1987; Joan getting banned from The Tonight Show, where she first became famous, in 1986 (she didn’t return until 2014); and Joan forcing Melissa to get a nose job at eighteen which matched her mother’s nose job around 1986.

The film was panned as critics as strange, embarassing and self-indulgent, so Lorelai and Rory are not alone in mocking it. I would imagine they are watching a video of the movie which Lorelai taped off TV.

Rory has just got back with Dean, and he is immediately returned to the status quo of watching movies chosen by his girlfriend and her mother, and doing chores for Lorelai. I guess we’re meant to assume that just being permitted to love a Gilmore girl is so wonderful that you will allow yourself to be treated like a nonentity in sheer gratitude.

“Silly rabbit”

RORY: When is dinner ready?
LORELAI: Do I look like a timer?
RORY: I thought you might have set one.
LORELAI: Silly rabbit.
RORY: Timers are for kids.

Lorelai and Rory are referring to the advertising campaign for Trix – a corn-based, very sugary, artificially coloured and flavoured breakfast cereal manufactured by General Mills, and first brought out in 1954. The highly popular marketing campaign began in 1955, and shows a cartoon rabbit who tries to trick children into giving him their cereal. The tagline is, “Silly rabbit – Trix are for kids!”.

Whether the breakfast cereal had anything to do with Richard Gilmore’s pet name for his mother is unknown, but he would have been ten or eleven when the cereal came out, and part of the company’s target demographic.

Zelda Fitzgerald

RORY: Did you pick out your ring?
LORELAI: Yup, he’s gonna surprise me with it tomorrow.
RORY: Twenties Deco?
LORELAI: Supposedly ripped right off of Zelda Fitzgerald’s cold dead hand.

Zelda Fitzgerald, born Zelda Sayre (1900-1948) was an American socialite, writer, artist, and the wife of author F. Scott Fitzgerald. The couple became icons of the Jazz Age, and her husband dubbed Zelda “the first American flapper”.

The Fitzgeralds’ marriage deteriorated, and Zelda was admitted to psychiatric care, diagnosed as schizophrenic. She spent the rest of her life in and out of sanatoriums. Like Amy Sherman-Palladino, Zelda studied ballet as a child, and as an adult, became obsessed with it again to the detriment of her health.

Lorelai is joking about her engagement ring being Zelda Fitzgerald’s, just that it is from the 1920s. It is telling that she links her engagement ring with a woman who had a famously disastrous marriage.

Cher and Gregg Allman

RORY: Okay good, so it’s decided. Breaking up, not for us.
DEAN: I mean, hey, not that it’s a bad thing. I’m sure some people like it.
RORY: Oh sure, Cher, Greg Allman, bet they’d give it a big thumbs up.

The singer Cher (born Cherilyn Sarkisan in 1946), earlier mentioned, married singer-songwriter Gregg Allman (1947-2017) in 1975, and they were divorced in 1978. Greg Allman remarried almost immediately (he married seven times in all), while Cher has never married again. Despite their troubled marriage, Greg Allman reported that he and Cher remained on speaking terms, one of only two ex-wives this was true of. This is another reference to marriage ending in divorce in this episode.

It seems slightly implausible that Cher’s divorce in the 1970s is the handiest break-up reference for Rory, but Cher received numerous mentions during the run of Gilmore Girls.

Cujo

MAX: She’s [Lorelai’s] right there with you isn’t she?
RORY: What? No.
MAX: No, I thought I heard her bark.
RORY: No, that’s just a wild jackal that hangs out here sometimes.
MAX: Mm hmm. Put Cujo on the phone please.

Cujo is a 1983 horror film, directed by Lewis Teague and based on the 1981 Stephen King novel of the same name. It is about a rabid St. Bernard dog named Cujo who traps a mother and son in a car without food or water during a heat wave. Cujo was a modest success, and despite receiving mixed reviews not only has a cult following, but is one of Stephen King’s favourite adaptations of his own work.

Deco

MAX: The third one [ring] is from the twenties … Large diamond in the middle …Diamond clusters on the sides … A little Deco.

Max is referring to Art Deco, a decorative style which flourished in the 1920s and influenced the style of architecture, furniture, jewellery, fashion, vehicles, and everyday objects. Art Deco was designed to be both modern and luxurious, with extravagent yet exquisite craftsmanship.

Art Deco jewellery is usually white-gold or platinum, with European-cut diamonds, filigree work, and geometric designs.

Spumoni

RORY: What about colours? Did you pick your colours yet?
LORELAI: Yes.
RORY: Really? What?
LORELAI: Spumoni.

Spumoni is an Italian moulded gelato dish with layers of different colours and flavours – traditionally cherry, pistachio, and chocolate. So Lorelai is jokingly saying her wedding colours will be pink, green, and brown; Rory isn’t impressed.

Stephanie Seymour in the Guns N’ Roses Video

RORY: So, what kind of dress are you thinking of?
LORELAI: Um, the one Stephanie Seymour wore in the Guns N’ Roses video.

Lorelai is referring to the music video to the 1992 power ballad November Rain, written by Axl Rose and from Guns N’ Roses’ 1991 album Use Your Illusion I. The song got to #3 on the charts, and at over eight minutes long, is the longest song to ever get into the Top Ten.

The music video, directed by Andy Morhan, shows Axl Rose getting married to his then-girlfriend, model and actress Stephanie Seymour, intercut with a live performance of the song. Seymour is wearing a traditional white wedding dress with a long train and a veil, but the front of the dress puffed up to be as short as a mini skirt. On a budget of over one million dollars (with $8000 spent on the dress), the video won the MTV Award for Best Cinematography.

The song is about a man’s unrequited love for a woman who no longer loves him in return, another foreshadowing of what is to come between Lorelai and Max. (The name Axl even looks and sounds a little like the name Max). The music video is based on the short story Without You by Del James, a friend of Rose’s; in the story the girl shoots herself, but the music video is ambiguous whether the Stephanie Seymour character’s death is a suicide or a murder. Yet another love leads to death reference in Gilmore Girls!

In 1993, Stephanie Seymour abruptly left Axl Rose to be with someone else – a foreshadowing of Lorelai’s future behaviour.

Tater Tots

LORELAI: Do you want Tater Tots also?
RORY: That’s a rhetorical question right?

Tater Tots are a frozen food product of deep-fried, grated potato made by Ore-Ida; the brand is owned by Heinz. First sold in 1953, Tater Tots are a popular item in American school cafeterias.

Lane’s Korean Name

Lane tells Rory her “Korean name” – it is unclear whether this is her legal name, and Lane is a name to be used among English-speakers, or whether Lane is her legal name, and her Korean name is a middle name given to help preserve her culture, and to be used when she is among people of Korean heritage. I suspect the latter.

The teletext says that Lane’s Korean name is Hyung-Hyung, which is highly improbable. Hyung is not a Korean name, but a title of respect given to address a male, literally meaning “older brother”. The Kims would have been completely nutty to choose that as Lane’s Korean name, and if done deliberately, must be a joke by the scriptwriter (Amy Sherman-Palladino).

It is possible that Lane actually says her Korean name is Hyun-Kyung, which can be translated as “virtuous respect”. It’s a reasonably common Korean name for girls, and there are several famous women with the name.

(Lane seems to have bought two lava lamps from Andrew’s bookstore, Stars Hollow Books).