Footnotes to the TV series
SOOKIE: Last looks. [Does a turn while Lorelai claps]
In film and television industry lingo, “Last looks” is the phrase said by the assistant director to call in hair and make-up to give the final touch to actors before the scene is filmed.
There isn’t any real reason for Sookie the character to know or use the phrase, so it’s an in-joke or meta-comment.
SOOKIE: This is a really nice thing you’re doing for me.
LORELAI: Anytime Sookie.
Lorelai might not have done anything to promote the relationship between Sookie and Jackson, but now that Sookie has made her choice, Lorelai is doing everything she can to make their night special. She goes above and beyond for Sookie in this episode, showing that she really can be a good friend and is determined to make up for her thoughtless comment about Sookie’s single status in the previous episode.
LANE: We’ll tell her [Lorelai] that we’re meeting Dean for a movie, and then we go to the movie, and then somebody who just happens to be a friend of Dean’s just happens to be there for the same movie, and so we figure that it would be completely rude for us to not ask said person to come sit with us.
RORY: I say to hell with governor, you run directly for president.
LANE: It’s not that bad.
Many US Presidents have been Governor of their state before making the run for the White House, including George W. Bush, former Governor of Texas, who had only recently (from Rory’s perspective) been sworn in as President, on January 20 2001.
In 2001, the last US President to run for President without standing as a state Governor was George Bush Sr. [pictured], who was a Congressman, Ambassador to the UN, Ambassador to China, then Director of Central Intelligence before his successful presidential campaign in 1988 (sworn in 1989).
Rory is saying that Lane’s lying is on a scale that only a politician at the highest level could come up with. Lane understandably tries to downplay that one.
LANE: You’re sure you don’t mind [as she borrows items for the date]?
RORY: What’s mine is yours.
This common phrase denoting generosity is so well known that we may forget it originated as a quote from William Shakespeare. In the play Measure for Measure the line is, “What’s mine is yours, and what is yours is mine”.
This 1988 song by Sam Phillips plays while Rory and Lane get ready for their double date. It is from her album The Indescribable Wow, earlier discussed.
SOOKIE: Not too much [make up].
LORELAI: No – just enough to say, “Hey sailor”.
A joke flirtatious catchphrase, supposedly from a prostitute or promiscuous woman (or man) to a male sailor, as if he is sexually frustrated after months at sea.
Lorelai is saying Sookie just needs enough make up to attract the attention of a desperate and not very fussy man. Not all that flattering, but Lorelai’s jokes rarely are.
LORELAI: Diva Glam.
RORY: I’ve got it.
LORELAI: Bring it up.
This seems to be the lipstick that Lorelai and Rory favour. I think it was made by MAC Cosmetics; the company was founded in Canada in 1984, and by 1998 were owned by Estee Lauder. Famous for their celebrity endorsements, and widely available in department stores such as Macy’s and Bloomingdale’s, MAC is one of the biggest-selling make-up brands world-wide. You will remember that Rory linked Lorelai’s make-up to RuPaul, who was the face of MAC in the late 1990s.
[Rory sitting on a bench reading. Dean come out, sees her and goes and sits with her]
DEAN: Is there anything in there about me?
RORY: I don’t know. You name wouldn’t be Lithium would it?
Rory is reading The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, edited by Karen V. Kukil. It was first published in 2000. The American poet, novelist, and short story writer Sylvia Plath (1932-1963) suffered from clinical depression which at times was severe.
Plath was hospitalised in a psychiatric ward for several months while in college, receiving electroconvulsive therapy, and required intermittant psychiatric support for the rest of her life. She died a suicide at the age of 30.
Rory may have been drawn to Sylvia Plath’s life story because she was highly driven academically, and a star student in both high school and college. She easily won prizes for poetry, short story-writing, and journalism, and one of her early writing achievements was being chosen as part of a group of college-aged guest editors for fashion magazine Mademoiselle.
On a darker note, among the several factors that pushed Plath into her first suicide attempt was a rejection from a Harvard summer school writing class. Sylvia Plath is a potent example to Rory of the pressures an ambitious young woman might face at college.
I’m actually not sure what Rory means by her comment, as to my knowledge Sylvia Plath was never treated with lithium. It may be an error by the writer (Amy Sherman-Palladino). In any case, it’s impossible not to feel that her quip is completely wasted on Dean.
SOOKIE: But I mentioned it once, it’s his [Jackson’s] turn.
LORELAI: Alright, let’s say it is his turn. You can spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for him to realise it’s his turn, or you can just run with the wolves and make it your turn again.
Lorelai is referring to the 1992 best-seller Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Jungian analyst, author, and poet Clarissa Pinkola Estés. The book analyses myths, fairy tales, and folk tales from different cultures to discover the Wild Woman archetype of the feminine psyche, in line with Jungian psychoanalysis.
The book spent three years on the New York Times Best Seller list, a record at the time, and the author won an award for being the first Latina author to make the Best Seller List. It was a highly popular feminist book of the 1990s, so Lorelai is encouraging Sookie to take the initiative and ask Jackson out without worrying about traditional gender roles.
SOOKIE: I asked him [Jackson] if he’d like to have dinner sometime.
LORELAI: I know – weeks ago.
For the first eleven episodes, dates in Gilmore Girls can be plotted on the calendar fairly easily. From now on, time becomes more amorphous and elastic, and sometimes even self-contradicts. At this point, a lot of estimating and even guessing will be needed to form any kind of workable timeline.
When Lorelai says the events of the previous episode happened weeks ago, we have no idea if she means two weeks, three weeks, or six weeks in the past. Most likely it is two or three weeks and we are now in early to mid-February – four or more weeks and she would probably say it was a month, or more than a month.
(It’s not possible for me to align the dates on the blog exactly with the vague calendar in Gilmore Girls at this point, or I will run out of time for events to occur in).
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 