Environmental blight

When Rory tells Luke that she went golfing with her grandfather, he tells her that golf courses are an environmental blight because of the chemicals golf courses use to keep the grass green.

Golf courses use pesticides and fungicides to care for their turf – the same stuff home owners put on their lawns. By area, golf courses actually use less chemicals than regular lawns, but the vast expanses of grass on golf courses mean that by volume they use a lot more. Aware of the environmental impact, many golf courses are using less chemicals than before, and some have gone completely organic.

The main environmental problem with golf courses is the enormous amounts of water they use to keep the grass green, leading to further scarcity of this limited resource.

“All things frilly”

RORY: Mr. Neville likes all things frilly.
RICHARD: Good God. He’s my broker.

Rory means that Mr. Neville likes wearing women’s underwear – although the mention of little girls wearing frilly underwear later in the episode gives this unfortunate implications.

It’s interesting that growing up in gossipy Stars Hollow has prepared Rory well for the intrigues of the country club world.

Peyton Place

RORY: It’s a conspiracy.
RICHARD: It’s Peyton Place.

Peyton Place is a 1956 novel by American author Grace Metalious. Set in a small, conservative, gossipy New England town, it deals with hypocrisy and class privilege and has a salacious plot which encompasses incest, abortion, adultery, suicide, and murder. It became an immediate best-seller when it was released.

It was adapted as a film in 1957, becoming the #2 film of 1958. In 1964 it was made into a highly successful television series which ran until 1969, which was when the term “Peyton Place” became used for any scandalous situation. The follow up novel Return to Peyton Place also became a film, and then a soap opera.

NSYNC

LORELAI: Oh no – not being attacked by a band of swans. Was it an all-boy band? Kind of a scary, feathery NSYNC kind of fiasco?

NSYNC was an American boy band formed in 1995, consisting of Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Chris Kirkpatrick, Joey Fatone, and Lance Bass. Their second studio album was No Strings Attached, released in March 2000, which was a landmark commercial success for the band, and the #1 album of the year. NSYNC stopped recording together in 2002.

Luxembourg Gardens

MICHEL: I was attacked by a band of swans in the Luxembourg Gardens when I was a boy.

Le Jardin du Luxembourg, called the Luxembourg Garden in English, is a formal garden in Paris outside the Luxembourg Palace. The garden is owned by the French Senate.

Although there is a large pool in the Garden, it doesn’t have a “band of swans”; there is a fountain which depicts Leda and the Swan instead. This calls into question Michel’s story, and the fact that he gets the name of the Garden wrong makes one wonder if he grew up in Paris at all.

Tutu

LORELAI: OK, I need more tulle here. I need the feeling of a major tutu, OK?

A tutu is a traditional ballet dress, often made from tulle, which is a fabric made from lightweight fine netting.

Amy Sherman-Palladino herself was a ballet dancer, and had the chance to turn professional. She became a writer instead, but there are numerous references to ballet in Gilmore Girls, and her show Bunheads was based around the world of ballet.