Footnotes to the TV series
JOE: It’s Joe . . . Joe Mastoni from the Deer Hill Lodge …
SOOKIE: Joe and I worked together one summer up in the Berkshires.
The Berkshires, previously discussed.
Deer Hill Lodge is probably inspired by historic Deer Hill House in West Cummington, Massachusetts, a small town in the foothills of the Berkshires. First built as a hotel in 1832, it has since been an inn, a dance, and a café. It is now an Airbnb property, made into four separate apartments for rent.
Just as Lorelai and Sookie are leaving their night class and at the cookie table, they run into Joe, an old friend of Sookie’s, and his business partner Alex, who are there to learn about starting their own chain of coffee shops.
Joe is played by Joe Fria. He may be recalled by some viewers as the actor who played the waiter at the French restaurant on the double date Sookie and Lorelai had with Jackson and Rune. Joe Fria has more recently done voice work, including for the Goosebumps series, and for Miraculous: Tales of Ladybug and Cat Noir.
Alex is played by Billy Burke. He had several small roles in film and television before this, and has become best known for playing Charlie Swan, the father of Bella Swan, in the Twilight film series.
LORELAI: I’m crushing your head, I’m crushing your head. Let’s go.
[Lorelai and Sookie get up and leave]
A reference to The Kids in the Hall, an award-winning Canadian sketch comedy TV series that aired from 1988 to 1995, and a revival season in 2022, starring the comedy troupe The Kids in the Hall. The troupe, consisting of comedians Dave Foley, Kevin McDonald, Bruce McCulloch, Mark McKinney, and Scott Thompson, appeared as almost all the characters throughout the series, both male and female, and also wrote most of the sketches.
The show had a similar surreal vibe to Monty Python’s Flying Circus, and it tended to be highly censored for American broadcasts, especially in regard to religion or nudity. It has been cited as an influence by several comedians.
One of their recurring sketches was “Headcrusher”. Mr. Tyzik (Mark McKinney) is a lonely man who despises virtually everyone, especially those he considers businessmen and trendy people. He calls them “flatheads” because in his mind, their heads deserve to be crushed. He is more than willing to help by pretending to crush their heads from a distance with his fingers, using forced perspective, while enthusiastically declaring “I’m crushing your head! I’m crushing your head!” in a high-pitched nasal voice with a slight eastern European accent, followed by making a crushing noise. Lorelai does this movement to one of the people shown on the real estate slide.
JOHN: Now this is a lovely property that has just become available right outside of Litchfield.
SOOKIE: It’s a sales pitch?
LORELAI: They spend two hours telling us nothing, then try to sell us lame property?
SOOKIE: We already know the place we’re buying.
LORELAI: I know.
Litchfield, previously discussed.
Lorelai and Sookie say they already know the property they will buy (the Dragonfly Inn), but the owner (Fran Weston) has refused to sell it to them. Is it really such an insane idea that they might look at some available real estate that somebody actually wants to sell, if only to give them some idea of the market? Maybe they could actually use a couple of business classes.
Also, the one day seminar that Lorelai talked about seems to have ended up being the two hour class Michel derided after all. I guess Lorelai meant “one day” as in the entire course takes place on only one day, rather than over several weeks.
LORELAI: [opens the flap] You will marry Shaun Cassidy and cheat with David.
SOOKIE: Well, good for me.
Shaun Cassidy, previously discussed as Lorelai’s preteen crush.
David Cassidy (1950-2017), actor, singer, and guitarist, and Shaun’s older half-brother. He played Keith Partridge on the 1970s musical sitcom, The Partridge Family.
Deciding whether you preferred Shaun or David Cassidy was a common pastime in the 1970s. The option to “marry” Shaun and er, “cheat” with David may have been a common solution to this dilemma.
[Picture shows David on the left and Shaun on the right]
[Lorelai displays the cootie catcher she’s just made]
LORELAI: Pick a color.
A cootie catcher is a folded paper fortune teller used in children’s games. Parts of the fortune teller are labelled with colors or numbers that serve as options for a player to choose from, and on the inside are eight flaps, each concealing a message.
The person operating the fortune teller manipulates the device based on the choices made by the player, and finally one of the hidden messages is revealed. These messages may purport to answer questions or they may be activities that the player must perform.
Used throughout Europe, some say since the 17th century, these paper fortune tellers have been popular in the US since the 1950s, especially with girls.
EMILY: So you’re just going to let this lead-footed Teutonic chambermaid drag your mother into a public forum and humiliate her, is that it?
Teutonic, literally meaning pertaining to the Teutons, a Germanic or Celtic tribe mentioned by classical authors. Even though the evidence that they were Germanic is rather shaky, the word is more often used as a poetic way to refer to German and Austrian people.
ANSWERING MACHINE: Ms. Gilmore, it’s Bob Merrimam, your mother’s lawyer. I’m calling about the little matter of this lawsuit she’s involved in. We’d like it if you could give a deposition . . .
The voice of Bob Merrimam is supplied by Seth MacFarlane, friend and colleague of Daniel Palladino from Family Guy. Seth MacFarlane had already had a role on Gilmore Girls.
Bob asks Lorelai to give a deposition in support of her mother’s case against Gerta, the unfairly dismissed German maid. This is where the episode title, “I Solemnly Swear” comes from, because that’s the beginning of the oath taken in legal contexts.
LORELAI: We are so in luck. It was international grab bag night at Al’s.
RORY: Cool. Did you peek?
LORELAI: And ruin the whole point of the mystery dinner? I think not. Pick.
Another quirky offering from Al’s Pancake World – on certain nights, how often is a mystery, Al offers an international grab bag, where you apparently receive a randomly assigned dinner from any national cuisine.
Who would be interested in this? Certainly not fussy eaters or people with food allergies, at least. To add to the chaos, diners apparently don’t know when it will be international grab bag night, as Lorelai proclaims that they are “in luck” that they happened to be buying dinner on that night.
Lorelai and Rory love this insane tradition because it is a game as well as food. They each pick one of the bags without looking, smell it, then try to guess what it is. Rory guesses hers is Moroccan, which is what she always says, on the basis that if you say the same thing every time, it will eventually be correct. Lorelai takes a cover-all-bases approach by declaring hers is Pan-Asian, with a hint of English Colonial and touches of South African.
Rory strongly implies that the food is old, suggesting that “grab bag night” might be a way of selling off out of date leftovers. It’s quite stomach-churning.
In the end, neither Gilmore girl can identify what food they have bought, and they end up going to Luke’s for dinner. What a waste of time, money, and food!
PARIS: Now Louise, poke John Williams over there and tell her she can cut the score, we’re moving on.
John Williams (born 1932), composer, conductor and pianist. In a career spanning seven decades, he has composed some of the most popular, recognisable and critically acclaimed film scores in cinematic history, including that of Star Wars. Williams has won 25 Grammy Awards, seven BAFTAs, five Oscars and four Golden Globe Awards. With 52 Academy Award nominations, he is the second most-nominated individual, after Walt Disney. His compositions are considered the epitome of film music and he is considered among the greatest composers in the history of cinema.
Paris says this because Madeline is humming so that she doesn’t hear the word “blood”, which frightens her.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 