Tag: Back Story

Luke’s Family

LUKE: Randy and Barbara don’t wanna miss their brat kid’s rugby semifinal … My sister never even called back. My cousins Paul and Jim, who my dad helped put through college, said they were too exhausted from a fishing trip. And slightly disturbed cousin Franny said she can’t leave because her Petey’s sick.

Randy and Barbara, a married couple with at least one child, who plays rugby, not sure whether Randy or Barbara is Luke’s cousin.

Liz, Luke’s sister

Paul and Jim, cousins, presumably brothers

Franny, cousin, possibly a sister to Paul and Jim? (and yet another Fran/Francine/Franny!)

Uncle Louie didn’t have any children, but Luke seems to have several cousins, although he doesn’t mention any other uncles or aunts. Perhaps they are already dead. It’s possible all the cousins mentioned are siblings, and only one uncle/aunt died before Louie.

Luke booked nine rooms at the Independence Inn for his family to attend Louie’s funeral. He only seems to have needed five rooms for the named family members, suggesting that the other four were for the unnamed relatives who said they couldn’t get out of work for the funeral.

Maybelline Fresh Lash Mascara

LORELAI: Sorry, it’s just . . . so excited about the ducks that, uh . . . do you want something to drink? You have good timing ‘cause we shopped yesterday, and in addition to a case of Maybelline Fresh Lash Mascara, I also bought some of that new, uh, freaky Coke with the lemon in it.

Maybelline is a multinational cosmetics company, founded in Chicago in 1914, and now based in New York. Since 1996, it has been a subsidiary of L’Oreal, previously discussed.

Maybelline’s Fresh Lash Mascara has now been replaced with Great Lash Mascara. In 1981, their Fresh Lash Mascara was advertised on television by Lynda Carter, who played superhero Wonder Woman, previously discussed as one of Lorelai’s favourites. I can imagine young Lorelai buying the mascara because of the face of the brand and remaining loyal to it.

Price Yeah!

This is the music that Jess is sleeping to when Luke wakes him up. Price Yeah!, is by the American indie rock band Pavement, first released on their EP Slay Tracks: 1933-1969 in 1989. The EP was self-recorded, and is experimental hard-core punk.

The band were partly inspired by their home town of Stockton, California, a place they considered flat and boring that they wanted to escape from – something that Jess can probably relate to.

Being an extremely limited release, copies of this EP quickly became collector’s items selling for hundreds of dollars. Jess is most likely listening to Westing (By Mustang and Sextant), a compilation of Pavement’s early EP’s and singles which was released in 1993.

The song begins:

Just cause I’m fakin’
Doesn’t mean I’m wrong
Cause I bought my price, yeah,
No I got it at cost

And there’s the things I know
Wrote them down on your nib
Just remember turning
It’s a rapid affair

Jess knows that he is faking it – but is he faking by hiding his true level of misery from Luke and the town, or is he faking by pretending to be less interested in Rory than he makes out? He’s aware of the price he is paying, but considers it worthwhile. The “rapid affair” may allude to how quickly he fell for Rory, and the things he wrote down to the annotations he made in Rory’s book.

Jess says he needs loud music on in order to sleep. Possibly he got into that habit needing to block out the sound of his mother partying or entertaining guests. Or even the sound of Liz having sex or fighting with her companion of the moment. Or they just lived in an apartment block where there was a lot of noise from other people, and little insulation against it.

Either way, it’s a sign that he didn’t have the best environment growing up. Unless he simply hasn’t adjusted to the quietness of the country after living in New York?

If Jess always needs loud music in order to sleep, how on earth has poor Luke been able to get any sleep? For that matter, why is he surprised to learn about it now? Has he just been gritting his teeth for six months and working long days on little sleep, and this is the final straw? And why haven’t any of their neighbours complained?

Pee-Wee Herman

RORY: I also pictured you with Pee-Wee Herman.
LORELAI: Wow.
RORY: Yeah. We lived in his playhouse and we’d be talking to Chairry and Captain Carl would be walking by.

Pee-Wee Herman, fictional character portrayed by comedian Paul Reubens (born Paul Reubenfeld 1952). The child-like Pee-Wee Herman developed as a stage act and then appeared in a feature film before becoming the host of Pee-Wee’s Playhouse, an Emmy-winning children’s show that was broadcast from 1985 to 1991.

Chairry was a puppet armchair, voiced by Alison Mork, which would hug Pee-Wee when he sat down in her. Captain Carl was one of a host of human characters in the show; he was a sea captain played by Saturday Night Live comedian and actor, Phil Hartman (1948-1998). The show had a lot of big stars on it, and guest appearances by a host of celebrities.

Rory would have watched the show as a preschooler, apparently looking to the child-like Pee-Wee Herman for a possible father substitute.

All-Boys Private School Uniform and a Yankees Cap

SOOKIE: I’m looking for a guy that looks like a guy that you could be with, only I’m deducting seventeen years off his age and I’m adding an all-boys private school uniform and a Yankees cap.

Sookie is looking around for Christopher, until Lorelai points out Sookie doesn’t know what he looks like. It seems hard to believe Lorelai has never shown Sookie a picture of Christopher, but from the way Rory treasures an old strip of photos of Christopher and Lorelai, it appears they possess no photo of him.

Sookie explains that she’s been looking for someone Lorelai would go out with, but imagining him seventeen years younger and in a private boy’s school uniform. This may suggest that Lorelai and Christopher went to separate single-sex private high schools. In real life, there are no single-sex private schools in Hartford itself, but a few in the nearby surrounding suburbs and towns that Lorelai and Christopher could have easily attended.

I’m not sure why Sookie is mentally making him a teenager in a school uniform when he’s an adult though. Maybe she’s going to then mentally add seventeen years to his age?

She gives him a Yankees cap because that’s what Luke wears!

Aunt Cecile

LORELAI: Oh, oh. Well, uh . . . ugh, why don’t we move Aunt Cecile? She was always so annoying at parties. She loved the knock-knock jokes.
RORY: Mom! … You can’t just kick out Aunt Cecile.
LORELAI: Knock-knock. Who’s there? Pineapple. Pineapple who? That’s where it ended. Never fully grasped the knock-knock concept.
EMILY: She was a complete idiot. Okay, it’s decided – Cecile goes.

Aunt Cecile is one of the deceased Gilmores currently in the mausoleum, and is almost unanimously voted out to the annex as the least popular corpse, due to her habit of telling incomplete knock-knock jokes. I assume she is the sister of either Trix, or Richard’s father.

Cecile, an Anglicised French form of Cecily, was most common around the turn of the twentieth century, although it has never been very popular in the US. By the mid-twentieth century it was fairly rare.

Note that Emily is dressed in black, suitable for her role discussing death and burial.

“Two previous loans”

MILES: Oh, you’ve taken out two previous loans on this house?
LORELAI: Um, yes.

This explains the difficulties Lorelai has been having in getting a loan – she has already taken two previous loans against her house, and is presumably in the process of paying them back (maybe cut down on the junk food buying?).

It doesn’t explain how she got turned down by a loan shark (fictionalised by Lorelai as Jacko’s Loans and Stuff), as the more desperate and in trouble you are, the more likely they are to loan you money at an exorbitant rate to make you suffer even more. I’d like to think Lorelai herself turned down the loan shark, knowing it was financially irresponsible.

Mr Rygalski

[Lorelai walks through the lobby talking on the phone]
LORELAI: Hi Mr. Rygalski, it’s Lorelai Gilmore.

Amy Sherman-Palladino’s friend Helen Pai is married to a man named Dave Rygalski. Later on, Lane (based on Helen), has a boyfriend named Dave Rygalski. There may be a hint here that Mr Rygalski at the bank is Dave’s father.

Xerox

JACKSON: I have a cousin who owns a Xerox company that specializes in taking pictures and making them into things – calendars, coffee mugs, collector plates, and pajamas.

Xerox is a corporation selling print and digital document products and series, headquartered in Connecticut, and incorporated in New York. They are best known for making photocopiers – so much so that Xerox is often used to mean any photocopier (like Kleenex and tissues), and “xerox” can be used as a verb, meaning “to photocopy”.

Jackson’s cousin owns a photocopying service which puts photos onto gift items. Jackson has a large family, and we learn a lot about them during the course of the show. We also learn that Jackson was on the wrestling team when he was in high school.