EMILY: He’s going to join my water aerobics class. LORELAI: What? EMILY: He bought some new swim trunks today. He’s out of control.
Water aerobics, or aquarobics, are aerobics performed in a swimming pool, usually standing upright. It’s a form of resistance and strength training, as well as a cardiac workout – you can work harder without getting overheated. It’s ideal for seniors as a way to exercise safely.
Lorelai earlier said that Emily was keeping her legs trim by holding grudges. Here we discover that Emily actually attends an exercise class to keep fit. (In real life, Kelly Bishop’s shapely legs are from her years of dancing on Broadway).
EMILY: You have to take your father …Tomorrow, for the whole day, just take him. LORELAI: Take him where? EMILY: I don’t care – the zoo, the mall, Rhode Island, just get him out of my house!
Rhode Island is a state in New England, the smallest state in the US. It takes its name from an island in Narragansett Bay, although most of the state is actually on the mainland. There are many beachside towns here, making it a common place for people to come for vacations, and there is a strong maritime culture. It would take about 90 minutes to drive to Rhode Island from Hartford.
The mention of Rhode Island may be a nod to animated sitcom Family Guy, which is set in Rhode Island, and which Daniel Palladino worked on.
RORY: Hey Kirk, there are a couple of little kids over there and they’re, uh, looking at this tape cover that’s kind of mature. You might wanna put that stuff on a higher shelf or something. KIRK: Mature? How mature? RORY: Uh, it’s a half-naked woman just standing there. KIRK: Is she a blonde?
The video that the boys are looking is Showgirls, a 1995 erotic drama directed by Paul Verhoeven and starring Elizabeth Berkley and Kyle MacLachlan (who played Dale Cooper in the 1990-91 David Lynch television series, Twin Peaks, a secret touchstone for Gilmore Girls). Showgirls is a about a street-smart drifter who goes to Las Vegas and climbs the seedy ladder from stripper to showgirl.
It was the first, and so far, only, NC-17 film given wide release in mainstream cinemas. Critically panned, it was a box office bomb, but a success on the home video market, despite being named as one of the worst films ever made. It’s often cited as a guilty pleasure, a camp classic, or a “so bad it’s good” film. It was made into a stage musical in 2013. (Amy Sherman-Palladino commented on the film Glitter, “It was no Showgirls“.) Some critics now believe it is a brilliant satire.
The video is correctly catalogued under Drama by the video store, and Showgirls was cut to an R rating for video store rentals. R rated videos were not kept in a separate section from other films, so Rory comes across as more of a meddlesome prude than a concerned citizen. The cover doesn’t actually show anything very salacious – just a leg and a tiny bit of side boob.
Patent leather is that shiny, almost plastic-looking, leather, and pirate boots, more correctly cavalier boots, are knee-high boots with a cuff around the top. A pair of Chanel boots of this type could cost around $1000 today. The boots sound suspiciously like something Amy Sherman-Palladino would wear.
[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.
Even though it’s the middle of the night, there’s snow on the ground, and they’re in pyjamas, Lorelai and Rory put on coats and scarves and walk to Sookie’s house. In other episodes, they say that Sookie’s house is a long walk from theirs (they seem to have to go through the centre of town to get there), but for some reason they always walk, even when complaining about the distance. Apparently it is both too far to walk quickly, and too close to drive (perhaps a mile???).
In real life, the sets for Lorelai’s and Sookie’s houses were right next to each other, and could be accessed through a door between them. Note that there are still snowmen standing from the previous episode’s contest – apparently they are left up until they melt in early spring.
LORELAI: They’re snowed in. SOOKIE: Who’s snowed in? LORELAI: The Bracebridge group. They’re stuck in Chicago. The dinner’s off.
In real life, December 2001 was warmer than average in Chicago, and it only snowed once, which took place close to Christmas, after the events of this episode.
The writer, Daniel Palladino, must have been thinking of the previous year – there was a terrible blizzard on Tuesday December 11 which raged for hours, with very heavy snowfalls. The storms continued on and off for the rest of the month, making it one of the heaviest snowfalls of all time for the city, an entire season’s worth.
Not being psychic, of course Palladino could only refer to a past blizzard, he didn’t know what the weather would be like in the upcoming December.
(The picture shows a plane grounded at O’Hare Airport in December 2000; flights really were cancelled).
SOOKIE: We are crazy for doing this. LORELAI: We’re beyond crazy. We are ‘Anne Heche speaking her secret language to God and looking for the spaceship in Fresno’ crazy. SOOKIE: Oh Quiness, Nakka dune notta.
LORELAI: Il el nostra doska don.
Anne Heche (born 1969), actress, director, and screenwriter. First became known as a soap opera actress, before gaining mainstream recognition in the late 1990s in films such as Donnie Brasco (1997) and Six Days, Seven Nights (1998). She was also famous for her high-profile three-year relationship with comedian Ellen De Generes, who came out to the press shortly after she and Anne began dating.
On August 19 2000, the day after her relationship with Ellen ended, Anne drove from Los Angeles to Cantua Creek, near Fresno, parking her vehicle on a roadside. She walked for more than a mile through the desert wearing shorts and a bra before knocking on a stranger’s door and asking for a shower. As she seemed reluctant to leave, the homeowner called the sheriff’s department. When deputies arrived, Heche told them that she was God, and would take everyone up to Heaven in a spaceship (she later said she had taken ecstasy). She was admitted to a psychiatric unit in Fresno, and released after a few hours.
While promoting her 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy, Anne told interviewers that she had been mentally ill for the first thirty-one years of her life due to horrific sexual abuse by her father (a closeted gay man who died of AIDS when Anne was thirteen), which began when she was only a baby. Her surviving family strongly reject those claims, although even without that, her childhood doesn’t sound like a picnic.
Anne said that she created a fantasy world called The Fourth Dimension and had an alter ego named Celestia who was the daughter and reincarnation of God, spoke her own language, had special powers, and was in contact with extraterrestrials. It seems likely Lorelai read Call Me Crazy, as it is the sort of camp celebrity memoir she could not resist (like Mommie Dearest and Tears and Laughter), although all the information could be gleaned from the press at the time.
Anne Heche stated that she had no further mental health issues after the episode at Cantua Creek, and she has gone on to have a successful career in film and television.
Sookie’s statement means, “Oh God, I cannot do this” in Anne Heche’s invented language. Lorelai replies, “It’s too scary for me now”, in the same language. Anne said this when she believed God wanted her to heal a friend’s injured ankle, however she says she did go on to heal her friend through laying on of hands. Anne shared this information, including the example of her language, with Barbara Walters on 20/20 in early September 2001.
Like Lorelai and Sookie, and many others at the time, Amy Sherman-Palladino mocked Anne Heche mercilessly after going public. Their tone was completely mainstream for the time.
UPDATE: Anne Heche passed away after a car accident on August 12 2022, under the influence of narcotics.
TRISTAN: The police are letting our parents handle it, and in my case that means military school in North Carolina.
A meta comment. Chad Michael Murray, who played Tristan, left the show in order to begin filming the teen drama One Tree Hill (2003-2012), shown on the same channel as Gilmore Girls (The WB); Murray had the lead role of Lucas Scott. One Tree Hill is set in the fictional town of Tree Hill in North Carolina, and mostly filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Amy Sherman-Palladino apparently planned for Tristan to become Rory’s boyfriend in high school/college and her “Christopher”, which, because Chad Michael Murray went to another show, was a role filled by the character of Logan Huntzberger instead. In this farewell episode, you can see the faint beginnings of the tenderness between Rory and Tristan which would have blossomed into eventual love. Anyone wishing to see what would have happened if Logan had been Tristan instead must turn to fanfiction.
In real life, there is only one one military school in North Carolina, and it is Oak Ridge Military Academy, so presumably that’s where Tristan is headed. It was originally founded in 1850, and was one of the first military schools to become co-educational, in 1972. It apparently had a reputation at one time of taking troubled youth, which it is working to overcome.
If Tristan turned up to Chilton in order to say he was leaving for military school, couldn’t he also have stayed to do the scene with them? Does everyone transfer schools on a Sunday night in this universe? (Maybe because they’re boarding schools?).
With Tristan out of the picture, the love triangle between Rory, Dean, and Tristan comes to an end, to make way for a new love triangle, which becomes clear in the very next episode.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 