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.
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.
PARIS: I knew that suggestion box was a bad idea. Watch Choate get Joan Didion while we’re being read “Eloise at the Plaza”.
Paris refers to Eloise: A Book for Precocious Grown-Ups, a 1955 book by Kay Thompson, illustrated by Hilary Knight. Originally marketed to adults, in 1969 it was released as a children’s book as Eloise, with no changes to the text or illustrations.
Eloise is a mischievous six-year-old girl who lives in the penthouse of the Plaza Hotel in New York City with her nanny, pet pug dog and pet turtle. Thompson based Eloise on an imaginary friend she had in childhood, although it has been speculated that her goddaughter Liza Minelli may have been a possible model. There are several books in the Eloise series, but Eloise never ages. In April 2003, a Disney television film was broadcast called Eloise at the Plaza, with Sofia Vassilieva in the title role.
A fan theory, which you may take with as many grains of salt as you wish, is that Louise was named after the character Eloise. I cannot think of any way that could be confirmed or denied, but it doesn’t seem that implausible. Louise and Eloise both have blonde hair, are rich and spoiled, rather bratty, and have unavailable, neglectful parents.
Kay Thompson died in 1998, so could not have been the commencement speaker, and famously hated her fans, so would be unlikely to agree to it anyway. Hilary Knight is still alive, but it doesn’t seem likely that he would have done it either.
PARIS: I knew that suggestion box was a bad idea. Watch Choate get Joan Didion …
Choate Rosemary Hall, often known as Choate, a private, co-educational, preparatory boarding school in Wallingford, Connecticut. Choate is currently ranked as the second best boarding school and third best private high school in America.
Founded in 1890, it took its present name and began a co-educational system with the 1971 merger of The Choate School for boys and Rosemary Hall for girls. Its alumni include many members of the American political elite, including John F. Kennedy.
Choate was the inspiration for Chilton, Rory’s school in Gilmore Girls, even though it is in Wallingford, not Hartford. Just to confuse things further, the show gave Stars Hollow the same zip code as Wallingford. In this episode, Paris makes it seem as if Chilton and Choate are rival schools.
LORELAI: Jackson brought pea tendrils instead of Brussels sprouts. MICHEL: Well, aren’t we Evel Knievel?
Robert “Evel” Knievel (1938-2007), stunt performer and entertainer, who was especially popular in the 1970s. Over the course of his career, he attempted more than 75 ramp-to-ramp motorcycle jumps. Knievel was inducted into the Motorcycle Hall of Fame in 1999.
As a point of interest, a biographical TV series called Evel starring Milo Ventigmiglia as Evel Knievel is currently searching for a TV network.
It was something of a theme of Gilmore Girls that Stars Hollow was a magical snow globe town in winter. Possibly a sly nod to the fact that the town is on a set, a closed artificial environment, like a snow globe.
EMILY: [walking in her home] Well, your father’s sixtieth birthday dinner is back on … The one that I had planned for Wednesday night.
Richard turns sixty in this episode, meaning he was born around mid-January in 1943. Edward Hermann, who plays Richard Gilmore, was also born in 1943 – although in July, not January.
Jackson’s relatives are played by Sean Everett, Danny Buday, Kristin Caruso, Lynne Garbet, Monty Bane, John Jabaley, and DeVera (Dee) Marcus.
Most of them have only had limited acting experience, with the first two having more experience working in the props department or as a writer or producer for film and TV. John Jabaley had previously had roles on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Firefly. Dee Marcus had previously had roles onWho’s the Boss?, Full House, and The Larry Sanders Show.
RICHARD: And this is our international contingent, Claude and Monique Clemenceau. They’re just in from France.
The Clemenceaus have been given the same surname as Georges Clemenceau (1841-1929), Prime Minister of France from 1906-1909, and again from 1917-1920, leading France through the end of World War I.
It is surely not a coincidence that Georges Clemenceau has a Connecticut connection. He fled France in 1865 due to involvement in radical politics during the regime of Napoleon III. He ended up teaching at a girl’s school in Stamford, Connecticut, where he fell in love with one of his students, Mary Plummer (1849-1922). They married in 1869 and moved to France a year later. They separated in 1876 and divorced in 1891, after which Clemenceau had Mary sent back to the US. From his time in the US, Clemenceau developed a strong faith in American democratic ideals.
Georges Clemenceau was a friend, biographer, and supporter of the famous French artist Claude Monet. Given Claude’s first name, this also does not seem like a coincidence. Notice that the name Monique sounds similar to Monet, as if both French guests have been named after the painter.
Claude is played by Michael des Barres, an English marquis, actor and rock singer. He played Murdoc in the original Macgyver and had a lead role in the show’s reboot, and replaced Robert Palmer in the band The Power Station, fronting the band at the 1985 Live Aid concert. He has had roles in numerous TV series and some films, including To Sir With Love, Pink Cadillac, and Mulholland Drive. A long-term campaigner against drug abuse, he is currently a radio host for Sirius XM.
Monique is played by Lydie Denier, a French-American model, singer, and actress. She has appeared in a few films and a number of TV programs, including General Hospital, Melrose Place, and Spin City.
RICHARD: These are our guests, Natalie and Douglas Swope.
EMILY: You two have met.
LORELAI: Yes, at the auction.
NATALIE: Good to see you again.
The show seems to have committed to the new timeline where Lorelai and Natalie Swope first met at the auction in “Eight O’clock at the Oasis”, supposedly about six weeks previously. However, when Natalie was visiting Emily in “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”, she asked after Lorelai, who she remembered very well even though she hadn’t seen her since before she had Rory (as Lorelai is said to have attended the Christmas party at Richard and Emily’s every year, this in itself doesn’t seem very likely – did Natalie never attend one of the parties?).
We meet Natalie’s husband, Douglas, in this episode. Again, surely he and Lorelai would have met in the original timeline, but obviously not in this one, as he wasn’t at the auction. Douglas is played by John Aniston, the father of Jennifer Aniston. He had roles on the soap opera Search for Tomorrow, and The West Wing, as well as a long-term connection with Days of Our Lives.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 