Footnotes to the TV series
In “Secrets and Loans”, Emily told Lorelai she would be holding her DAR meetings at the Independence Inn from then on. Here we learn that wasn’t an empty threat, because here we are months later, and the DAR are due the next Tuesday, at 3 pm. They seem meet on the second Tuesday of each month.
Do laundry much more thoroughly than Lorelai
Watch TV in her pyjamas
Order Indian food that Lorelai won’t allow in the house
Go to bed early
Possibly fall asleep on the couch in front of the television
Note that Lorelai is wearing a top that says Yoga Kills on it – a callback to breaking her leg doing yoga, mentioned in “Rory’s Birthday Parties”.
LUKE: I went to the bank and got a cashier’s check, signed the papers and I bought the building.
In “Emily in Wonderland”, Luke jokes that he’s been thinking of conquering the flower shop next door and expanding the freezer. Now he does actually buy the building the flower shop is in so he can expand (although it’s his living space, not the freezer).
MICHEL: I mean, it’s just as possible I say I’ll cover the desk, and the moment you’ve stepped away I’ll put some fruit on my head and join a conga line somewhere.
A reference to the showgirls at the Copacabana nightclub in New York, in the style of Carmen Miranda, previously mentioned.
A conga line [pictured] is a novelty carnival dance from Cuba which became popular in the US in the 1930s. The dancers form a long procession in a line, with three shuffle steps, then a kick. It was mistakenly thought to be an African dance from the Congo, hence the name.
There was a conga line at the wedding reception for the twins Jessica and Jackie, which was held at the Independence Inn in “Kill Me Now”.
LORELAI: Cold egg roll?
JESS: Why not? [takes a bite]
LORELAI: Bad?
JESS: Oh yeah.
A callback to the scene in “Richard in Stars Hollow” when Rory offers Jess an egg roll in exchange for information. He doesn’t take one, but leaves saying, “You owe me an egg roll“.
Lorelai needing her rain gutters cleaned was mentioned in “A-Tisket, A-Tasket” – she was hoping that the “Collins kid” might clean them for her. Luke remembers this, and suggests Jess could clean her gutters instead. Lorelai puts him off by saying she’s already got people lined up for the job.
Rory puts her head down sadly or sullenly when Lorelai balks at Jess coming to their house. Note that Rory is holding the ice creams hugged close to her chest, so her body heat will melt them even faster. I’m pretty sure that’s not ice cream in those cups marked “ice cream”.
RICHARD: Is that your second cup of coffee?
LORELAI: Uh, third. Why?
RICHARD: No reason. That’s a lot of coffee first thing in the morning.
A callback to Richard’s earlier scene with Emily. He’s learning just how much coffee Gilmore girls like to drink!
RICHARD: Interesting. I just realised you have three cups of coffee in the morning …
EMILY: Well, so what?
RICHARD: Nothing. Just an observation, that’s all. That’s a lot of coffee to drink early in the morning.
It seems that Lorelai and Emily have something else in common – they both need their coffee to get through the day. This feels like a callback to the beginning of the Pilot, where Luke asks Lorelai how many coffees she’s had. It’s first thing in the morning, but she’s already had five, and is ordering her sixth.
EMILY: So I went inside and looked around and it occurred to me that there’s a very limited space there … Now of course there’s a slot open for me and Richard and you and Rory, but after the two of you – that’s it. No more room for anyone else.
Apparently the Gilmore family mausoleum is now almost full, and only has four spaces left. Emily is very concerned about Lorelai getting married, because there would be nowhere for her husband, but she never seems to consider that Rory could very well marry one day, and married or not, both of them are capable of having children (or further children, in Lorelai’s case). Where they are meant to go is never even discussed, and it really sounds as if the Gilmores’ mausoleum has pretty much seen its quota filled by now.
Lorelai suggests that she and Rory could be buried in the same space – a callback to them sharing a bed in the potting shed, and a sign that she really sees Rory as an extension of herself. Rory pleads for more boundaries by saying she’d prefer her own space. Even in death, Lorelai wants to keep Rory enmeshed with her, rather gruesomely.
Emily says the cemetery offered them the opportunity to buy an “annex” for extra family members. I don’t think this is an option in real life, although they have two public mausoleums at Cedar Hill where future generations of dead Gilmores could be stashed. Richard’s mother Trix dies during the series run, and surely other elderly Gilmores as well – how long are those extra four spaces going to last, and how long can they keep kicking existing Gilmores into the annex, which is also of finite space?
In A Year in the Life, Richard Gilmore dies and is buried in a plot with a headstone, not in a mausoleum. Maybe they really did run out of space?
TAYLOR: Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the new uniforms of the fabulous fighting Minutemen.
The Stars Hollow basketball team is called the Minutemen. They are patriotically named after the Minutemen from American history – civilian colonists who independently formed their own militia groups during the American Revolutionary War, so called because they were ready to fight at a minute’s notice. They were among the first to fight during the war, comprising perhaps a quarter of all troops. Generally young, they provided a highly mobile, rapidly deployed force that could respond immediately to threats.
We knew of the Minutemen way back in Series 1, Episode 1, in the Pilot. When Rory is talking to Dean for the first time at school, there is a sign outside the high school saying Go Minutemen, listing them as the champion team of the 1997-98 season.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 