Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: Oh, well, I brought pizza if you guys are hungry.
In previous seasons, Paris is said to be lactose intolerant, and cannot eat cheese. When she had pizza before at the Gilmores’, Lorelai got her a pizza without cheese on it. This can’t be the case now, as Lorelai didn’t know Paris was coming over. Maybe the big blow out of mac and cheese Paris had when Jess brought dinner over taught her that she wasn’t as lactose intolerant as she thought?
RORY: Okay, so, were you safe?
PARIS: Yes, it was a regular afterschool special.
ABC Afterschool Special, television anthology series that aired on ABC from 1972 to 1997, usually in the late afternoon on weekdays. Most episodes were dramatically presented situations, often controversial, of interest to children and teenagers. Several episodes were either in animated form or presented as documentaries. Topics included illiteracy, substance abuse and teenage pregnancy. The series won 51 Daytime Emmy Awards.
None of the episodes depicted a young couple having a sexual relationship, but “A Question About Sex” (1990), did advocate for teens to be informed about sex education.
Rory listens to Paris’ concerns about losing her virginity with a fair amount of sensitivity, and checks that she and Jamie practised safe sex, that it was fully consensual, and that Jamie treated Paris with respect. I don’t think it’s a stretch to suggest that this reflects the sex education training that Rory has received from Lorelai.
PARIS: Well, look who’s suddenly decided to become Kofi Annan … Charleston thinks we need to play nice with each other, so he screws up the whole bicentennial.
Kofi Annan (1938-2018), Ghanaian diplomat who served as the seventh secretary-general of the United Nations from 1997 to 2006. Annan and the UN were the co-recipients of the 2001 Nobel Peace Prize. He was the founder and chairman of the Kofi Annan Foundation, as well as chairman of The Elders, an international organisation founded by Nelson Mandela.
Mr Charleston has an entire school to run and is in the middle of organising the bicentennial celebrations. Is it really feasible he cares that much about two students having a spat – especially two students who will be leaving Chilton in only a few months?
SOOKIE: You’ll give me lots of tips [on pregnancy]?
LORELAI: Oh, what I can remember.
SOOKIE: Get your diary out from that year ’cause I wanna know it all.
LORELAI: A lot of my diary from that year was, um, a debate over which member of Tears for Fears I loved more at that particular moment.
Tears for Fears are an English pop rock band formed in1981 by Roland Orzabal and Curt Smith.The band’s debut album, The Hurting (1983), reached #1 on the UK Albums Chart, and their first three hit singles all reached the top five in the UK. Their second album, Songs from the Big Chair (1985), reached #1 in the US, achieving multi-platinum status in both the UK and the US. The album contained two US #1 hits: “Shout” and “Everybody Wants to Rule the World”. The band broke up in 1990, but have since brought out albums together, and tour semi-regularly.
When Lorelai was pregnant in 1984, Tears for Fears hadn’t had any chart success in the US, except for “Change” making #73, and doing quite well as a radio track. Lorelai must have been ahead of the curve. This is another example of the teenaged Lorelai enjoying slightly obscure British rock music.
LORELAI: I ran into Max …. He’s back now, for a little while at least, and I am happy to report that either he’s forgiven me for treating him so badly or it wasn’t that bad and I just built it up worse in my head.
RORY: Oh no, you treated him like crap.
Max was so civil to Lorelai when they met that she begins to wonder if she was really that bad to him, and perhaps she’s exaggerated her behaviour in her own head. Other characters are quick to confirm that she really did treat Max horribly.
RORY: Hi. Did you hear about the strokes?
LORELAI: Yes, stay away from whiskey and the DAR.
In a later season, Rory does actually join the DAR. In A Year in the Life, Rory is shown drinking whiskey on the sly during the day at work.
RICHARD: Liesl … Our East-German maid. She was much more masculine-looking than me.
LORELAI: Right, the muttonchops.
Mutton chops, extravagant sideburns that are grown down to the chin, as favoured in the 19th century. You can see from the photo of Liesl that she had nothing of the sort.
RICHARD: Oh, and you’re forgetting Liesl … Our East-German maid. She was much more masculine-looking than me.
We saw Liesl in “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”. She wasn’t masculine looking at all. Unless there was some other Liesl. There’s quite a few jokes about East German women being masculine in this show.
Even though Jackson wanted he and Sookie to have four children in four years, when Sookie gives him the news about being pregnant, he immediately has a meltdown, and starts worrying about money, and baby-proofing the house. It’s eye-rollingly annoying. He also doesn’t ask Sookie for any proof that she’s pregnant.
SOOKIE: Oh my God, I’m pregnant! …
RORY: That’s great!
[they all scream and hug]
Lorelai suggests to Sookie she may have some kind of minor illness affecting her taste buds, then she goes into the lobby to talk to Rory, before Sookie comes out of the kitchen and announces she’s pregnant.
Pregnancy can certainly affect the sense of taste of smell, explaining Sookie’s suddenly horrible food, so this makes sense – but how can Sookie be sure? Did she just throw up in the toilet (which could be something else), did she do the world’s quickest pregnancy test, and if she had one all along, why didn’t she use it before? Has she had some other little sign, like her periods stopping, breast tenderness, and weight gain, and she’s put all the clues together?
Who knows? She just apparently knows she’s pregnant, even though she’s seemingly never been pregnant before, and everyone gets super excited and jumps around hugging each other. Nobody asks Sookie how she knows, or suggests she might be mistaken, or that it might need to be verified by, oh I don’t know, science.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 