LUKE: You gonna go [for a ride on a sleigh]? JESS: I think I’ll wait for the clog dancing.
Clog dancing is a traditional step dance performed wearing wooden clogs, originating in mining districts of Wales and the north of England. The tradition came to the US via immigration, and is typically associated with the Appalachian region, where it combined with bluegrass, Native American, and African-American dance rhythms. It is from clog dancing that tap dancing formed.
Jess turns down the ride in the sleigh with Luke because he’s planning on jumping on Rory’s sleigh when he can do so while unobserved.
PARIS: Well, my parents are out of town, so my Portuguese nanny will make dinner and then I’ll either get back to reading The Iliad or we’ll play Monopoly. I crush her every time.
The Iliad, an ancient Greek epic poem, attributed to Homer, and usually dated to around the 8th century BC. The poem is set during the final weeks of the Trojan War, but contains so many allusions to past and future events that by the end it has told the entire story.
Monopoly, a board game where players roll dice to move around the board while buying and trading property. First published by Parker Brothers in 1935, and based on the 1903 The Landlord’s Game created by Lizzie Magie, it is one of the most well-known board games in the world.
Paris’ parents have gone away just as Paris goes on her break from school. It’s almost as if they’re trying to get away from her; they’re certainly not including her in their plans … no wonder the poor kid needs a nanny.
RORY (looking at photo of Sherry): Nice looking lady. LORELAI: Mm hmm. Like a young Tammy Faye Bakker. RORY: But prettier than that.
Tammy Faye Bakker, born Tamara LaValley (1942-2007) was the ex-wife of television evangelist Jim Bakker (born 1940). She and her husband ran a televangelist program called the PTL Club, founded in 1974; it was dissolved in 1989 when Jim Bakker was convicted and imprisoned on indicted on numerous counts of fraud and conspiracy. Tammy Faye divorced Jim in 1992, and married Roe Messner, a church building contractor (so by this stage she was actually Tammy Faye Messner).
Tammy Faye was known for her eccentric and glamorous image, and her views which often diverged from mainstream evangelical Christianity. For example, she supported the LGBT community, and reached out to HIV positive patients at the height of the AIDS epidemic. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996, so was already terminally ill when this episode aired.
It is unclear what age “young” Tammy Faye Bakker was that Lorelai believes Sherry resembles. Knowing what Sherry actually looks like, perhaps when Tammy Faye’s hair was brown, before she dyed it blonde. That would have been in the 1960s, when Tammy Faye and her husband Jim had a puppet show on a Christian TV network.
The viewer may decide for themselves whether Sherry looks like Tammy Faye Bakker at any age, but I personally cannot see any strong resemblance (I can barely see a weak resemblance). I’m surprised that Rory doesn’t disagree any more strenuously than by saying Sherry is “prettier than that”, and can only think that she walks on eggshells when it comes to her mother’s jealousy over Sherry.
I’m not sure how Lorelai’s frame of reference for picturing a young Tammy Faye Bakker is in the 1960s, before Lorelai was born. I find this whole reference quite confusing.
EMILY: I don’t know. The man is so sensitive. He reads so much into every little perceived slight. LORELAI: Yeah. I remember one time when I was a kid, Dad had put on some weight, and he bought a new suit to try to cover it up. And he wore it for us and he said, ‘How do I look?’ and I said, ‘You look fat.’ [pause] But I guess that wasn’t really a perceived slight … so, I’ll think of another example.
This episode was written by Daniel Palladino, so naturally we have to have Lorelai be nasty about someone’s weight. This time it’s her own father, and apparently she was cruel to the overweight even in childhood! He’s just determined to turn her into a hateful character.
RORY: Paris wants the first issue back to be a double issue, so we have to prep over break and she says the news never sleeps. LORELAI: What about Paris, does she ever sleep? RORY: I think she periodically makes a whirring noise and then just shuts down.
Paris is an extremely hard-working, driven, and passionate editor of the school newspaper – and she doesn’t even want to be a journalist. It would be nice to see Rory show some of this enthusiasm for her chosen future profession. Without Paris, how much would Rory even care about the paper?
I think it’s meant to show us that Paris is an overly demanding lunatic with no life, while Rory is rational and relaxed about life-work balance. However, it just makes it seem as if Rory isn’t that interested, and is willing to let Paris set the pace for her.
LANE: Henry’s act. Um, how do I look? RORY: You might want to hold a phone up to your face so he’ll recognize you. LANE: Okay. [walks away]
Quite a bitchy comment to your best friend from “the sweetest kid in the world“. I think we can now assume that Rory has had enough and isn’t going to be helping Lane and Henry any more.
LORELAI: All right, that’s it. This afternoon we are going to engage in some intensive retail therapy to bring you out of this funk. RORY: No thanks. LORELAI: I mean it. Today is the day we finally spring for the Powerpuff Girls shot glasses.
The Powerpuff Girls is an animated television series on the Cartoon Network about three kindergarten-aged girls with superpowers named Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. The girls live in the fictional city of Townsville with their father and creator, Professor Utonium.
The plot of each episode is a humorous take on superhero shows, with the girls having to defend their city from villains and monsters, while also dealing with typical little kid issues, like loose teeth and bedwetting. The original series was broacast from 1998 to 2005, but had various specials, a movie, and a range of spin-off media.
Episodes often contain hidden references to older popular culture, with sly tributes and parodies, and has been praised as both pop culture and high art, suitable for small children and adults. You can see why Lorelai and Rory love it.
The Powerpuff Girls have a wide range of merchandise, and you can indeed buy Powerpuff Girls shot glasses.
LORELAI: Maybe Dean won’t even come tonight. RORY: Oh, he’ll be there. There aren’t enough monster truck rallies in the world to keep him away from Miss Patty’s tonight.
A monster truck is a specially modified truck for competition and entertainment, given heavy duty suspension, four-wheel drive, and oversized tyres. Monster trucks developed in the late 1970s, and by the early 1980s were popular side acts at motocross events. Today monster trucks take centre stage at rallies, usually having races and stunt driving. In real life, there are regular monster truck rallies in Hartford and Bridgeport, so Dean wouldn’t have any trouble getting to one.
Somehow Dean has devolved from being a big city boy who liked classic films, Hunter S. Thompson, and Nick Drake into a country boy who likes BattleBots and monster truck rallies. How did he go from seeming pretty perfect for Rory into someone we barely recognise?
RORY: Look, things are really good for me and Dean right now, and I don’t want anything to mess that up. Especially not something that meant nothing at all to me and I wished had never happened in the first place.
Ouch. That genuinely hurt. If Tristan wasn’t already hellbent on making things difficult for Rory and Dean, I think that definitely sealed the deal.
I don’t think Rory is being entirely truthful that her kiss with Tristan meant nothing at all – it brought up so much emotion that she cried and was able to begin grieving the loss of her relationship. But that would be an incredibly awkward conversation to have, might be more insulting than what she actually said, and not really helpful in setting boundaries with Tristan.
(I don’t think she’s correct that things are “really good” with Dean either – he’s jealous and controlling, she’s scared to be honest with him because of how he’ll react, they have few interests in common, they have different values, she’s slowly becoming intrigued by another boy. But she’s not being dishonest, she just doesn’t have the experience or perspective to see these things for herself).
LORELAI: He’s never seen Ab Fab. RORY: Definitely not a soulmate.
Absolutely Fabulous (often called Ab Fab) is a British television sitcom starring Jennifer Saunders as Edina “Eddy” Monsoon, a heavy-drinking PR agent who spends all her time chasing the latest hip fad, and Joanna Lumley as her best friend Patsy Stone, a fashion editor whose drug abuse, alcohol consumption and promiscuity are at almost life-threatening proportions. Eddy’s studious daughter Saffron “Saffy”, played by Julia Sawalha, is the sensible one who tries to rein in her wayward mother’s worst excesses, taking on the parent role in their relationship.
The first three series were broadcast on the BBC in the UK from 1992 to 1994, with a special in 1996. In the US, it premiered in 1994 on Comedy Central. After receiving critical acclaim and being named one of the greatest British sitcoms of all time in 2000, it was revived in 2001 – Lorelai may have become a fan quite recently. It was shown on the Oxygen Network, which might be how she watched it, and became a cult hit in the US.
The revival continued until 2004, with a twentieth anniversary series of specials in 2011-2012. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie was released in 2016.
Absolutely Fabulous‘ demographic was, broadly speaking, gay men and straight women over 35, so it’s hardly surprising that Paul has never seen it. I think it’s unrealistic to expect her “soulmate” to be a fan of the show.
The mother-daughter relationship between Eddy and Saffy is an exaggerated version of that between Lorelai and Rory, and Eddy’s outrageous outfits sometimes aren’t much worse than a few of Lorelai’s more questionable fashion choices. I think this would have been a show Lorelai and Rory would have enjoyed watching together, seeing something of themselves in the characters. Perhaps Rory is Lorelai’s true soulmate.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 