Tag: Comics

“Super Jackson”

SOOKIE: Oh wait! What’s that? It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s Super Jackson and his atomic pea tendrils!

Sookie sarcastically compares Jackson to the comic book superhero Superman. The television series Adventures of Superman, 1952-58, with George Reeves playing the title character, was introduced each episode with a crowd of people saying the lines, “Look! Up in the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s Superman!”.

Sookie and Jackson are still fighting over the produce he provides for the inn. Before they were dating, it seemed cute, as if fuelled by unresolved sexual tension. Now that they’re married, it seems stupid, as if their relationship hasn’t progressed, and more like workplace bullying.

Blankie

PARIS: You have a problem with it?

FRANCIE: No, I’m just surprised. You seem so attached to those meetings.

PARIS: Well, I finally got a blankie. It’s much better.

Blankie, the baby-talk word for the security blankets that toddlers sometimes like to carry around for self-soothing. A famous example is the character of Linus in the Peanuts comic strip.

Snoopy

RORY: [starts applying the purple dye] So have you mentioned dyeing your hair to the band yet? LANE: No, but they’ll be cool with it. They’ve all got tattoos. Dave and Zach have musical themes and Brian’s got Snoopy.

RORY: Poor guy.

LANE: Yeah, but he’s a slamming bass player.

Snoopy, Charlie Brown’s dog in the Peanuts comic strip, previously discussed and frequently mentioned. He is a black and white beagle. Comic strip creator Charles M. Schulz based him on his childhood dog Spike, who was a pointer crossed with an unknown hound – presumed to be a beagle, as Spike looked very beagle-like. The name came from Schulz’s mother, who had said if they ever got another dog, she would have named him Snoopy. In the comic strip, Snoopy has an older brother named Spike who lives in the Californian desert. Snoopy has his own star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and is a mascot of the NASA space program.

Note how quick Lane is to defend Brian when Rory says something pitying about him. Lane may have only been in the band for a week or so, but she already feels protective of her band mates.

Mickey

LORELAI: Did you call an exterminator?

MICHEL: Why, no, what a wonderful idea. I was actually going to fasten a large wedge of cheese to my head and lay on the ground until Mickey gets hungry and decides to crawl out and snack on my face.

Mickey Mouse, animated cartoon character co-created in 1928 by Walt Disney and Ub Iwerks, and first voiced by Disney himself. The name “Mickey” was suggested by Walt Disney’s wife Lillian, to replace the character’s original name of Mortimer Mouse.

Mickey first appeared in the 1928 short film Plane Crazy, and made his feature film debut in Steamboat Willie, one of the first cartoons with sound. He has appeared in over 130 films, including The Band Concert (1935), The Brave Little Tailor (1938), and Fantasia (1940). In 1978, he became the first cartoon character to get a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

Mickey has featured extensively in comic strips and comic books, in television series, and in other media, such as video games and merchandising, and appears as a character you can meet at Disney parks. He is one of the most recognisable fictional characters of all time.

Wonder Woman

LORELAI: I just . . . I feel like I’m never gonna have it . . . the whole package, you know? That person, that couple life, and I swear, I hate admitting it because I fancy myself Wonder Woman, but . . . I really want it – the whole package.

Wonder Woman, previously discussed as one of Lorelai’s personal feminist icons.

Here Lorelai admits that she would actually like to be in a stable, established relationship, suggesting one of the reasons she may have agreed to get engaged to Max, even knowing he wasn’t right for her.

“The doctor is in”

RORY: You had another dream.

LORELAI: Yes.

RORY: The doctor is in.

In the Peanuts comic strip, previously mentioned, there is a running gag where Lucy van Pelt sets up her own psychiatry booth, in which she dispenses terrible advice for five cents. The booth has a sign on it, saying The doctor is in, when Lucy is available for consultation. Rory is having a sly joke at her own expense, as if any advice she has to offer will be similarly useless.

People and Works Referenced More Than Once in Gilmore Girls (Up to Season Two)

Women

Christiane Amanpour

Pamela Anderson

Jane Austen

Simone de Beauvoir

Bjork

Anita Bryant

Mariah Carey

Cher

Colette

Joan Crawford

Emily Dickinson

Celine Dion

Enya

Ella Fitzgerald

Zsa Zsa Gabor

Judy Garland

P.J. Harvey

Lillian Hellman

Barbara Hutton

Carole King

Ricki Lake

Jennifer Lopez

Courtney Love

Madonna

Carmen Miranda

Marilyn Monroe

Nico

Yoko Ono

Dorothy Parker

Sam Phillips

Sylvia Plath

Emily Post

Dawn Powell

Britney Spears

Meryl Streep

Martha Stewart

Barbra Streisand

Elizabeth Taylor

The Virgin Mary

Barbara Walters

Eudora Welty

Virginia Woolf

Men

Abbot and Costello

Woody Allen

Kevin Bacon

Beck

Matthew Broderick

Mel Brooks

Charles Bukowski

Chang and Eng Bunker

George Clooney

Elvis Costello

Kevin Costner

James Dean

Charles Dickens

Fyodor Dostoevsky

William Faulkner

Sigmund Freud

William Randolph Hearst

King Henry VIII

William Holden

Hubert Humphrey

Michael Jackson

Henry James

Jesus Christ

Pope John-Paul II

James Joyce

Ted Kaczynski

John F. Kennedy

Stephen King

John Lennon

Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb

Baz Luhrman

David Lynch

Barry Manilow

Charles Manson

Arthur Miller

Benito Mussolini

Paul Newman

Richard Nixon

Charlie Parker

Sean Penn

Regis Philbin

Grant Lee Phillips

Brad Pitt

Iggy Pop

Elvis Presley

Prince

Paul Revere

J.D. Salinger

William Shakespeare

Frank Sinatra

Steven Spielberg

Sylvester Stallone

Hunter S. Thompson

John Travolta

Mark Twain

Tom Waits

Books

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by Edward Albee

Tuesdays with Morrie by Mitch Alborn

Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll

Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes

The Mourning Bride by William Congreve

Howl and Other Poems by Allen Ginsberg

Hansel and Gretel by The Brothers Grimm

Rapunzel by The Brothers Grimm

The Iliad by Homer

The Sketchbook of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent by Washington Irving

Nancy Drew series by Carolyn Keene

On the Road by Jack Kerouac

To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Paul Revere’s Ride by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A Mencken Chrestomathy by H.L. Mencken

The Crucible by Arthur MIller

Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell

Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust

The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare

Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy

Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette by Judith Thurman

The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain

The Last Empire by Gore Vidal

Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut

The Glass Menagerie by Tennessee Williams

A Streetcar Named Desire by Tenneessee Williams

The Bible

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary

Comics

Peanuts

Superman

Periodicals

Cosmopolitan

GQ

InStyle

Jane

The New York Times

The New Yorker

The Wall Street Journal

The Washington Post

Films

Babe

Bambi

The Boy in the Plastic Bubble

Cinderella

David and Lisa

The Deer Hunter

Dr Dolittle

Fatal Attraction

Footloose

Frankenstein

Fried Green Tomatoes

Funny Girl

Ghostbusters

Glitter

The Godfather series

Grease

Heathers

The Horse Whisperer

How the Grinch Stole Christmas

The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1939)

Invasion of the Body Snatchers

The Little Rascals

Mary Poppins

The Matrix

Midnight Express

The Miracle Worker

Monty Python and The Holy Grail

Oklahoma!

The Outsiders

Rebel Without a Cause

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Rosemary’s Baby

Say It Isn’t So

The Shining

Sixteen Candles

Sleeping Beauty

Stalag 17

Star Wars

A Streetcar Named Desire

Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story

West Side Story

The Wizard of Oz

The Yearling

Bands

98°

Ash

B-52s

The Bangles

The Beatles

The Bee Gees

Belle and Sebastian

Black Sabbath

Blondie

The Cure

Duran Duran

Foo Fighters

The Go-Go’s

Grandaddy

Grant Lee Buffalo

Metallica

Motley Crue

NSYNC

Pixies

Rolling Stones

The Sex Pistols

The Spice Girls

Steely Dan

U2

Van Halen

The Velvet Underground

Wilco

XTC

Albums

Wasp Star (Apple Venus Volume 2) – XTC

Songs

What a Wonderful World – Louis Armstrong; Joey Ramone

I Can’t Get Started – Ella Fitzgerald

Someone to Watch Over Me – Rickie Lee Jones; Marty and Elayne

Where You Lead – Carole King

It’s a Small World After All – Richard and Robert Sherman

We Are Family – Sister Sledge

Teach Me Tonight – Dinah Washington

My Little Corner of the World – Yo La Tengo

Television

All in the Family

The Andy Griffith Show

BattleBots

The Brady Bunch

Charlie’s Angels

The Facts of Life

Get Smart

Happy Days

I Love Lucy

Jeopardy

Joanie Loves Chachi

Lassie

Looney Tunes

The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom

The Odd Couple

The Oprah Winfrey Show

The Powerpuff Girls

Saved By the Bell

Star Trek

This Old House

The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson

The Twilight Zone

Twin Peaks

Wheel of Fortune

Wonder Woman

Mr Freeze

LORELAI: You’re pulling a Mr. Freeze on me.

Mr Freeze (Dr Victor Fries) is a supervillain from the Batman comics, created by Dave Wood and Sheldon Moldoff in 1959, and originally called Mr Zero. Mr Freeze was a rogue scientist whose design for an ice gun backfired, spilling cryogenic chemicals on himself, so he needed sub-zero temperatures to survive. The Batman television series gave him a more sympathetic back story, making him a complex, tragic character. He was portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger in the 1997 Batman film.

Another example of Lorelai using comic books as a reference point.