LUKE: So, back from the ball, huh? LORELAI: Yes, I left behind a glass slipper and a business card in case the prince is really dumb.
Yet another Cinderellareference. In the fairy tale, Cinderella loses the glass slipper at the ball by which the prince, through a laborious and long-winded process, eventually manages to track her down. Lorelai suggests leaving a business card might have led to quicker results.
Is Lorelai’s response supposed to be a hint to Luke, or just a comment on the stupidity of Christopher? Either way, it feels as if Luke’s opening gambit is his way of testing to see if Christopher is going to be sticking around or not.
The song which is played while the debutantes perform their “fan dance” – not the burlesque entertainment the name leads you to believe, but a rather tame affair holding small white fans over their heads. Luckily for Rory, little actual dancing ability seems to be required for it.
Thanks Heaven for Little Girls is a 1957 song written by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe, performed by Maurice Chevalier in the 1958 musical comedy, Gigi, based on the novelette by French author Colette. The film is about a sixteen-year-old girl being trained to be a courtesan in 19th century Paris, who winds up becoming a wife rather than a mistress.
The lyrics describe the pleasure men derive from little girls of “five or six or seven”, knowing that in a decade or so, they will have developed into bigger girls, who “grow up in the most delightful way”.
As a song about the joys of girls developing into nubile young women so you can marry them, it’s on theme for a debutante ball, but also wildly and hilariously inappropriate. The show does seem to agree with Lorelai (big surprise!) that there’s something pretty creepy about coming out parties and debutante balls.
RORY: At one point Miss Patty thought Dean was gonna get hurt, she made me sit in the corner and watch. LORELAI: Hey! Nobody puts Baby in the corner.
A reference to the 1987 dance film, Dirty Dancing, starring Jennifer Grey as Frances “Baby” Houseman, a girl who falls in love with her dance instructor Johnny Castle, played by Patrick Swayze, while on vacation with her parents at a resort. (Faithful reader lujza0317 has reminded me that Baby’s mother is played by none other than Kelly Bishop, aka Emily Gilmore!).
At one point, Johnny stands up for Frances when her parents stop her from dancing by forcing her to sit at a table in a corner, saying, “Nobody puts Baby in a corner”. He then pulls out her out of the corner so they can perform together on the dance floor. He lets Frances know that she doesn’t deserve to be hidden away, but should be in the spotlight so that her talents can shine. It’s commonly misquoted as “Nobody puts Baby in the corner”, as Lorelai does.
Although reviews were mixed and the studio had serious doubts about releasing the film, it became one of the highest-grossing of 1987, and the #1 film in the US, with many audience members going back to see it again and again. That re-watch value made it a hit on home video and DVD, and it still sells over a million DVDs a year. It is the #1 on the list of films watched by women, earning it the title, “Star Wars for girls”.
The song that is playing at Miss Patty’s while Rory and Dean, then Lorelai and Christopher, dance together.
The Way You Look Tonight was written by Jerome Kern, with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and first sung by Fred Astaire in the 1936 musical film, Swing Time. The song went to #1 in 1936, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song.
The song has often been successfully covered. The version Miss Patty plays is the best known and most popular – the 1964 version by Frank Sinatra, with the Nelson Riddle Orchestra. It’s on the album Sinatra Sings Days of Wine and Roses, Moon River, and Other Academy Award Winners.
LORELAI: Oh my God, George Lucas wishes he had this sound system.
George Lucas (born 1944) is an American film director, producer, and screenwriter, one of the most financially successful in history. He is best known for the Star Wars film franchise, which features a stirring musical theme composed by John Williams.
LORELAI: Now, I know you would rather sit through Endless Love than ever be a part of this scene again.
Endless Love is a 1981 romantic drama, based on the 1979 novel of the same name by Scott Spencer. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, and starring Brooke Shields and Martin Hewitt, Tom Cruise makes his film debut, in a minor role.
It’s a drippy story of teenage love gone wrong, with high melodrama which includes arson, being committed to a psychiatric institution, and imprisonment. It received mixed reviews, with only Brooke Shields getting any praise, and the book’s author saying the screen adaptation had been “botched”. Despite this, the film was a box-office success. The film’s theme song, also called Endless Love, became a #1 hit for Lionel Richie and Diana Ross.
Boston is the capital of, and largest city in, the state of Massachusetts. It was founded by Puritan colonists in 1630. It has a population of more than 600 000 people, is one of the economically most dominant cities in the world, and is known for its diversity of neighbourhoods. It’s about two and a half hours drive from where Stars Hollow would be, so Christopher is significantly closer to them now. It’s also 15 minutes drive from Harvard University ….
Note that Christopher has moved to Boston without letting Lorelai and Rory know, or even giving them the landline number for his new apartment. It seems he hasn’t spoken to them since Lorelai’s bachelorette party, with the excuse that he was giving Lorelai space after she broke her engagement. Which might be reasonable, except he has a daughter, and there’s no excuse for not phoning her. Once again, Rory is an afterthought in Christopher’s relationship with Lorelai, rather than the focal point she should be.
Christopher quickly rattles off a few associations for Boston:
Boston baked beans
Baked beans sweetened with molasses and flavoured with salt pork or bacon. It’s been a speciality of Boston since colonial times, and baked beans with frankfurters is a favourite dish. Boston is sometimes known as Beantown.
Boston cream pie
A sponge cake with custard or cream filling, glazed with chocolate. It’s said to have been created in 1881 at the Parker House Hotel in Boston by a French chef. It’s the official dessert of Massachusetts.
Boston Tea Party
A political protest by the an organisation called the Sons of Liberty in Boston on December 16 1773. It was in protest of the Tea Act, which allowed the British East India Company to sell tea from China in American colonies without paying taxes apart from those imposed by British parliament. The Sons of Liberty strongly opposed the taxes as a violation of their rights, with the slogan “no taxation without representation”. Protesters destroyed an entire shipment of tea sent by the East India Company, boarding the ships and throwing chests of tea into Boston Harbor. The British government responded harshly, and the episode escalated into the American Revolution. The Tea Party became an iconic event of American history.
Boston Strangler
The name given to the murderer of thirteen women in Boston in the early 1960s; most were sexually assaulted and strangled in their apartments with no signs of forced entry. In 1967 a man named Albert DeSalvo confessed to being the Boston Strangler while serving life imprisonment for a series of rapes; he was found stabbed to death in prison in 1973. Although his confession revealed some details of the crimes unknown to the public, and DNA evidence has linked him with the Strangler’s final victim, doubts remain as to whether he committed all the Boston murders. George Nassar, the prison inmate DeSalvo reportedly confessed to, is the major suspect; he is currently serving life in prison for murder. Several films have been made about the case, most notably The Boston Strangler (1968), starring Tony Curtis.
Christopher’s glib associations for the city bring to mind the way Rory summed up Chicago to Dean as “Windy. Oprah”.
LORELAI: And uh, you’ll need shoes, hose, gloves, some mice, a dog, a pumpkin.
Lorelai is referencing Cinderella, previously discussed. Cinderella’s fairy godmother turned a pumpkin into a coach, and a dog and some mice into attendants so that she could go to the ball in style.
It’s interesting that the last time Lorelai compared Rory’s situation to Cinderella was for her sixteenth birthday party, organised by Emily. This is another formal, dressy occasion they are going to for Emily’s sake, where Rory will be primped and put on display for Hartford society. For both events, Lorelai did her best to help Rory, even though she didn’t fully approve.
Lorelai is casting herself in the role of the fairy godmother, who is going to help Rory transform into a fairy tale princess for one night.
LORELAI: I swear, there is nothing in the world my mother is better at than getting someone to agree to something that in any other universe, they would never ever consider … I am still convinced she had something to do with Lily Tomlin doing that movie with John Travolta.
Lorelai is referring to the 1978 romantic drama Moment by Moment, directed by Jane Wagner. It stars Lily Tomlin as a wealthy middle-aged Beverly Hills socialite, and John Travolta as a young drifter. He becomes infatuated with her, and they embark on a rocky May-December romance. The film was widely panned by both critics and audiences. It remains a camp classic to this day – exactly the sort of film Lorelai couldn’t resist watching.
RORY: I went out onto the patio. LORELAI: Ugh, Rory, that’s like accepting the position as the drummer in Spinal Tap.
Spinal Tap is a fictional English heavy metal band created by American comedians and musicians Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, and Harry Shearer. They first appeared on a 1979 sketch comedy pilot called The TV Show, but are best known from the critically-acclaimed 1984 mockumentary film, This is Spinal Tap, considered one of the best films of the 1980s. The heavy metal fan and comedic Lorelai must surely love it.
Spinal Tap’s fictional history includes a succession of drummers, all of which have died in strange circumstances, such as a “bizarre gardening accident”, “choking on someone else’s vomit”, two suffering spontaneous combustion on stage, and one death a mystery police thought better to leave unsolved.
Lorelai’s saying that Rory was doomed the minute she went out on the patio.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 