Footnotes to the TV series
People who eat crunchy food with their mouths open
People who dog-ear library books
People who spit when they talk (Lorelai spits in Rory’s eye while she’s saying this)
Note that Lorelai, who supposedly never eats fresh fruit unless she feels like she’s coming down with an illness of some kind, is eating a bowl of fruit salad for breakfast. Maybe she’s a bit under the weather?
SOOKIE: ‘Fran’s Old Place’! It’ll be like Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. People will be trying to figure out who Fran is.
Ruth’s Chris Steak House is a chain of over one hundred upscale steakhouses across the United States, Canada and Mexico. The original Chris Steakhouse was founded in New Orleans in 1927 by Chris Matulich. It was purchased in 1965 by divorced single mother Ruth Fertel, who needed money to send her sons to college.
The name was changed to Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse in 1976 after a fire forced Fertel to move the restaurant to a new property. It allowed her to to keep some continuity, as she was legally not able to use the name Chris Steakhouse for any other locations than the original restaurant. Fertel admitted she always hated the name.
Note the similarities between Ruth and Lorelai – both struggling single mothers who need money for their children’s education. Both will even suffer the setback of a fire!
LORELAI: Mmm, I’m terrible at coming up with names. When we first bought out house, Rory and I wanted to name it, you know, like Jefferson named his place Monticello, but all we could come up with is The Crap Shack.
Former US President Thomas Jefferson, previously discussed, called his main plantation Monticello, from the Italian for “little mountain”, as it’s situated on a peak of the Southwest Mountains, near Charlottesville, Virginia. The plantation house was first begun in 1768 in a neoclassical style, but extensively remodelled in the 1790s with elements from Parisian homes Jefferson had seen in France and ideas of his own devising, and work continued into the 1820s. Monticello is now a National Historic Landmark and a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and features on the US five cent coin.
Notice that Lorelai wears a black blouse with a red cherry print design on it – Monticello is famous for its orchard, including its cherry trees. You can still buy cherry preserves from the Monticello gift shop. I cannot say if the colour of the blouse is significant in light of the slave labour that was used at Monticello, and even to some extent, in the building of the plantation house itself.
This is the first time we learn that Lorelai and Rory supposedly called their house The Crap Shack when they moved in, when Rory was eleven. Presumably the house was in poor condition, and has needed a lot of work to get it to the standard we see. It can’t be a name they use very often – they’ve always just referred to as “home” or “the house” so far. Perhaps that’s because the house is now far less crappy than when Lorelai bought it and the name doesn’t really apply any more.
RORY: Too bad Grandpa’s not here. He likes weird food.
LORELAI: Yeah, where’s he eating his weird food tonight? Argentina? Morocco?
EMILY: Akron … The amenities are atrociously lacking. He had to eat at a coffee shop last night. The whole thing’s terribly insulting. He’s miserable.
Akron is a city in Ohio, with a population of nearly 200 000, although the Greater Akron area is around 700 000. It has a long history of rubber and tyre manufacturing, earning it the name Rubber Capital of the World. Today it has an economy based on manufacturing, education, healthcare, and biomedical research, with many polymer companies. Racially diverse, it has been the site of several key scenes in African-American race relations, including being the place where Marcus Garvey founded the Universal Negro Improvement Society in 1914. Like many manufacturing centres, it suffers from the effects of air and soil pollution.
It is one of many cities which claims to have invented the hamburger, which might be one reason why Gilmore Girls doesn’t rate it as a place for fine dining. They do seem to be lacking silver service restaurants, although with a selection of delicious-looking steakhouses and grills. I feel as if Richard should have been able to find something decent to eat there, but this is the man who ate chocolate pudding with an expression like it was rat poison. Maybe his hotel wasn’t situated near any good food options.
It is one of the few times that Richard needed to travel for work within his home country. Richard seems to travel overseas an inordinate amount for someone who’s an executive at an insurance firm – is that much European travel really necessary in insurance? (Especially when a problem at their office in China was sorted out with a phone call from Richard). I wonder if being sent to Akron is another symptom of Richard being “phased out” of his job.
LORELAI: Very tasty. New cook?
EMILY: Yes, Marisella. She’s introduced us to some wonderful dishes so charmingly specific to her native country.
LORELAI: What country is she from?
EMILY: One of those little ones next to Mexico.
There are two countries which border Mexico to the south – Belize and Guatemala. Belize is the smaller of the two, although I’m not sure if that means it’s more likely as Marisella’s place of origin.
The cuisine of Belize and Guatemala is broadly similar to other countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, but often with their own twist. Dishes specific to Guatemala include pepian (a spicy chicken stew), and relleintos (mashed deep fried plantains mixed with chocolate and sprinkled with sugar). Dishes specific to Belize include chimole (a chunky chicken and potato soup), and fry jacks (soft puffy tortillas filled with beans, cheese, or meat). Garnaches are popular in both countries (fried corn tortillas topped with refried beans, cabbage, and cheese).
The Gilmores look as if they are eating a selection of grilled vegetables with tortillas (?), yellow rice, and beans, with salad and slices of lime. The food is served on communal dishes, and everyone helps themselves on their individual plate. It looks fairly typical of Central American meals.
RORY: Lorelai Gilmore. Nope, doesn’t sound model-y enough. You need something that stands out more. How about Waffle? We could call you Waffle and say you’re from Belgium?
Rory is referring to the way many models have unusual or exotic-sounding names, sometimes the one they were given at birth, and sometimes self-chosen. (Alexis Bledel began her career as a model, so presumably would know of many examples).
Waffle is from Belgium because they are famous for this foodstuff. American love “Belgian waffles”, which were introduced to North America in 1962, and popularised in 1964 at the New York World’s Fair – a variant of the Brussels waffle, served with strawberries and whipped cream (the Belgian cook who brought them over didn’t think North Americans would recognise Brussels as the name of a Belgian city).
There are several different types of waffle in Belgium, and none of them are called Belgian waffle. They tend to be larger and lighter than Belgian waffles in North America, with larger squares and a deeper grid pattern. Unlike in North America, they are not served as a breakfast food, but more often as a dessert or afternoon snack with coffee. [picture is the American version of Belgian waffles].
[Emily walks out onto the patio]
EMILY: What is this, a refugee camp? Come inside and eat at the table.
LORELAI: Mom, the whole point of barbecuing is to eat outside.
EMILY: Animals eat outside. Human beings eat inside with napkins and utensils. If you want to eat outside, go hunt down a gazelle. Make your decision, I’ll be inside.
More of Emily’s repressed, WASPY-y attitudes to eating, where pizza is something you only eat in a Turkish prison, and eating outside is something for animals or people in refugee camps. I can only think this attitude comes from country club barbecues, where the food would be cooked outside by the catering staff, but served indoors at tables like any other meal.
You can see how a lot of Lorelai’s poor dietary choices come out of a rebellion against her mother’s strict views on what foods are acceptable. Note that Lorelai and Rory immediately begin gnawing on corn cobs while hunched over in a corner, exactly like wild beasts, or starving people, comically fulfilling Emily’s expectations of what eating outside does to someone.
[they walk out onto the patio, where a chef is cooking on the grill]
RORY: Hey, cool!
LORELAI: What’s up, Poppin’ Fresh?
Poppin’ Fresh, otherwise known as the Pillsbury Doughboy, is an advertising mascot for the Pillsbury Company’s refrigerated dough product line, created in 1965. His slogan is, “Say hello to poppin’ fresh dough!”. He’s a boy made of dough who wears a chef’s hat, hence Lorelai’s greeting to the chef.
LORELAI: After all you’ve been through tonight and I come in here and find you eating like that.
[Rory raises her pinkie]
LORELAI: There you go.
Rory mockingly puts her pinkie finger up when eating her burger and fries, in the same way genteel ladies are supposed to hold theirs while partaking of a cup of tea.
LIBBY: You know, they say four out of five debs marry their escorts.
RORY: Kind of like the dentists with Trident.
Trident is a brand of sugar-free chewing gum. For many years it was advertised with the slogan, “Four out of five dentists surveyed recommend sugarless gum for their patients who chew gum.” This is believed to have been based on a survey of practising dentists in the early 1960s, the results of which were approximately 80% in favour of sugarless gum.
In real life, it’s not true that 80% of debutantes marry their escorts. That’s preposterous, especially as most debutantes are matched up with some random guy. I’m not sure whether it’s meant to show Libby is a gullible fool, or whether the show actually expects us to believe this nonsense.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 