Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: Do you want Tater Tots also?
RORY: That’s a rhetorical question right?
Tater Tots are a frozen food product of deep-fried, grated potato made by Ore-Ida; the brand is owned by Heinz. First sold in 1953, Tater Tots are a popular item in American school cafeterias.
JACKSON: Uh, hey, do you wanna look at the Brussels sprouts?
SOOKIE: Yes, I do. [giggles] No. Ooh, what about some nice Brussels sprouts with like a garlic olive oil for the wedding? That sounds like a “‘Til death do us part” kind of side dish, doesn’t it?
Sookie says “I do”, which is the traditional way to agree to marry someone in the wedding vows, and “… until death do us part” is the conclusion to the traditional wedding vows, which date back to medieval times and are printed in prayer books.
Sookie is just teasing Jackson, but later they will be married for real.
SOOKIE: Who’s catering?
LORELAI: Um, Bobby Flay?
Robert “Bobby” Flay (born 1964) is an American chef, restaurateur, and television personality. He is the owner of several restaurants, including Bar Americain in New York and at the Mohegan Sun casino in Uncasville, Connecticut. He has hosted numerous TV shows for the Food Network and the Cooking Channel, and Lorelai may have seen Grillin’ and Chillin’, Hot Off the Grill with Bobby Flay, or Food Nation with Bobby Flay, which all began airing in the late 1990s or 2000.
Of course Lorelai is joking, and Sookie immediately takes charge of both the catering and making the wedding cake.
MICHEL: I am weighing my turkey.
SOOKIE: Why?
MICHEL: A group of scientists did a study on rats where they cut their daily calories by thirty percent.
SOOKIE: And you felt left out?
MICHEL: No, the rats lived thirty percent longer. And the scientists were so impressed that they cut their own calories just like the rats.
Michel is referring to a famous and oft-cited 1934 study, which found that when scientists cut the calories of mice by 30-40% but still gave them all the nutrients they needed, they lived longer than expected – sometimes twice as long as the expected lifespan.
It has been difficult to prove conclusively that this works on humans also, and sometimes it doesn’t even work on mice – the mice have to be young and well-fed to begin with for the calorie reduction to be of any use. Older and leaner mice died earlier than expected when on a calorie-restricted diet (which doesn’t seem like good news for Michel, who isn’t all that young, and already slim). Furthermore, mice on a calorie-restricted diet can find it harder to fight infections.
Since 1997, The Calorie Restriction Society has been collecting data on its 900 human members who are on calorie-restricted diets, but it may be decades before a definitive answer is reached. However, a 2012 study on monkeys found no difference in lifespan between subjects who ate a normal healthy diet and those who ate a calorie-restricted healthy diet.
It’s notable that Michel is eating turkey, since in the Pilot episode he said he didn’t eat meat. Possibly that was a dietary fad, or perhaps he only considers red meat to be “meat”.
SOOKIE: Carlito, we’re running out of clarified butter. Ooh, chop that finer. No hard boiling. Yo prefiero tener los huevos suave. Ooh, that looks good. Add a little pinch of oregano, I think we’ve got it.
As Sookie gives instructions to her assistant Carlito, she partly speaks in Spanish. Her one sentence in Spanish can be translated as “I’d prefer the eggs to be soft” – I think she means the eggs to be poached or perhaps soft-boiled, but you can’t actually see what Carlito is doing.
I’m not completely sure, but as Sookie receives her lobster order just after this, it’s possible she is planning to make a variation on Lobster Benedict, where you serve lobster with poached eggs and a hollandaise sauce. Another possibility would be lobster salad with soft boiled eggs – or possibly the eggs and lobsters are for two separate dishes.
LORELAI: Okay, I’m sharing something with you. Sharing is not making a big deal, sharing is a nice gesture. Like when you’re a kid and you have one of those Popsicles and you break it in two and offer half to another kid. That is sharing, that is what I’m doing.
LUKE: You offered me half a Popsicle?
Popsicle is an American brand name for those sweet frozen snacks on a stick that might otherwise be known as ice pops, ice lollies, ice blocks, or icy poles. Popsicles were invented at the turn of the 20th century, and first manufactured in the 1920s. The brand is now owned by Unilever. Popsicles are easily fairly broken in half in order to share.
RORY: Oh! You should walk down the aisle to Frank Sinatra with a huge bouquet of something that smells really good.
LORELAI: Pot roast.
RORY: And you should wear a long veil with your hair up.
LORELAI: Ugh, I’ll take any other subject in the world for 200, Alex.
Lorelai is referring to the game show Jeopardy!, previously discussed. The host is Alex Trebek, and Lorelai mimics the game play of the show, with contestants choosing a particular subject for a certain amount of money (such as $200).
Lauren Graham, who played Lorelai Gilmore, went on Jeopardy! as a contestant in a celebrity episode of the show.
MAX: Oh, oh, I forgot. (Max pulls two Ring Pops out of the bag) One for you, and one for you.
RORY: What are these?
MAX: Those are rings. And the diamond is actually candy, so you can eat it.
Ring Pops are fruit-flavoured lollipops sold as a large plastic wearable ring with a candy “gemstone” that can be sucked. Manufactured by Topps, they were invented by Frank Richards in 1979.
(Lorelai, Rory, and Max are walking down the street. Lorelai and Max are carrying small grocery bags.)
MAX: Okay, we’ve got food, drink, reading material, chocolate covered espresso beans.
Chocolate-covered espresso beans are coffee beans covered in chocolate. They are candy made for the Gilmore girls, who love both sugar and caffeine. A serving of 40 g (about a handful) contains the same amount of caffeine as three cups of coffee.
In actuality, there are no such things as “espresso beans” – espresso is made from the same coffee plants as any other coffee.
LORELAI: I had the weirdest dream last night. We were in our house, but it wasn’t our house, it was a Kentucky Fried Chicken.
RORY: I’m hooked.
LORELAI: I had to get dressed, but my clothes were in the back. And the guy manning the giant oil vat would not let me though.
RORY: Oh my God! That’s so weird. When you said oil vat, that just reminded me, I had this dream last night we were swimming in a pool, only it wasn’t water, it was like oil or honey or something.
Kentucky Fried Chicken (since 1991 branded as KFC) is a fast food restaurant chain specialising in fried chicken with a secret recipe of eleven herbs and spices. It is the world’s second-largest restaurant chain after McDonald’s. It was founded by Colonel Harland Sanders in 1930, who sold his chicken from a roadside restaurant in the Great Depression, with the first franchise opening in 1952.
There are several KFC outlets in Hartford, and two in Wallingford, near where Stars Hollow seems to be located.
Dreams often link food and sex, so I wonder if Lorelai’s dream of a fast food outlet is trying to tell her that she is moving too fast with Max, and perhaps that the relationship is cheap and unsatisfying because it’s mostly based on sexual attraction?
The fact that Lorelai doesn’t seem to have any clothes on in the dream seems telling, and also that a man is stopping her from putting her clothes on (in the back of the store!) could signify that on some level she feels that the passion she has with Max is stopping her from finding a relationship that is deeper and more meaningful (with Luke).
The name of the man who is stopping Lorelai from getting her clothes turns out to be someone she once knew named Jim Dunning, which sounds rather like, “I’m done in”. In a way, her relationship with Max has already come as far as it can.
Both Lorelai and Rory dreamed of oil on the same night (Lorelai’s featured a man in charge of a vat of cooking oil, while Rory went swimming in what seemed to be oil, or perhaps honey). Both of them seem to want things to go smoothly in their lives: Lorelai dreaming of cooking oil may mean she wants a transformation in her life, while Rory is obviously exploring her emotions.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 