Footnotes to the TV series
EMILY: I did not have a thing for the pirate guy.
RICHARD: She was mad about him. She even tried to get me to grow one of those little moustaches.
Later on, Richard does grow a moustache similar to Erroll Flynn’s, and it turns out that Emily doesn’t like it at all.
This is the movie that Lorelai takes Max to see at the movie theatre run by the Black-White-Read Bookstore in Stars Hollow.
House on Haunted Hill is a 1959 horror film directed by William Castle. It stars Vincent Price as an eccentric millionaire who invites five people to a haunted house he has rented; each person will receive $10 000 if they stay the entire night in the house. Made on a shoestring budget, it was a huge success and is still regarded as a horror classic.
Amusingly, Max will soon be staying the entire night in Lorelai’s house.
LORELAI: Sorry I woke you up.
RORY: That’s okay. It’s all fodder for the tell-all.
This casual comment from Rory suggests that her writing a book about Lorelai is a long-standing joke between them. In A Year in the Life, Rory does actually begin writing the book.
DEAN: But you’re watching me.
LORELAI: Sweetheart, the whole town is watching you. That girl in there is beloved around here. You hurt her, there’s not a safe place within a hundred miles for you to hide.
As Dean discovers to his cost later in the season.
LORELAI: Don’t even get me started on your Prince Charming crush, OK? At least my obsessions are alive. You have a thing for a cartoon.
DEAN: Ooh, Prince Charming, huh?
RORY: It was a long time ago. And not the Cinderella one, the Sleeping Beauty one.
Prince Charming is the generic name for the royal male love interest in a fairy tale. Rory tells Dean that her crush was on the prince in the 1959 animated Walt Disney film Sleeping Beauty, whose name is Prince Phillip (it’s the one in Cinderella whose name actually is Prince Charming). Sleeping Beauty was the #2 movie of 1959 and is today considered one of the best animated films ever made, although it was so expensive to make that the Disney studio posted a financial loss that year.
Sleeping Beauty has had several re-releases. It was re-released in theatres in March 1986, when Rory was 17 months old. Although Rory could have been taken to the cinema to see it, it was also released on video that year, and Lorelai (or the grandparents) could have bought it for her. Her crush on the prince could go right back to babyhood, and if they owned the video she might have watched it for years as a toddler and little girl.
Sleeping Beauty was next re-released in 1995, when Rory was aged ten or eleven. It is also possible that this was when she developed her crush on the prince. To me this makes more sense, as she was on the cusp of puberty and more likely to be thinking about boys in a romantic way.
Prince Phillip does very vaguely resemble Dean – or at least a cartoon version of Dean wouldn’t look completely unlike Prince Phillip. The fact that Rory liked the prince because he could dance is a foreshadowing of what is soon to come between her and Dean.
(After Rory confesses she did a load of laundry without asking Lorelai)
LORELAI: I’m crushed. I’m bleeding. Get me a tourniquet. Oh, no, they’re dirty ’cause Rory wouldn’t wash them with her stuff.
A tourniquet is a device used to control blood flow after an injury. Tourniquets have been especially used on battlefields.
Lorelai’s pretense at suffering deep emotional pain will soon be replaced by genuine emotional pain.
LUKE: Will you marry me?
LORELAI: What?
LUKE: Just looking for something to shut you up.
An enormous tease to Luke-Lorelai shippers, and early foreshadowing. What a lot of time could have been saved if she’d said yes!
We learn in this episode that Rory’s full name is Lorelai Leigh Gilmore. This seems like an homage to the character Lorelei Lee (played by Marilyn Monroe), from the 1953 musical comedy film Gentlemen Prefer Blondes, directed by Howard Hawks. It is based on the 1949 musical, which in turn was based on the best-selling 1925 novel of the same name by Anita Loos. Gentlemen Prefer Blondes was the #9 movie of 1953, and both the film and Monroe’s performance were praised by critics.
In the film, Lorelei Lee loves wealthy men and the high life, and is also accused in court of theft. This may help prepare us for Rory’s own character arc.
Lorelai asks Rory if she thinks Luke is cute, indicating him as a possible love interest. Rory puts a stop to this idea, as she fears that if Lorelai and Luke dated, then broke up, they would never be able to get food and coffee from him again. Without Rory’s blessing, any attraction Lorelai feels toward Luke has to be put on the back-burner. Future episodes prove Rory’s concerns to be not unfounded.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 