Footnotes to the TV series
RORY: I hate that you’re torturing yourself like this, in bed like this.
PARIS: Proust wrote all three thousand pages of In Search of Lost Time in bed.
Marcel Proust, previously discussed as the author of In Search of Lost Time. Proust had lifelong poor health caused by severe allergies and asthma, and rarely left his apartment. He wrote much of In Search of Lost Time sitting up in bed, and was completely confined to bed for the last three years before his death.
PARIS: I’ve had Nanny hold all my calls, and the mail. My parents are away, so I’ve been totally Howard Hughes-ing it.
Howard Hughes (1905-1976), business magnate, record-setting pilot, engineer, film producer, and philanthropist, known during his lifetime as one of the most influential and richest people in the world. He first became prominent as a film producer, and then as an important figure in the aviation industry.
Later in life, he became known for his eccentric behavior and reclusive lifestyle—oddities that were caused in part by his worsening obsessive-compulsive disorder, chronic pain from a near-fatal plane crash, and increasing deafness.
SOOKIE: Papaya won’t eat, so I’m pretending to eat out of her bowl so she’ll copy me.
LORELAI: Sookie, you named the cat?
Papaya (Carica papaya), also known as pawpaw. A tropical fruit first domesticated in Mesoamerica, within modern-day southern Mexico and Central America. Spaniards introduced papaya to Europe in the 16th century. Papaya cultivation today spans Hawaii, central Africa, India, and Australia. India produces more papaya than any other country.
Babette had a cat named Cinnamon, and then got a kitten named Apricot. Women like calling their cats after food on this show. Sookie has committed numerous health and safety offences in the kitchen of the Independence Inn – now she is feeding a stray cat on the floor! They should have really have been shut down years ago.
LORELAI: Oh, well, I brought pizza if you guys are hungry.
PARIS: I have to take my retainer out first.
An orthodontic retainer, a custom-made device, usually made of wires or clear plastic, that hold teeth in position after surgery or any method of realigning teeth.
LORELAI: Oh, well, I brought pizza if you guys are hungry.
In previous seasons, Paris is said to be lactose intolerant, and cannot eat cheese. When she had pizza before at the Gilmores’, Lorelai got her a pizza without cheese on it. This can’t be the case now, as Lorelai didn’t know Paris was coming over. Maybe the big blow out of mac and cheese Paris had when Jess brought dinner over taught her that she wasn’t as lactose intolerant as she thought?
SOOKIE: Oh my God, I’m pregnant! …
RORY: That’s great!
[they all scream and hug]
Lorelai suggests to Sookie she may have some kind of minor illness affecting her taste buds, then she goes into the lobby to talk to Rory, before Sookie comes out of the kitchen and announces she’s pregnant.
Pregnancy can certainly affect the sense of taste of smell, explaining Sookie’s suddenly horrible food, so this makes sense – but how can Sookie be sure? Did she just throw up in the toilet (which could be something else), did she do the world’s quickest pregnancy test, and if she had one all along, why didn’t she use it before? Has she had some other little sign, like her periods stopping, breast tenderness, and weight gain, and she’s put all the clues together?
Who knows? She just apparently knows she’s pregnant, even though she’s seemingly never been pregnant before, and everyone gets super excited and jumps around hugging each other. Nobody asks Sookie how she knows, or suggests she might be mistaken, or that it might need to be verified by, oh I don’t know, science.
LORELAI: I don’t know. It’s weird, Sookie must be sick or something.
RORY: Sookie never gets sick.
In fact, Sookie said that she had a little bug the week before. Later events suggest this may have been morning sickness, since we never learn exactly what this “bug” entailed. Although only a scriptwriter who has never been pregnant would think of morning sickness as a “little bug”, so I don’t know.
TRIX: Now, talk to some old women, tell us what it’s like to be young.
LORELAI: Not nearly as much fun since the mandatory sunscreen rule, I’ll tell ya.
In the US, sunscreen began to be regulated in 1978, when Lorelai was ten years old. Apparently she hasn’t had as much fun since that age.
ALEX: Ready to try another? I hear there’s one from Peru that comes with a Surgeon’s General warning.
Peru, a country on the west coast of South America. Despite Alex’s warning, Peruvian coffee is said to be mild and light in flavour.
The surgeon general of the United States is the operational head of the US Public Health Service Commissioned Corps and thus the leading spokesperson on matters of public health in the federal government of the United States. The US surgeon general is nominated by the president of the United States and confirmed by the Senate.
In 2003, the Surgeon General of the US was Richard Carmona (born 1949); he was in the post from 2002 to 2006. In 2014 he wrote a book called 30 Days to a Better Brain, where he actually promoted coffee as a healthy drink that could improve mood and memory.
Francie comes to talk to Paris while she is washing her hands in the bathroom. Even though there are two containers of handwash at the basin, the viewer can see she is using her own handwash or hand sanitiser. This is meant to indicate how “crazy” and germphobic Paris is, but post-Covid, she now looks pretty sensible and well organised!
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 