Footnotes to the TV series
LANE: Eggless egg salad. Though this year my mom added food coloring to make the egg-like product look more eggy.
Vegan egg salad is made from mashed tofu, yeast, and vegan mayonnaise with mustard and turmeric for colouring. Black salt (actually pink in colour) provides the egg flavouring. It doesn’t need food colouring, but maybe knowledge of vegan foods has increased since 2002.
I don’t know who wants vegan egg salad at 6 am, but this is the refreshment that Mrs Kim and Lane are providing!
PARIS: Sorry I’m late, Mrs. Savitt.
MRS SAVITT: Is everything okay?
PARIS: Yes. I overslept.
In “The Deer Hunters”, Rory turned up a few minutes late for class after being hit by a deer, and all hell broke loose. There was a serious suggestion made that Rory might not be suitable for such a strict school as Chilton. Now Paris wanders into class late without any reasonable excuse, and it’s no big deal. The show could never really decide if Chilton was a big, scary, super strict school, or just a normal prep school.
LORELAI: Why not?
RORY: Because this is Dean’s first marathon. We were gonna go and watch and hang out, he’s totally looking forward to it. I told him about how Andrew gets in a fight with his date in the first fifteen minutes and storms off the floor. I told him about Taylor getting punch-drunk at hour fifteen and telling stories about how he always wanted to be a magician.
If Rory cares so much about Dean’s first marathon, why did she say she would work on the newspaper with Paris on that day? Possibly she and Dean were just going to go in the afternoon or evening to watch (although how will they see Andrew storm off in the first fifteen minutes, if so?).
It’s interesting to wonder why Dean didn’t go to the marathon the year before with Rory (in 2000, he and Rory only began dating in November, so it might have seemed too soon to drag him along). In the previous season around this time of year, Rory was doing the Shakespeare play with Tristan, and she and Dean weren’t getting along very well. It seems so much so that Rory didn’t invite her boyfriend to the marathon.
LORELAI: Plus, we got the whole mother/daughter gimmick going for us. The crowd’ll eat that up.
It’s a dance marathon based on nothing but stamina. They don’t actually need a gimmick to win. Perhaps Lorelai thinks that if the crowd is supporting them, they’ll be more likely to last until the end, although she may be saying anything to get Rory to agree.
DEAN: I know this is a stupid question, but why can’t you just talk to him?
LANE: Because yesterday he called to say that they were still looking for a rehearsal space and, uh, that he’d call when he had more news. So now I have to wait until he calls about the band – and in between, I call and hang up on him. Pathetic.
Lane has been calling Dave and hanging up when he answers, just so she can hear his voice. She and Dave are in regular contact even though the band has apparently gone on a break while they look for a suitable rehearsal space (he phoned her just the day before). However, lovesick Lane is still calling him multiple times a day.
Dean finds this behaviour ridiculous, and then he discovers Rory used to hang up on him before they were dating. I’m not sure how she got his number when they’d only spoken a few times, maybe Dean gave her his number straight away (which would surely be a clue he liked her?). Also, why doesn’t Dean remember someone ringing him all the time and then hanging up two years ago?
While Paris is still at Chilton, she sees Jamie, the Princeton student she had a date with in Washington DC. Jamie had her phone number but never called, thinking he didn’t need the “distraction” of having a girlfriend. Unable to think of anything but Paris, he has still not phoned her, but turned up at Chilton to see her.
Characters love showing up impulsively as a romantic gesture on the show – as is the way, Jamie waits patiently until Paris comes outside, and she hasn’t been kept back by a teacher or school meeting, and nobody from the school tries to move him on or report him to the police for hanging around the school gates.
Although Paris is shocked and flustered that Jamie has appeared three months after their date in August (confirming that it is now November), she is quickly persuaded to listen to him, and they go to have coffee together.
LORELAI: Apparently, Miss Patty showed his wife a picture of me, and she thinks I look like Elizabeth Taylor, which makes her Debbie Reynolds, and Stanley Eddie Fisher.
Actress Elizabeth Taylor, previously discussed and frequently mentioned. This is the second time Lorelai has been linked with Elizabeth Taylor (although, so has Miss Patty).
Singer and actor Edwin “Eddie” Fisher (1928-2010) was Elizabeth Taylor’s fourth husband. His first wife was actress and singer Debbie Reynolds (born Mary Reynolds, 1932-2016), a close friend of Elizabeth Taylor. Married in 1955, Fisher and Reynolds divorced in 1959 when it was revealed that he had been having an affair with Taylor. It caused a huge scandal at the time. Eddie Fisher and Elizabeth Taylor were divorced in 1964, and she and Debbie Reynolds reconciled and resumed their friendship some time in the late 1960s or early 1970s.
We learned earlier that Miss Patty carries a photo of Lorelai in her wallet in order to show it to men who might be interested in dating Lorelai. Now she’s apparently showing it to other women to make them jealous. What is it with this creepy obsession Miss Patty has with Lorelai?
RORY: Who’s Stanley Appleman?
LORELAI: Oh, he’s brand new in town. He works over at the hardware store, and the best part is, he used to be part of the touring company . . . of Riverdance.
Riverdance, theatrical show that consists mainly of traditional Irish music and dance. With a score composed by Bill Whelan, it originated as an interval act during the Eurovision Song Contest 1994. Shortly afterwards, it was expanded into a stage show, which opened in Dublin in 1995. Since then, the show has visited over 450 venues worldwide and been seen by over 25 million people, making it one of the most successful dance productions in the world.
Riverdance comes to Hartford every year. Did Stanley join the company while it was in Connecticut, or did he like the area so much he decided to stay there? How do you go from touring with Riverdance to working in hardware in a small town?
TAYLOR: No, we have that money. The Tennessee Williams lookalike contest last month put us right over the top.
Thomas Williams III, known by his pen name Tennessee Williams (1911-1983), playwright and screenwriter. He is considered to be one of the foremost playwrights of the 20th century. Williams had his first success with The Glass Menagerie in 1944, followed by a strong of successes, including A Streetcar Named Desire (1947), Cat on a Hot Tin Roof (1955) and Sweet Bird of Youth (1959). Much of his work has been adapted for the cinema. In 1979, he was inducted into the American Theater Hall of Fame.
It isn’t clear why Stars Hollow would hold a Tennessee Williams lookalike contest, although Williams’ literary agent did live in Connecticut, so there is a local link of a sort. Later on, it seems as if the town is keen to have fundraisers with a literary connection.
Taylor tells Luke they have enough money to restore the bridge now, and are currently raising money to buy a tarpaulin to cover the bridge, to ensure it doesn’t get further damaged during the winter before it can be restored. (Not only are tarpaulins not that expensive, Luke is able to locate and sew together numerous tarpaulins in a single night in the show’s final episode!). Despite this, Stars Hollow continues raising money for the bridge throughout the run of Gilmore Girls.
LORELAI: And out of nowhere, Kirk comes dancing by, waving a McDonald’s hot apple pie in the air and of course Ho-Ho lunges for the pie and drops my hand and that was it. Kirk wins, I’m out. I’m gonna get that Ho-Ho someday.
McDonald’s fast food restaurants, previously discussed. They have had hot apple pie on their dessert menu since 1968. Until 1992, the apple pies were deep fried, but are now baked.
Ho-Ho, previously discussed.
Lorelai’s story reveals that Kirk is not above fighting dirty in order to win the dance marathon. He had great foresight to bring a McDonald’s apple pie with him to the marathon, and kept it hot (?) by some arcane means.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 