The Donna Reed Show

This is the television program that Lorelai and Rory watch with Dean, and is the basis for the episode’s title.

The Donna Reed Show is a sit-com starring Donna Reed as middle-class housewife Donna Stone. Carl Betz played opposite her as Donna’s paediatrician husband Alex, and Shelley Fabares and Paul Petersen were their teenaged children, Mary and Jeff.

Although Lorelai and Rory consider the show hopelessly outdated and sexist, episodes occasionally examined issues such as women’s rights (not with any radical outcomes, it must be said). But Donna Stone was a more assertive mother than had previously been shown on television, and it was the first sitcom to focus on the mother as the central figure in a domestic comedy. It helped pave the way for shows such as Roseanne and even Gilmore Girls (both shows that Amy Sherman-Palladino worked on).

The Donna Reed Show was attacked by feminists in the 1970s as presenting an idealised view of domesticity, so Rory and Lorelai’s criticisms feel really behind the times. It’s strange that they are giving feminist opinions from a generation ago as if they are clever and new – maybe they really do watch too many old movies?

The Donna Reed Show originally aired from 1958-1966, and was one of the most popular programs of 1963-64. It was only cancelled when Donna Reed became tired of doing the show.

Reruns of The Donna Reed Show were shown on Nick at Nite from 1985 to 1994. It wasn’t on TV in 2001, and hadn’t yet been released on DVD, meaning that the only way Lorelai and Rory can be watching the show is because they taped it off TV ages ago and are still watching it on video at least seven years later. Despite their mocking of the show, they must really be huge fans! (Again, how a show that hadn’t been on TV in nearly a decade is a relevant target for their attacks is a puzzle).

“Waverly and First”

Madeline tells Rory and Paris that she and Louise have been asked to a party “on the corner of Waverly and First” by Jess and Sean, the boys they picked up at the concert. This is apparently just around the corner from the concert venue.

Waverly Place is in Greenwich Village, not far from New York University, suggesting that Jess and Sean are students there. In real life, there is no point where Waverly Place crosses with First Avenue, although it does cross with Fifth and Sixth. It is very possibly a deliberate error.

The Concert in New York

Lorelai asks the three Hartford girls to join them at the concert that evening. They agree immediately, and apparently don’t need to ask their parents’ permission to attend a concert in another city with a woman they only just met, or don’t consider it necessary.

It seems that Paris, Madeline, and Louise never went home to Hartford, as they wear the same clothes to the concert as they did to visit Rory.The drive to New York from Stars Hollow would be just under two hours, and just over two hours to return to Hartford from New York, making this a long night for the girls – they wouldn’t get home until past 1 am the next day. Again, this doesn’t seem to be an issue for them or their families.

“How long has it been?”

LOUISE: How long has it been [that Rory and Dean have been together]?
RORY: … About a month.
LOUISE: Oh, lifers.

It’s quite clearly been more than “about a month” since Rory and Dean got together. It’s been more than two months since they went to the school dance together, so Madeline and Louise must know it’s more than a month.

By Louise describing a couple in a one-month relationship as “lifers”, we can tell she’s never been in a relationship for more than a few weeks at most, and that she views (or affects to view) a long-term relationship in terms of a prison sentence.

Monty

RORY: So did you guys find it okay?
PARIS: There’s no sign on this street.
RORY: I know, that’s why I told you to turn right at the big rooster statue.
PARIS: I thought you were kidding.
LORELAI: Oh no, we never kid about Monty.

There are numerous examples of big statues across the United Statues, often of ordinary things like animals and fruit. They are generally used as roadside attractions or as markers for a particular business. Stars Hollow seems to have one of a big rooster, affectionately known as “Monty” (by the Gilmore girls at least, who love to give names to inanimate objects), which marks the turn off to the Gilmores’ street, as the sign has quirkily fallen down or disappeared, and never been replaced. I feel as if the officious Taylor would not allow that to happen, but perhaps his powers were not yet so all-encompassing.

Rather disappointingly, this giant rooster is never shown, or discussed again, and it is not known why it was erected, or even if it was taken down at some point. We learn in the next episode that the Gilmores’ friend and neighbour Miss Patty raises chickens, and it is possible that Monty is there as a marker for her (hypothetical) side-business of selling eggs and/or poultry. It could be a marker for another type of rural business, or possibly Stars Hollow or its county is particularly famous for its poultry.

There is a big rooster statue in Salem, Connecticut [pictured], about an hour’s drive away from the area where Stars Hollow seems to be, so it’s perfectly plausible for Stars Hollow – this one is unusual for being painted black instead of the more usual white, and is a marker for a grain and feed store. Big rooster statues are common in California, where Gilmore Girls was written.

Rachel

After accidentally buying and wearing Luke’s ex-girlfriend’s sweater that he donated to the charity rummage sale, Lorelai learns from Sookie and Miss Patty that Luke had a “very serious girlfriend” called Rachel about five or six years ago (around 1995-1996), who broke his heart.

When Lorelai wonders how she could not have known about this relationship, or ever heard of Rachel before, the viewer can’t help but wonder too, as Lorelai has been in Stars Hollow since 1986.

Her friends explain that she was busy moving into her new house with her eleven year old daughter at the time, and that Rachel travelled a lot. As it doesn’t take that long to move into a new house, it makes you wonder how long this “very serious” partially long-distance relationship between Luke and Rachel lasted. Not very, by the sounds of it.

It’s a pretty lame explanation for why Lorelai’s never met or heard of Rachel before now, but at least tells us how long Lorelai and Rory have been in their home.

“She decided to be stupid”

RORY: [on the phone] Yeah, you too. Bye. [hangs up] That was Lane.
LORELAI: Oh, and what’s the verdict?
RORY: She decided to be stupid and tell her mother the truth – that she wanted to go to a rock concert with us tonight in New York.
LORELAI: Stupid.

In the very last episode, Double Date, Lorelai said she could never lie to Mrs. Kim to help Lane disobey her, citing “the mom code”. Yet now she says that Lane was “stupid” to tell her mother the truth, suggesting she was quite prepared to lie to Mrs. Kim on Lane’s behalf.

The Old Muddy River Bridge

RORY: Hey Luke, someone put a sign for the rummage sale up in your window over there …
LUKE: Your mom asked me to put it there, okay?
RORY: And you said yes?
LUKE: She’s not real good with “no”.

From the sign in the window of Luke’s Diner, we learn that the charity rummage sale is to raise funds to restore the Old Muddy River Bridge. There is an artist’s impression of the bridge, although it’s unclear whether this is what the bridge used to look like and needs to be restored to this condition, or this is what the new bridge will look like once it’s rebuilt. Either way, it looks as if the whole thing could be knocked up in a single afternoon with less than $100 worth of lumber and Luke donating his time to it.

However, for some reason this simple wooden footbridge is an ongoing project for the town, which spends much of its time raising money towards the bridge’s reconstruction and maintenance throughout the show’s original run. We can see that once again Luke is more civic-minded than he pretends to be, as he helps advertise the rummage sale, just as he brought hot drinks the Stars Hollow Battle re-enactors.

Also notice that Lorelai doesn’t even need to add her address: everyone in town knows where she lives, and she can just tell them to take contributions to her house. That’s some level of notoriety in a town of nearly 10 000 people.

In real life, the small town of Washington Depot, which Stars Hollow was originally inspired by, is surrounded by state parks and reservations. There are several wooden footbridges over rivers, creeks, and gorges; some quite elaborate, and others small and simple like the one in the drawing.

Affair

Louise says they can’t meet at her house to study as her mother is having an affair.

Nobody comments on this or asks why it affects them meeting – does Louise’s mother need the house to herself all weekend for her affair? Couldn’t she meet her lover elsewhere, or simply skip seeing him for a single afternoon? What does Louise’s father do on the weekends while the house is off limits to other family members’ activities in order to accommodate his wife’s affair? Has the house somehow been tainted by “affair-ness” so that nobody is ever allowed to visit?

These questions shall never answered. As Louise’s story doesn’t make sense, she may be making up an excuse that nobody will question out of embarrassment.

Measles

Madeline says that they can’t study at her house because her brother has measles.

Measles is a highly contagious viral infection causing fever, cough, runny nose, inflamed eyes, and a red rash. It can be fatal. Madeline must be vaccinated against the disease or she would have it herself, and the household should have been quarantined so that Madeline shouldn’t be (and possibly isn’t) living at home while her brother is infectious.

Measles were declared to be eliminated in the US in 2000 by public health officials (this doesn’t mean nobody got measles that year, just that there were so few cases and such high vaccination rates that they weren’t any threat to the general population).

Madeline’s brother getting measles in 2001 is highly unusual, and it really makes you wonder why vaccination rates are so low in the Gilmore Girls universe – in real life, Connecticut has one of the highest rates of child vaccination in the world. It seems more in line with California, where Gilmore Girls is filmed, where vaccination rates tend to be lower.