Vincent “Vince” Foster (1945-1993), attorney who served as deputy White House counsel during the first six months of the Clinton administration. A childhood friend of Bill Clinton, he was unhappy working in politics, and became severely depressed. He was found dead from a gunshot wound in Fort Marcy Park in Virginia, just outside Washington DC, with a torn up resignation letter in his briefcase. His death was ruled a suicide, but several tabloids and newsletters speculated that he had been murdered, possibly involving the Clintons themselves.
Lorelai jokingly questions Rory, as if she is expecting her to provide inside information on the case (because Rory is in student government now).
LORELAI: Well, apparently this lovely girl came home to find her husband giving the nanny a nice little bonus package … The man was shot thirty-five times. He looks like a sprinkler system.
EMILY: I can’t believe this. Shauna was always such a nice girl. She was bright, cultured, well-spoken.
RORY: Ladies and gentlemen, the Williams sisters take center stage at Wimbledon once again.
Tennis players Serena and Venus Williams, previously discussed and referenced to indicate a rapid back-and-forth communication with neither party giving in.
LORELAI: I always thought if he could just get it together, grow up – maybe we could do it. Maybe we could really be a family, in the stupid, traditional ‘Dan Quayle, golden retriever, grow old together, wear matching jogging suits’ kind of way.
James Danforth “Dan” Quayle (born 1947), the 44th US vice-president from 1989 to 1993 under President George H.W. Bush. He sought the Republican nomination for president in 2000, but was unsuccessful.
Dan Quayle was outspoken on “family values”, and was notorious for citing sitcom Murphy Brown, which had an intelligent, professional single mother as the protagonist, as an example of how popular culture was eroding those values, in 1993. Amy Sherman-Palladino, creator of her own show about a single mother, seems to be having a little dig at Quayle here.
RICHARD: And I am shocked by your naïveté … Did you really have pictures of Norman Rockwell family Christmases dancing in your head? Lorelai had her chance for a family, she walked away from it. That was her choice.
Norman Rockwell (1894-1978), painter and illustrator, most famous for the cover illustrations of idealised or sentimental American life he created for The Saturday Evening Post for five decades. His Christmas illustrations [pictured] are well known as iconic images of the Yuletide season, and still popular.
Richard also references the poem, “A Visit from St. Nicholas”, attributed to Clement Clarke Moore, and previously mentioned as a classic work which has shaped the American view of Christmas. In the poem it says,
The children were nestled all snug in their beds, While visions of sugar-plums danced in their heads.
Richard mocks Emily’s hopes for Lorelai and Christopher to be together as idealistic and sugary-sweet as Christmas paintings and rhymes. He has never wavered from his position that Lorelai had one chance to have a husband and family, when she was sixteen, with Christopher, and that walking away from it was irresponsible. The idea that not marrying Christopher might have been the responsible thing to do, not to mention that stepping back from Christopher and Sherry now is the more moral choice, is something he cannot fathom.
LORELAI: Hello Rory, we missed you. Not the ottoman, of course, but everyone knows he’s a snob. Napoleon complex, he only really likes the magazine rack.
An ottoman is a small padded seat without a back or arms that can be used as a table, stool, or footstool. They are also known as tuffets, hassocks, or pouffes. The name comes from the Ottoman Empire from where it originated, the seat introduced to Europe in the 18th century.
A Napoleon complex is an imaginary syndrome attributed to people of short stature, where the short person (usually a man), overcompensates for their size by being too aggressive or domineering. In psychology, it is regarded as a derogatory social stereotype and a piece of mysandry. It comes from the idea put about by the British in the 19th century that Napoleon Bonaparte’s short temper was caused by him being of short size. In fact, Napoleon was 5 foot 7, average height for his era.
Presumably the ottoman only likes the magazine rack because it’s the one thing smaller than it is!
LORELAI: Sookie, Jackson loves you. You’re not seriously telling me the future of your marriage depends on Leon Troutsky over there.
Lorelai makes a pun on the name Leon Trotsky (born Lev Bronstein,1879-1940), Russian-Ukrainian Marxist revolutionary, political theorist and politician. Ideologically a communist, he developed a variant of Marxism which has become known as Trotskyism. After the death of Lenin and the rise of Joseph Stalin, Trotsky gradually lost favour, and he was expelled from the Soviet Union in 1929. He spent the rest of his life in exile and was assassinated in Mexico City in 1940 by an agent of the Soviets.
MRS. KIM: This was Sherman’s shaving table … General Sherman, famous man, burned Atlanta, liked a close shave.
General William Tecumseh Sherman, previously mentioned. A general in the Union Army during the Civil War, he invaded Georgia with three armies in the spring of 1864. His campaign against Atlanta ended successfully in September of that year with the capturing of the city, and he gave orders that all civilians were to evacuate the city before giving instructions that all military and government buildings were to be burned, although many private homes and businesses were too. This victory made him a household name, and ensured the re-election of President Abraham Lincoln in November that year.
SOOKIE: What do you think, manly [holding up statue]?
LORELAI: In an Oscar Wilde sort of way, absolutely.
Oscar Wilde (1854-1900), Irish poet and playwright, and one of the most popular playwrights in London in the early 1890s. Best remembered for his sparkling comedies, witty epigrams, and his only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray (1890).
At the height of his fame and success, while his play The Importance of Being Ernest (1895) was still being performed in London, Wilde prosecuted the Marquess of Queensberry (the father of Wilde’s lover, Lord Alfred Douglas) for libel, but the trial unearthed evidence that led to Wilde’s arrest for indecency with men and boys. He was convicted and sentenced to two years’ hard labour, and imprisoned from 1895 to 1897. On his release, he left for France, and never returned to Ireland or Britain.
The statue that Sookie holds up appears to be a cherub or some other sort of nude small boy. It certainly doesn’t look butch, but Lorelai seems to be saying, not so much that the statue seems “gay”, as slightly paedophilic, because of the subject matter.
Oscar Wilde did take teenagers as young as fourteen as his lover, although to my knowledge, not small children like the statue seems to be (Wilde’s trial was based on his activities with males because of their gender, not specifically with their ages). The full details of Wilde’s case had been published in 2001, with many people shocked, or at least uncomfortable, with how extensive Wilde’s interest in much younger males had been – something which would have seen Wilde imprisoned in our time as well. This may be what Amy Sherman-Palladino had in mind when she wrote this scene.
PARIS: I mean, women fall for men who are wrong for them all of the time, and then they get sidetracked from their goals. They give up careers and become alcoholics and, if you’re Sunny von Bülow, wind up in a coma completely incapable of stopping Glenn Close from playing you in a movie.
Martha “Sunny” von Bülow (born Martha Crawford, 1932-2008), heiress and socialite. Her second husband, Claus von Bülow (1926−2019), was convicted in 1982 of attempting to murder her by insulin overdose, but the conviction was overturned on appeal. A second trial found him not guilty, after experts testified that there was no insulin injection and that her symptoms were attributable to overuse of prescription drugs, combined with alcohol and diabetes. Sunny von Bülow lived almost 28 years in a persistent vegetative state from 1980 until her death.
The story was dramatised in the 1990 film Reversal of Fortune, directed by Barbet Schroeder, and based on the 1985 book of the same name by Claus’ lawyer, Alan Dershowitz. The role of Sunny is played by Glenn Close in the film. Reversal of Fortune received mostly positive reviews, and still has a very good reputation as a tantalising mystery and satire on the rich.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 