Riverdance

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?

Tennessee Williams

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 20^th 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.

Mad Cow Disease

LORELAI: Pale means sickly.

LUKE: Or sunscreen.

LORELAI: Or mad cow disease.

Bovine spongiform encephalopathy (BSE), commonly known as mad cow disease, is an incurable and inevitably fatal neurodegenerative disease of cattle. It can be spread to humans if they eat meat from infected cows.

In humans, infection can result in Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (CJD), also known as subacute spongiform encephalopathy or neurocognitive disorder due to prion disease, an invariably fatal degenerative brain disorder. Early symptoms include memory problems, behavioral changes, poor coordination, and visual disturbances. Later symptoms include dementia, involuntary movements, blindness, weakness, and coma. About 70% of people die within a year of diagnosis. Pale skin isn’t one of the symptoms.

There was an outbreak of mad cow disease in the UK which lasted from 1986 to 2015, reaching a peak in 1993. There were a few cases in North America from 1993 to 2012, which had an impact on the US beef industry.

Dance Marathon

In this episode, Stars Hollow is holding a dance marathon to raise money. Dance marathons began in the 1920s and were at their peak in the 1930s, with people vying to win the cash prize at the end, that could be for as much as a year’s salary. Today they are generally held as charity fundraisers, and only last for twelve to twenty-four hours, not the thousands of hours they went on for in times past, which sounds like absolute torture (and they were often rigged as well).

We learn that the dance marathon is an annual event, that Lorelai has been close to winning it for four years in a row, since 1998, and that the previous year she only lost at the eleventh hour. It’s possible the one in 2001 took place around the same time as Mia’s visit (she may have come back for it). The one in 2000 presumably took place after Lorelai’s date with Max.

According to the banner in the town square, this is the 50^th annual dance marathon in Stars Hollow, so the first one was held in 1952. In fact, this is around the time dance marathons began to decline in popularity. Could Stars Hollow have really been thirty years behind the trends?

Garvey Avenue

LORELAI: “Oh, and lots of cars stopped at a blue light on Garvey Avenue. Why a blue light? Well, ‘cause blue’s the new red.”

Garvey Avenue is a major road in the San Gabriel valley of Los Angles’ Eastside district [pictured]. For the purposes of fiction, there may be some confusion or conflation with Garvey Street, which is in the city of Everett in Massachusetts, three miles north of Boston, once a part of Charlestown and still bordering it. That might possibly be seen as confirmation that Christopher and Sherry live in the Charlestown area of Boston.

Rand McNally

RORY: She’s [Sherry’s] very up on traffic flow and rush hour and all that.

LORELAI: She’s Rand McNally.

Rand McNally, publishing and technology company that provides mapping for both electronic gadgets, and for educational purposes, well known for producing school atlases and road maps. William Rand opened a printing shop in Chicago in 1956, and two years later hired Irish immigrant Andrew McNally; the two men founded Rand McNally & Co in 1868. The first Rand McNally map appeared in a 1872 railway guide, and their first road map was published in 1904.

Lorelai and Rory left Boston at 6 pm, on Sherry’s advice. That means it would be around 8 pm when they get back to Stars Hollow and egg Jess’ car.

Walmart

JESS: Walmart.

LUKE: Excuse me?

JESS: I’ve been working there twelve hours a week for the past few months to get extra money for the car.

Walmart, previously discussed. There is a large Walmart Supercenter in Hartford, which might be where Jess has been working [pictured]. How he’s been getting there without a car for months is a mystery – if he was taking the bus back and forth, you’d think his path would have crossed with Rory’s at some point, or someone would have noticed him at the bus stop. Perhaps he’s been getting a lift with someone.

Luke really isn’t taking enough notice of Jess as a guardian. Jess has been working out of town for months, either getting lifts or catching the bus, and done a course in order to get certification to drive a forklift. Jess’ dedication and work ethic is commendable – Luke’s lack of interest in his life isn’t. What if Jess had been doing something dangerous or illegal all these months?

When Luke asks Jess what his Walmart discount is, he responds with 15%. In real life it is 10%.

It’s been shown several times over that Jess is Lorelai in teenage boy form, and here is another parallel between them – like Lorelai, Jess is beginning his working life while still in his teens, and isn’t afraid to work hard in a blue collar job to pay the bills, just as she did.

“It’s just minutes from here”

LORELAI: It’s gonna be Harvard [that Rory’s going to].

SHERRY: Well, I certainly hope so. It’s just minutes from here. Did you know that? …I’ve already clocked it – two point seven miles, which is nothing. I’ve already checked out the best late afternoon route for her to take to come over after classes.

Lorelai has already driven to Harvard University – how can she not be aware how close it is to Sherry and Christopher, that she also just drove to? The fact that Cambridge is right next to Boston must surely be a bit of a giveaway.

I’m not sure exactly where Sherry and Christopher live, but the Bunker Hill area in Charlestown is 2.7 miles from Harvard, which is a nine minute drive [pictured]. This is the oldest part of Boston, and Christopher did say he’d like to live somewhere historical. Any further west, north or south, and they wouldn’t be living in Boston, and any further east, they would be too far away.

If so, for Rory to visit them, she would need to take a bus, and would still have a walk of at least twenty minutes. The other way would be to take the subway, which would require a change in the middle, and there would then be a ten minute walk. A fifteen minute bike ride might be easier.

The knowledge that Rory going to Harvard means her spending a lot more time with Christopher and Sherry must surely be making it seem less attractive to Lorelai.

For Keeps

SHERRY: Well, then where’d you get your information on child raising? Your mom?

LORELAI: No, For Keeps. Uh, Molly Ringwald, Randall Bantikoff, really underrated little post-John Hughes flick. She went to the prom fat. I found it really inspirational.

For Keeps, a 1988 coming of age comedy drama directed by John G. Avildsen and starring Molly Ringwald and Randall Bantikoff as Darcy and Stan, two high school seniors who are in love. Darcy gets pregnant just before graduation and decides to keep the baby. It was Ringwald’s final teen movie, and is considered one of her most mature performances, especially in the scene where Darcy develops postpartum depression. (Like Rory, Darcy works on the school paper and plans to study journalism at college). The film was a box office success, and received mixed reviews, with the positive ones mostly for Ringwald’s performance.

As the film came out in January 1988, when Rory had already turned three, it’s hard to see how it could have “inspired” Lorelai during her pregnancy.

Note that this is another occasion when pregnancy and being “fat” are conflated, which is becoming a rather disturbing trend, and no surprise, this is another Daniel Palladino script.

Christopher and Sherry’s Home

Christopher and Sherry’s home in Boston is filmed at the Warner Bros back lot on French Street – it’s not far from where they film the town meetings.

There are green balloons out the front, because “green is the new pink”, so green for a girl baby. Although Lorelai and Rory think this is strange, I’ve heard of people using green for gender reveal parties because they are “so over” pink and blue, or to make a statement about gender neutrality, or they simply don’t know the sex of their baby (so why have a reveal party to reveal you don’t know anything???). So this trend ended up becoming mainstream. Sherry was ahead of her time!

The green balloons signal “green for envy”, because Lorelai is very jealous of Sherry.