The Shakers

TAYLOR: Well, fine, if you feel like that, maybe I will just stop showing up altogether. Maybe I’ll convert to something else and give them my generous weekly donation …

REVEREND SKINNER : Maybe the Shakers in Woodbury would take him.

RABBI BARANS: Yeah, he’s already got the beard. Can you make furniture, Taylor?

The United Society of Believers in Christ’s Second Appearing, more commonly known as the Shakers, are a Christian founded in England in the 1740s. They emigrated from England in the 1770s and settled in Revolutionary colonial America. They were initially known as “Shaking Quakers” because of their ecstatic behaviour during worship services.

They practice a celibate and communal utopian lifestyle, pacifism, charismatic worship, and their model of equality of the sexes. They are also known for their simple living, architecture, technological innovation, music, and furniture.

In real life, there are only two Shakers left in the US, Arnold Hadd and June Carpenter, who live in the Sabbathday Lake Shaker Community in Maine [pictured]. The idea of them living in nearby Woodbury is purely fictional. Of course, the reverend and the rabbi may just be teasing Taylor.

“It’s all the way in Boston”

RORY: Yeah, but … it’s all the way in Boston.

LORELAI: I’ll drive you there if you want … Yeah, I’ll do some Boston shopping …

Boston is about two hours drive from the location of Stars Hollow, which is a significant journey, but never made to seem like a big deal in this episode. Lorelai and Rory would have spent four hours getting to and from a baby shower, but Lorelai makes it sound like a fun shopping trip. Mind you, this is the woman who drove to New York to go shopping, and drove home again without getting out of the car.

“I’m still a minor”

JESS: Sign this. [hands him a piece of paper]

LUKE: The registration?

JESS: I’m still a minor.

It’s now late October to early November, and Jess says he still hasn’t turned eighteen yet, which means his birthday must be either in November or December, making him a month or two younger than Rory.

Yet when Jess moved to Stars Hollow in September 2001, Luke said he was seventeen, meaning his birthday had already occurred by then. Either he has a movable birthday (like Rory), or Luke meant that he would turn seventeen within that calendar year. Parental figures love rounding their kids’ ages up on this show.

Boo Radley

MISS PATTY: [The Town Loner’s] a bit creepy …

LORELAI: But he’s our Boo Radley, and we don’t have a Boo Radley, unless you count the troubadour or Pete the pizza guy or the guy who talks to mailboxes.

Boo Radley, character from To Kill a Mockingbird, previously discussed.

We learn here that Lorelai sees Pete the pizza guy as one of the town “outsiders”, along with the town loner, the town troubadour, and the (unknown) guy who talks to mailboxes. This might come as a surprise, since running a pizza restaurant and delivery service does not seem like something that would isolate a person from their town or be a suitable job for a hermit. It does seem very typical of Lorelai to choose someone considered a bit eccentric to be their regular pizza provider though.

In an earlier season, Lorelai nominated Jackson’s cousin Rune as a “Boo Radley”. She doesn’t mention him in this context, and in fact Rune is never seen or mentioned again. He was only meant to be staying in town temporarily, so presumably he left sometime after Christmas of 2001.

Here we are at another town meeting, which used to be on Thursdays, and then mysteriously were held on a Saturday this season. I don’t know what day it is now, but it is neither Thursday nor Saturday. They’re just sticking a town meeting in whenever they feel like it.

Brooke Shields

LORELAI: I once told a store my name was Squeegy Beckinheim just to see how many catalogs they would sell my name to, and apparently my name is to catalog companies what Brooke Shields’ picture is to Chinese restaurants.

Brooke Shields (born 1965), actress and model. She began her career as a child model and gained critical acclaim at age 12 for her leading role as an underage prostitute in the film Pretty Baby (1978). She continued to model into her late teenage years and starred in several dramas in the 1980s, including The Blue Lagoon (1980), and Endless Love (1981).

She returned to acting in the 1990s and appeared in several films, as well as starring in the TV shows Suddenly Susan and Lipstick Jungle. She is currently a voice actor on animated TV show Mr Pickles, and its spinoff, Momma Named Me Sheriff.

Lorelai refers to the practice of restaurants putting up photos of their famous customers, and sometimes, famous people they wish were customers. Brooke Shields may have eaten at a lot of Chinese restaurants when she was young – she was brought up by a “bohemian” single mother, and like Lorelai and Rory, they often had Chinese food for dinner. Brooke Shields does have a regular Chinese restaurant – Mr Chow, which opened in Manhattan in 1979, and became an upscale hotspot in the 1980s. Her favourite Chinese food is chicken sticks and fried seaweed.

“Ground control to Major Tom”

LORELAI: [sings] Ground control to Major Tom . . .

Lorelai sings the opening words to “Space Oddity”, a 1969 song by David Bowie, from his album of the same name. It was released on July 11, in order to come out just ahead of the Apollo 11 Moon landing. The lyrics are about an astronaut known as Major Tom who undertakes a solo space flight which malfunctions, leaving him floating through space, and seemingly unable or unwilling to make radio contact with Earth.

The song was praised by critics and used by the BBC during its coverage of the Moon landing, but initially sold poorly, and was banned in the US, due to its lyrics which repeat that “something’s wrong”, and its downbeat ending. After Bowie sang the song on Top of the Pops in October, the song rose to #5 in the UK. “Space Oddity” was released in the US in 1972, where it peaked at #15, becoming Bowie’s first US hit. It remains one of Bowie’s most popular songs, and is regarded as one of his greatest.

Lorelai sings this song as accepting her fate in going to the concert, as Major Tom calmly accepts his fate. (The song also mentions “planet earth is blue”, chiming in with Lorelai being told to wear blue to the concert).

However, Bowie didn’t actually perform “Space Oddity” on his Heathen Tour in the US, although he did sing “Ashes to Ashes” and “Hallo Spaceboy” – two other songs of his that feature the character of Major Tom. The three songs are sometimes known as the Major Tom Trilogy. “Space Oddity” was performed only once during the tour, in Horsens, Denmark.

Blue Crush

[Rory, soaked from the sprinklers, runs down the street and bumps into Jess]

RORY: Get out of my way.

JESS: I like the new look. It’s very Blue Crush.

Blue Crush, a 2002 sports film directed by John Stockwell, based on Susan Orlean’s 1998 article “Life’s Swell” in Outside magazine. It stars Kate Bosworth, Michelle Rodriguez, and Sanoe Lake as three friends in Hawaii who share a passion for surfing. The film was a commercial success, and received modestly positive reviews.

Blue Crush came out in August 2002, so Jess may have seen it over the summer (it feels like it could have been Shane’s choice of film?). Note this is another mention of Lauren Graham’s home state of Hawaii! The film’s soundtrack includes a song by Jamaican DJ Beenie Man (stage name of Anthony Davis) – a possible inspiration for the name Beenie Morrison?

Jess is saying that Rory is so wet she looks as if she has been surfing (and she’s wearing a blue uniform). The choice of the title is provocative – “blue” like erotica, a “blue movie”, plus the word “crush”. It sounds as if he is saying Rory looks like his “sexy crush”!

“Letting chicks into the Augusta Golf Club”

LORELAI: Dad, I explained this to Mom and I’ll explain it to you. I’m not sixteen, I don’t live with you anymore, I’ve been making my own decisions, romantic and otherwise, for a long time now and you can play all the golf you want but the subject better be letting chicks into the Augusta Golf Club because my love life is officially off limits.

Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Florida, first opened in 1932. Since 1934, the club has played host to the annual Masters Tournament, one of the four men’s major championships in professional golf, and the only major played each year at the same course. It is considered to be one of the best golf courses in the US.

There was a controversy over the club’s refusal to admit female members to the club. Following the discord, two club members resigned, and pressure on corporate sponsors led the club to broadcast the 2003 and 2004 tournaments without commercials. The controversy was discussed by the International Olympic Committee when re-examining whether golf meets Olympic criteria of a “sport practiced without discrimination with a spirit of friendship, solidarity and fair play”.

The club extended membership to Condoleezza Rice and Darla Moore in 2012, so it now has at least two female members. The Augusta National Women’s Amateur Championship began being co-hosted by Augusta National in 2019.

Bowie’s Farewell Tour

LORELAI: There’s no way I could stand this guy for another night. I’ll catch Bowie the next time he does a farewell tour.

David Bowie’s Heathen Tour in 2002 was not his farewell tour, or his final tour, nor was it ever planned to be so or promoted as such. His final tour was A Reality Tour in support of his Reality album, beginning in Denmark in October 2003, and brought to a sudden end in June 2004.

David Bowie suffered a heart attack on stage in Prague on June 23, and the tour was cut short after a music festival in Germany the next evening due to continued discomfort. The tour was officially cancelled after Bowie was diagnosed with an acutely blocked artery that required an angioplasty procedure (performed on 26 June). It was only after this incident that David Bowie decided his touring days were over, and he retired from live performance in 2006.

Lorelai seems to be aware that time is running out to catch David Bowie live (he was then in his mid-fifties), and perhaps also that her chances of dating a wealthy man who can pay for the tickets again is slender. However, Lorelai could have seen David Bowie at Madison Square Garden in New York City on 15 December 2003 – which really would have been his next time in New York, and his farewell tour. This makes her comment seem rather prescient.

Andre Cold Duck

LORELAI: And I, in turn, chimed in with my story about getting sick on Andre Cold Duck in the back of Peter Cutler’s car in ninth grade.

Andre Cold Duck is a sparkling red wine, which is sweet with a fruity flavour. Made in the Sacramento area, it is marketed as “California champagne” and is very cheap. It was a go-to choice for high schoolers and college students in the 1980s due to its price and syrupy flavour, and at that time was supposedly the best-selling sparkling wine in the US. Its sickly sweet taste meant that it was common to throw up from drinking it, like Lorelai did, and the sugary overtones also meant a killer headache the next day if you overindulged. Beware of its properties if you want to try it out!