DEAN: So, did you and Paris actually kiss or was that like a stage thing? RORY: A lady never kisses and tells.
Very clever, because Rory is not telling Dean about her kiss with Tristan. (A slight callback to Kiss and Tell, the episode where Rory and Dean first kiss, and everyone knows about it).
It was quite obvious that Paris and Rory didn’t kiss, Paris didn’t even pretend to kiss Rory. I’m actually not convinced they could have got a good mark for the project. Two members of their group dropped out at the last minute, they didn’t offer a unique perspective on the play, Paris as Romeo sounds irritated more than anything else, and there’s no tragically romantic kiss. As it was fifty percent of their grade, that doesn’t sound good for their overall result.
TRISTAN: The police are letting our parents handle it, and in my case that means military school in North Carolina.
A meta comment. Chad Michael Murray, who played Tristan, left the show in order to begin filming the teen drama One Tree Hill (2003-2012), shown on the same channel as Gilmore Girls (The WB); Murray had the lead role of Lucas Scott. One Tree Hill is set in the fictional town of Tree Hill in North Carolina, and mostly filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina.
Amy Sherman-Palladino apparently planned for Tristan to become Rory’s boyfriend in high school/college and her “Christopher”, which, because Chad Michael Murray went to another show, was a role filled by the character of Logan Huntzberger instead. In this farewell episode, you can see the faint beginnings of the tenderness between Rory and Tristan which would have blossomed into eventual love. Anyone wishing to see what would have happened if Logan had been Tristan instead must turn to fanfiction.
In real life, there is only one one military school in North Carolina, and it is Oak Ridge Military Academy, so presumably that’s where Tristan is headed. It was originally founded in 1850, and was one of the first military schools to become co-educational, in 1972. It apparently had a reputation at one time of taking troubled youth, which it is working to overcome.
If Tristan turned up to Chilton in order to say he was leaving for military school, couldn’t he also have stayed to do the scene with them? Does everyone transfer schools on a Sunday night in this universe? (Maybe because they’re boarding schools?).
With Tristan out of the picture, the love triangle between Rory, Dean, and Tristan comes to an end, to make way for a new love triangle, which becomes clear in the very next episode.
LORELAI: Business school has to indicate some kind of maturity, right? LUKE: Doogie Howser was a doctor at sixteen. LORELAI: Doogie Howser was not real.
Dr Douglas “Doogie” Howser (played by Neil Patrick-Harris) is the protagonist of the television medical comedy-drama, Doogie Howser, MD (1989-1993). A child genius, Howser graduated from Princeton at the age of ten, and completed medical school at fourteen. The show opens on Doogie’s sixteenth birthday, and shows the challenges he faces practising medicine as a resident surgeon while also coping with the usual teenage problems.
The show was abruptly cancelled due to low ratings, but has made its mark as a cultural reference, as anyone young and very smart is generally dubbed “Doogie Howser”. This year it was rebooted as Doogie Kameāloha, MD, about a sixteen-year-old Hawaiian girl working as a doctor, with Peyton Lee in the title role.
In real life, Balamurali Ambati has the Guinness World Record for obtaining his medical license at the age of 17, graduating from the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York City in 1995. He thus became the youngest qualified medical doctor in the world, so not too far off Doogie Howser. (Dr Ambati disliked comparisons to Dr Howser, and as he was six feet tall at age fourteen, fit in with the other medical students and was popular with his peers).
LORELAI: All right, that’s it. This afternoon we are going to engage in some intensive retail therapy to bring you out of this funk. RORY: No thanks. LORELAI: I mean it. Today is the day we finally spring for the Powerpuff Girls shot glasses.
The Powerpuff Girls is an animated television series on the Cartoon Network about three kindergarten-aged girls with superpowers named Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup. The girls live in the fictional city of Townsville with their father and creator, Professor Utonium.
The plot of each episode is a humorous take on superhero shows, with the girls having to defend their city from villains and monsters, while also dealing with typical little kid issues, like loose teeth and bedwetting. The original series was broacast from 1998 to 2005, but had various specials, a movie, and a range of spin-off media.
Episodes often contain hidden references to older popular culture, with sly tributes and parodies, and has been praised as both pop culture and high art, suitable for small children and adults. You can see why Lorelai and Rory love it.
The Powerpuff Girls have a wide range of merchandise, and you can indeed buy Powerpuff Girls shot glasses.
LORELAI: He’s never seen Ab Fab. RORY: Definitely not a soulmate.
Absolutely Fabulous (often called Ab Fab) is a British television sitcom starring Jennifer Saunders as Edina “Eddy” Monsoon, a heavy-drinking PR agent who spends all her time chasing the latest hip fad, and Joanna Lumley as her best friend Patsy Stone, a fashion editor whose drug abuse, alcohol consumption and promiscuity are at almost life-threatening proportions. Eddy’s studious daughter Saffron “Saffy”, played by Julia Sawalha, is the sensible one who tries to rein in her wayward mother’s worst excesses, taking on the parent role in their relationship.
The first three series were broadcast on the BBC in the UK from 1992 to 1994, with a special in 1996. In the US, it premiered in 1994 on Comedy Central. After receiving critical acclaim and being named one of the greatest British sitcoms of all time in 2000, it was revived in 2001 – Lorelai may have become a fan quite recently. It was shown on the Oxygen Network, which might be how she watched it, and became a cult hit in the US.
The revival continued until 2004, with a twentieth anniversary series of specials in 2011-2012. Absolutely Fabulous: The Movie was released in 2016.
Absolutely Fabulous‘ demographic was, broadly speaking, gay men and straight women over 35, so it’s hardly surprising that Paul has never seen it. I think it’s unrealistic to expect her “soulmate” to be a fan of the show.
The mother-daughter relationship between Eddy and Saffy is an exaggerated version of that between Lorelai and Rory, and Eddy’s outrageous outfits sometimes aren’t much worse than a few of Lorelai’s more questionable fashion choices. I think this would have been a show Lorelai and Rory would have enjoyed watching together, seeing something of themselves in the characters. Perhaps Rory is Lorelai’s true soulmate.
DEAN: What do you have to be sorry for? RORY: That . . . that I didn’t tell you about the rehearsal. And that No Doubt is touring with U2. I know you’re extremely disappointed in Bono.
No Doubt is an American rock band formed in 1986, consisting of vocalist Gwen Stefani, guitarist Tom Dumont, bassist Tony Kanal, and drummer Adrian Young. Their 1992 eponymous debut album made little impact, but their 1995 follow-up, The Beacon Street Collection, sold more than 100 000 copies after they changed to a ska-punk sound. Their 1995 album, Tragic Kingdom, was certified diamond, with singles Don’t Speak, and Just a Girl becoming hits – the first spending 16 weeks at #1 in the US. Their most recent album at this point was Return of Saturn in 2000, although Rock Steady was just about to be released, in early December 2001.
No Doubt were one of the openers for U2 on the third leg of their Elevation Tour – the same one PJ Harvey had opened for earlier. No Doubt were one of the support acts at Madison Square Garden in late October 2001, then the only support act from November 5th to 25th, in California, Texas, Utah, Nevada, and Arizona.
As Tristan invited Rory to the Elevation Tour when they were performing in Hartford, it feels somewhat tactless for her to bring it up while trying to placate Dean. But it may also be reminding Dean that he shares her musical tastes more than Tristan, as both Dean and Rory appear to be U2 fans. He wasn’t before going out with Rory, so perhaps she has influenced him in this regard.
PARIS: Excuse me. We reserved this place for 8 sharp and right now my watch says 8:04. MISS PATTY: Well, then tell it to go outside and have a smoke. You can’t rush a cool down sweetheart. PARIS: Look, I understand the whole Mystic Pizza, small town, ‘we don’t let a clock run our lives’ thing, but I come from the big city where money talks and I’m paying good money for this place and I have a schedule to keep.
Mystic Pizza is a 1988 romantic comedy-drama film directed by Donald Petrie, and starring Annabath Gish and Julia Roberts as two teenaged sisters working as waitresses at Mystic Pizza, a pizza parlour in the real-life fishing village of Mystic, Connecticut (it also features Matt Damon in his screen debut). The younger sister, played by Annabath Gish, is on a partial scholarship at Yale and also works part-time at the whaling museum, so there are some connections with Gilmore Girls. If you enjoy Gilmore Girls, I would definitely recommend Mystic Pizza.
Mystic Pizza received generally favourable reviews, with particular praise for the lead actresses, and has gained something of a cult following as a feel-good coming-of-age movie. In September and October of this year, it was turned into a stage musical by the Ogunquit Playhouse in Maine – this was several years after a fictional Broadway musical based on the film featured in the sitcom 30 Rock in 2007.
The real life Mystic Pizza restaurant which had inspired the film was renovated to resemble the film set, and is still in business.
RORY: She’s letting you go? That’s amazing. What changed her mind? LANE: I let her watch the Romeo and Juliet movie with Leo and Claire Danes.
Lane is talking about William Shakespeare’s Romeo and Juliet (often shortened to Romeo + Juliet), a 1996 film directed by Baz Luhrman and starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes in the title roles. It is a modernised adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, with the Montagues and Capulets two rival (mafia) business empires in the fictional American city of Verona Beach (inspired by Venice Beach in L.A., but filmed in Mexico).
The film was a commercial success and gained mostly positive reviews, as well as winning several awards internationally. At the BAFTA Film Awards, it won Best Direction, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Film Music, and Best Production Design. It continues to be a popular choice for high school English teachers to show their students as an introduction to the play.
It wasn’t released on DVD until 2002, so I’m not sure how Lane showed her mother the movie. Perhaps it was conveniently on at the local cinema.
SOOKIE: Swear. Raise your right hand and say, ‘May Destiny’s Child break up if I count these blueberries.’ MICHEL: Pick another group.
Destiny’s Child, a girl group founded in Texas in 1990 under the name Girl’s Tyme, with a final and best-known line-up of Beyoncé Knowles, Kelly Rowland, and Michelle Williams. They signed to Columbia in 1997 under the name Destiny’s Child, and gained mainstream recognition with the release of their hit song, No, No, No, and their 1999 best-selling album, The Writing’s On the Wall. Their most recent album at this stage was Survivor, which came out in April 2001, apart from their Christmas album in October of that year.
The reason Michel might be particularly concerned that Destiny’s Child could break up is because the band announced they were going on hiatus to pursue solo careers in 2001. They reunited in 2004 for their fourth and final album, Destiny Fulfilled. After their 2005 tour, the group did indeed break up.
Somehow Michel is more worried about eating one or two extra blueberries on his pancakes because of the calories than he is with eating actual pancakes! Michel’s relationship with food is even unhealthier that Lorelai and Rory’s, and is certainly weirder.
While waiting for the group project meeting to start, Madeline reads Jane magazine (1997-2007). This was a women’s fashion magazine founded by Jane Pratt, aimed at the 18-34 market, and designed for those young women who had grown up with Sassy (1988-1996), a feminist magazine for teenage girls which had Pratt as the first editor. Jane’s reputation was for being witty, quirky, trashy, and occasionally thoughtful, with a readership who saw themselves as “wild and crazy” party girls.
It folded because it’s young readership were now getting more interested in digital platforms, such as Jezebel. Jane Pratt went on to found the infamous xoJane online magazine (2011-2016).
Madeline is reading the November 2001 issue with Carmen Electra and Dave Navarro on the front cover. This issue actually had a double front cover, and you can see Madeline holding up the one with Shirley Manson, P. Diddy, and Alicia Keys on it. The magazine that month had interviews with other music stars, including Jennifer Lopez, Janet Jackson, Sheryl Crow, and Tommy Lee.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 