“Best things happened when it snowed”

Lorelai lists all the wonderful things which occurred during snow.

Her best birthday: Lorelai’s birthday is in April. It doesn’t usually snow heavily in Hartford in April, but you can get some light snow, especially early in the month. Once in a while a very chilly spring can produce a significant snowfall in April.

Her first kiss: We don’t know when this occurred, just that it must have been during cold weather.

Rory’s first steps: Babies usually start walking at around 9-12 months of age. For it to snow on the day, Rory must have started walking around her first birthday, in October or November 1985.

Rory’s birth: Rory was apparently born in a snow storm. Although it’s normal to get the first snowfall of the year in Hartford in late October, a snow storm would be highly unusual. In real life, there was no snow storm in Hartford in October 1984.

Smelling Snow

LORELAI: Wait, close your eyes and breathe. [Rory does] I smell snow … Can’t you smell it?
RORY: You know, it’s like dogs and high-pitched noises. I think it’s something only you can smell.

In fact plenty of people can “smell” snow coming, so Lorelai is by no means unusual. Most scientists believe that we can’t literally smell snow as cold weakens our sense of smell, but interpret changes in air pressure etc as an odour. Others think maybe some people can actually smell the unique chemical composition of snow. Either way, Lorelai can definitely sense the approach of snow.

This is when we first learn of Lorelai’s life-long love of snow. Of course in reality it’s always fake snow as they are filming in California.

Stamford

We learn from his phone message that as well as teaching at Chilton, Max teaches a night class twice a week in Stamford, a city in Connecticut about an hour and a half drive south from Hartford, on the coast.

The fact that Max sees the sign to Stars Hollow on the way suggests again that it around the Wallingford area, as you would drive past Wallingford going from Hartford to Stamford using Interstate 91. It isn’t actually a turnpike though as it is toll-free at that point: the Connecticut Turnpike (I-95) goes further on from Stamford toward New Haven.

Max possibly teaches in the English department at the Stamford campus of the University of Connecticut, a public university. We learn a bit later that one of the nights he teaches class is on Fridays, so with Lorelai attending classes twice a week and Max teaching classes twice a week, it’s going to be hard for them to find a free day in the week to date.

“Many moons ago”

MAX (on answering machine): Anyhow, as I sit here losing my faith in mankind, I wonder if we’re ever gonna actually go on that date we talked about many moons ago.

A “moon” is an old-fashioned way of saying “a month”, or one lunar cycle from new moon to new moon. Max is speaking poetically rather than literally – they made the date in October and it’s now November, so it’s only one moon ago, or at most, one moon and a bit.

Battle of Stars Hollow

We learn in this episode that every year the town re-enacts The Battle of Stars Hollow, which took place during the Revolutionary War on either November 10 or November 17 in 1776 (depending on whether this episode is one or two weeks after the previous one). This contradicts the sign in town, which says that Stars Hollow was founded in 1779.

In the “battle” a dozen militia men from Stars Hollow waited for the redcoats in the cold, however the British never showed up. Despite this lack of anything happening, Stars Hollow is very proud of its role in the American Revolutionary War.

We also learn that Luke’s father William Danes was an enthusiastic battle re-enactor, and even owned his own musket, which he had buried with him. Although Luke doesn’t follow in his father’s footsteps, he does serve free hot drinks to the re-enactors who have to have to spend all night freezing in the cold.

In real life, there were only three battles sites in Connecticut in the American Revolutionary War, and they were all British victories. Nonetheless, Revolutionary War history is a big deal in New England. Many Connecticut towns have annual commemorations of the American Revolutionary War, just like Stars Hollow.

Town Meeting

This is the first episode in which we see a town meeting, and we learn that they are held on Thursday nights (somehow Lorelai gets back from business class in time for the meetings). We also discover that they are held in Miss Patty’s dance studio rather than a town hall, and never find out why, but can assume it’s for some suitably eccentric and quirky reason.

In real life, even a much smaller town than Stars Hollow would have a town hall. Washington Depot, the original inspiration for Stars Hollow, is about a third the size and still has its own town hall. The practical reason not to have a town hall on the show is that it would mean building a new set for it that would be rarely used. A town hall would also require a much larger cast to fill it to capacity.

Prince Charming

LORELAI: Don’t even get me started on your Prince Charming crush, OK? At least my obsessions are alive. You have a thing for a cartoon.
DEAN: Ooh, Prince Charming, huh?
RORY: It was a long time ago. And not the Cinderella one, the Sleeping Beauty one.

Prince Charming is the generic name for the royal male love interest in a fairy tale. Rory tells Dean that her crush was on the prince in the 1959 animated Walt Disney film Sleeping Beauty, whose name is Prince Phillip (it’s the one in Cinderella whose name actually is Prince Charming). Sleeping Beauty was the #2 movie of 1959 and is today considered one of the best animated films ever made, although it was so expensive to make that the Disney studio posted a financial loss that year.

Sleeping Beauty has had several re-releases. It was re-released in theatres in March 1986, when Rory was 17 months old. Although Rory could have been taken to the cinema to see it, it was also released on video that year, and Lorelai (or the grandparents) could have bought it for her. Her crush on the prince could go right back to babyhood, and if they owned the video she might have watched it for years as a toddler and little girl.

Sleeping Beauty was next re-released in 1995, when Rory was aged ten or eleven. It is also possible that this was when she developed her crush on the prince. To me this makes more sense, as she was on the cusp of puberty and more likely to be thinking about boys in a romantic way.

Prince Phillip does very vaguely resemble Dean – or at least a cartoon version of Dean wouldn’t look completely unlike Prince Phillip. The fact that Rory liked the prince because he could dance is a foreshadowing of what is soon to come between her and Dean.

Pink Moon

(Dean looks around Rory’s bedroom, and picks up a CD)
DEAN: Wow. Very clean. How much does it suck that they use Pink Moon in a Volkswagen commercial?

Dean is referring to the song Pink Moon by Nick Drake, earlier identified as one his favourite singers.

This is by far the most pretentious and hypocritical thing the usually down-to-earth Dean ever says in Gilmore Girls. Nick Drake had been obscure for decades when his song Pink Moon was used in a Volkswagen commercial. Without the commercial, Dean would never have even heard of Nick Drake, and as the commercial only came out in December 1999, he had been a Nick Drake fan for less than a year.

I can only imagine he was trying to impress Rory with his hipness, by making out that he had somehow known about Nick Drake previous to the commercial, to the point where he could feel betrayed that they used his music to sell Volkswagen. I’m not buying it.

In turn, Rory clearly went out and bought the Pink Moon album just because Dean liked it, then pretends that she knows and cares all about it to the same extent. But the show lets us know that, whereas that isn’t the case with Dean’s statement.

Mister Kelly’s

BABETTE (to Dean): There used be a great club there called – what was it called baby?
MOREY: Uh … Mr. Kelly’s.
BABETTE: Oh, yeah – Mr. Kelly’s. You ever go there?

Mister Kelly’s was a nightclub in Chicago, which began in 1953. From 1956 onward it became a place where many entertainers, especially jazz singers and comedians, began their careers, including Barbra Streisand, Lenny Bruce, Eartha Kitt, and George Carlin. The nightclub closed in 1975, so it isn’t possible for Dean to have ever gone there.

Amish country

LORELAI: I’m sorry. I thought you would be happy about this [that Lorelai invited Dean to their movie night].
RORY: In what universe would I be happy? This isn’t Amish country. Girls and boys usually date alone.

In conservative Amish groups, teenage couples might be expected to date each other with groups of friends, or even with their parents accompanying them. However some Amish teenagers do go on dates alone, at least sometimes. The most conservative Amish of all practice a form of dating where the boy and girl talk all night in the same bed, fully clothed, and with no touching. (Yet when Rory and Dean tried that, all hell broke loose!)

When people say Amish country, they usually mean south-eastern Pennsylvania.