Tag: Religion

92nd Street Y or Brick Church

PARIS: It’s partly my parents’ fault, they didn’t brand me properly. I should’ve been at the 92nd Street Y or Brick Church.

RORY: Prep schools?
PARIS: Preschools. It decides everything.

The 92nd Street Y and the Brick Church School are both upmarket faith-based preschools on the Upper East Side of Manhattan in New York City – this may suggest that Paris lived there when she was a small child, her parents moving to Hartford later.

Does this provide a hint of why Paris never quite fit in at Chilton? The other alternative is that she believes her parents should have moved to New York for her preschool education, which is just selfish and impractical enough to be believable for Paris’ character.

The 92nd Street Y [pictured] is a secular Jewish cultural centre which offers a diversity of programs, including a nursery school. The Brick Church is a Presbyterian church which has offered early childhood programs since 1940, and members of the congregation receive preference in the highly competitive application process.

The fact that Paris considers both these preschools as options she could have had suggests that Paris’ mother may be or originally was Presbyterian. Either that, or she has no idea how preschools actually work.

“I’ll be seventy years old”

KIRK: So it’s back to the desert for the Minutemen, perhaps for another forty years. Of course, by then, I’ll be seventy years old. A lot of the rest of you will probably be dead. Taylor, you’ll be dead. Babette, Miss Patty . . . that man there in the hat.

From this we learn that Kirk is thirty years old, and born in either 1972 or 1973, depending on whether he has already had his birthday for 2003, or will be turning 31 later in the year. Sean Gunn who plays Kirk was born in 1974.

Kirk’s prediction that many of the older people of Stars Hollow will probably by dead in forty years seems like a slight echo of the story of the Israelites, where an entire generation had to pass away before they could reach the Promised Land.

Israelites

KIRK: Well, ladies and gentlemen, much like the Israelites of yore, the Stars Hollow Minutemen languished in the desert for forty years. But tonight, there was no Promised Land, no New Canaan, only a humiliating five to one defeat at the merciless hands of the West Hartford Wildcats.

After escaping from servitude in Egypt under the leadership of Moses, the Israelites wandered the wilderness for forty years – a punishment from God for not believing they would be able to take the land promised to them by God from the Canaanites, who were gigantic of stature and had fortified cities.

Only after the entire generation who left Egypt had passed away, except Joshua and Caleb, who had maintained faith in God, were the Israelites able to cease wandering. Eventually they were led into the Promised Land by Joshua, the successor of Moses. Note that Kirk mixes up the land of Canaan with New Canaan, a town in Connecticut.

In real life, the West Hartford Wildcats is actually a women’s softball team.

Creed, Amy Grant

ZACH: But no way are we playing Creed, man … Or Amy Grant. That’s where we draw the line.

Creed, rock band from Tallahassee, Florida with several songs addressing themes in Christian theology and spirituality. Prominent in the post-grunge movement of the mid-1990s, the band released three consecutive multi-platinum albums, with their album Human Clay being certified diamond. Creed has sold over 28 million records but has been panned by some critics; Rolling Stone magazine ranked the band the worst artist of the 1990s.

Amy Grant (born 1960), [pictured] pop singer-songwriter, and musician. She began in contemporary Christian music before crossing over to pop music in the 1980s and 1990s. She has been referred to as “The Queen of Christian Pop”. She had sold more than 30 million albums worldwide, won six Grammy Awards, 22 Gospel Music Association Dove Awards, and had the first Christian album to go platinum. She was honoured with a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2006 and in 2022, she was announced as a recipient of the Kennedy Center Honors.

Marshall Stacks

LANE: Yeah, yeah, Dave. Christians can still rock, don’t hide it.
ZACH: Marshall stacks don’t know Christians from atheists.
DAVE: Gosh, I just wasn’t sure if you guys would be accepting of my devoutness.

Marshall, British company that designs and manufactures music amplifiers, speakers, headphones and earphones, drums and bongos. The company also owns a record label called Marshall Records. It was founded in London in 1962 by drum shop owner and drummer, Jim Marshall, and is now based in Milton Keynes, England.

Their amplifiers are known as Marshall stacks, due to their size. Iconic in rock and roll, famous customers of Marshall include The Who, Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, and John Mayall.

When Zach and Brian realise that Dave has been moonlighting as a Christian guitarist for Lane’s mother, they comically miss the point, and decide that Dave has been hiding a secret from them – that he’s a devout Christian. They immediately assure Dave that his religion makes no difference to how they feel about him, and he had no reason to hide it from them.

Glory of Easter

RORY: I got the flags and . . . he changed his mind again.
LANE: He’s worse than my mother at the Glory of Easter T-shirt stand.

Glory of Easter, an annual evangelical drama which begun in 1984 and went on until 2012. It took place at the Crystal Cathedral in Garden Grove, California [pictured, now a Catholic church], suggesting that the Kim family went to it at least once, where Mrs Kim could not decide between all the tee-shirts available for sale.

I think this is the first time we’ve seen Lane working at the Independence Inn to help prepare for a function. Perhaps Mrs Kim is allowing her more freedom, or perhaps now she’s eighteen she can be employed at the inn without any worry about labour laws. In either case, this is another possible income stream for Lane.

Mamma Mia

RORY: Looks like Italy for us!
LORELAI: Mamma mia!

Mamma mia, an Italian interjection of surprise, literally meaning “my mom/mum”, possibly in reference to the Virgin Mary.

Lorelai may be thinking of the 1975 ABBA song, “Mamma Mia”, from their self-titled third album. It went to #32 in the US, but was #1 in the UK, Ireland, Australia, Switzerland, and West Germany. It is widely considered one of their best songs, although in a deleted scene of Gilmore Girls, Lorelai refers to it as an earworm.

It is possibly a little insensitive to say this is front of Emily, given that Lorelai ran away from home to work for Mia, who she regards as a beloved mother figure.