History class

Rory’s class is studying the German theologican Martin Luther (1483-1546), who was a seminal figure in the Protestant Reformation. The teacher quotes from Luther’s tract To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation (1520), advocating a break away from the Catholic church.

Rory is able to correctly identify both the author and the year from the quote, and get her answers in before Paris can. This shows that Paris is already challenging her to do better in class.

Incidentally it demonstrates that Paris’ paranoia about Rory has actually helped to create the situation she feared – if Paris had not been so antagonistic, the shy Rory would no doubt have remained quietly in the background on her first day at a new school.

Flagellation

LUKE: You look nice, too.
LORELAI: I had a flagellation to go to.

A flagellation is a severe whipping given as corporal punishment, usually to the point of bleeding, and often performed in public to increase the humiliation and provide a spectacle. Such punishments were common in the past, and although long abolished in Western nations as a legal punishment, are still routinely handed out by the justice system in other countries around the world.

The word has a specifically religious meaning in Christianity, with The Flagellation of Christ (pictured above) being the scourging administered to Jesus Christ prior to his crucifixion by the Romans – a standard pre-crucifixion punishment at the time.

Amish

RORY: And we get to wear uniforms. No more having people check you out to see what jeans you’re wearing ’cause everyone’s dressed alike in boring clothes and just there to learn.
LANE: Okay, there’s academic-minded and then there’s Amish.

The Amish are a group of traditional Christian churches, originating from Swiss Anabaptists, with a strong presence in Pennsylvania. They favour a simple, rural lifestyle with plain conformist dress and a rejection of modern technology and conveniences.

Friday Night Dinner

Along with her parents’ agreement to give her money to pay for Rory’s tuition at Chilton, Lorelai must in turn agree to have dinner with them every Friday, thus setting in place the pattern of the entire show. She also has to call them once a week to give an update on Rory’s schooling and her own life – this weekly phone call is not mentioned again, and although Lorelai seems to particularly hate talking to her mother on the phone, we never hear Emily (Kelly Bishop) complain that she has missed a phone call. We must assume that either Lorelai dutifully complied each week, or that Emily almost immediately accepted that she would not follow through. Neither sounds quite likely, knowing their personalities. Maybe Lorelai made Rory do the phone call.

The choice of Friday night for the family dinner fulfils at least three functions:

Friday was the very next day of the week, so Emily was making sure that the dinners began straight away with no chance for Lorelai to change her mind or wriggle out of it
Friday night is a popular night for social events, thus ensuring that plot-wise there was always the potential for conflict over the Friday Night Dinner and other responsibilities
It brings to mind the Jewish Shabbat, with the holy day beginning at sunset on Friday evening, usually celebrated with a family dinner. This gives the Gilmores’ Friday Night Dinner a feeling of ritual and ceremony, and underscores the marking of cycles of time that each dinner symbolises. (I don’t believe this is a stretch, as Amy Sherman-Palladino is of Jewish heritage).

“Protestants love oatmeal”

SOOKIE: I’ll make cookies [to celebrate Rory getting into Chilton]. Protestants love oatmeal.

Sookie has a number of eccentric beliefs in regard to food, and this seems to be one of them. The reason for her statement is something of a mystery to me, unless she is thinking of Quaker Oats, whose logo has a man dressed in 18^th century Quaker clothing to represent simplicity and honesty. (The company was not founded by Quakers, and never had any connection with the religion).

The interesting part is that her saying this seems to imply that Sookie herself is not a Protestant, although this is never confirmed in the show.

Lane Kim (Keiko Agena)

Rory’s best friend is loosely based on writer, director and producer Helen Pai, a friend since childhood of Amy Sherman-Palladino and a co-producer of Gilmore Girls. Like Lane, Helen is a Korean-American who was raised in a Seventh Day Adventist family.

Lane Kim’s eclectic collecting and obsessive knowledge of popular music seems to be inspired by Daniel Palladino, who has been collecting rock and pop since early childhood, and now has a music collection numbering in the thousands.