Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: Rory, I was supposed to graduate from high school. Go to Vassar. Marry a Yale man and get myself a proper nickname like Babe or Bunny or Shih Tzu.
A shih tzu is a breed of toy dog originating from Tibet. They have a short snout, large round eyes, long coat, floppy ears, and a playful, friendly disposition. Their name translates to “lion” in Mandarin, and the breed is considered sacred in Buddhist mythology.
LANE: Twice a week, on Wednesday and Friday nights at six o’clock, I could come and practice here …
SOPHIE: Please, go home.
LANE: I can’t. I can’t go home until you say yes. I have to rock, I have to! Please, I’m so begging you – let me rock!
Lane begs and pleads and cajoles and bargains, and finally gets Sophie to agree to let her practice twice a week at the music store in the evening. It’s an incredible gift Sophie has given Lane, apparently touched by her overwhelming need to live a musical life and with no one to help her.
Rory gets opportunities handed to her on a platter, while Lane has to beg a virtual stranger to let her practice drums. She’s not getting free lessons, she will have to teach herself, but at least she is going to be allowed to touch some actual drums on a regular basis.
According to Lane, her mother goes to Bible group alone on Wednesday and Friday evenings at 6 pm. In “It Should’ve Been Lorelai”, Lane has to accompany her mother to Bible class every Saturday morning, but Bible class and Bible group seem to be two different things. Perhaps Bible class is for instruction, while Bible group is for discussion. Throw in Thursday evening hymns, and most of the week seems to be taken up with religious activities.
Notice how Lane pleads with Sophie as if in the throes of passionate prayer. I can imagine Lane has prayed constantly for any chance to play music, and after many years, her prayers have been answered.
RORY: Oh, right, Jess is the Antichrist, I forgot.
Theologically, the Antichrist is a prophesied figure who sets himself up as a false Messiah, but popularly understood to mean anyone who is an opponent of Christianity, with the motive to destroy or damage the church. It’s also used colloquially to mean a person or thing which is fundamentally evil, and an enemy of everything which is good.
The hymn they are singing at the Kim house when Lane arrives.
What a Friend We Have in Jesus is a Christian hymn written by Irish-Canadian poet Joseph M. Scriven, a preacher in the Plymouth Brethren movement. He wrote it in 1855 to comfort his mother back in Ireland after hearing she was terribly ill, and only received credit for it in the 1880s. The tune was composed by American attorney Charles Crozat Converse.
Although sometimes criticised for its sentimentality, the hymn remains popular. It has been recorded many times, including by Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald, Aretha Franklin, Tina Turner, Glen Campbell, and Amy Grant. The song features in the film, Driving Miss Daisy, previously discussed.
Lane looks absolutely flushed with happiness as she joins in with the hymn-singing, thrilled with finding her calling in life. It’s a reminder too that Lane has always grown up around music – just not rock music. It feels as if Mrs Kim has unknowingly been bolstering Lane’s passion all this time!
In “Kiss and Tell”, Lane mentioned that it was Sing Your Favourite Hymn Night at the Kim house on the day that Dean first kissed Rory, again linking hymn night with first love. That seemed to be a Thursday evening, suggesting it is Thursday now, and a week after the car accident that Jess and Rory had. (Of course, the Kims could have changed their hymn night in the interim). It’s clearly not night time, but “hymn night” actually seems to be held in the late afternoon (or early evening in the winter months, as it gets dark earlier then).
The song which plays when the rabbi doll is moved so Rory can get pizza money.
Hava Nagila is a modern Jewish folk song traditionally sung at Jewish celebrations. It was composed in 1918 to celebrate the Balfour Declaration and the British victory over the Ottomans in 1917; there are competing claims over who wrote the simple lyrics, but the tune is a traditional Hasidic religious song. Hava Nagila translates as “Let us rejoice”, and the song is all about being happy.
Notice that the photo from Rory’s sixteenth birthday party is across from the rabbi doll with nodding head, and just behind it is the monkey lamp that Lorelai swapped for Baccarat candlesticks she received as a gift from Emily.
BABETTE: I met this guy once – gorgeous, tan, looked just like Mickey Hargitay. We had coffee, he gave me a pamphlet. Next thing you know, I’m wearing a muumuu, playing a tambourine, jumping up and down at the airport.
Miklós “Mickey” Hargitay (1926-2006), Hungarian-born bodybuilder, actor and the 1955 Mr Universe. He was married to actress Jayne Mansfield from 1958-1964, and they made four films together, including Will Success Spoil Rock Hunter? (1957). He is the father of actress Mariska Hargitay.
Babette sometimes alludes to the terrible experiences she had with men before fortunately meeting Morey, which she has no compunction about sharing with Rory. The previous season, she told Rory about the time she got pushed out of a car, and this season she tells Rory about how she was lured into a cult! For such a bright and bubbly character, she has a very dark past.
I think the cult that Babette is describing are the Hare Krishnas, who tended to recruit new members at airports in the 1970s, and often used tambourine music and dancing to attract interest. They didn’t actually wear muumuus, but Babette might have thought their orange robes looked like muumuus.
RORY: Get your books or I’m going home.
JESS: Wait there. [does magic trick]
At the end of the trick, Jess presents Rory with an apple by sleight of hand. It’s an apple for the teacher, but also a potent symbol of sexual temptation – Jess is the cunning serpent in the Paradise of Stars Hollow. Although Rory receives it with a bashful smile, clearly charmed, she never takes a bite from the apple – she’s a virginal Eve, not ready to give into temptation.
RORY: So you’re back at Chilton now?
BRAD: Oh, yeah. My psychiatrist convinced my parents that I should face my fears instead of running away from them and my rabbi agreed, so here I am.
Brad is now back at Chilton, after transferring to Hillside Academy five months ago, due to being bullied by Paris. He told Rory that Hillside Academy was much more relaxed than Chilton, and he’d made tons of friends there.
If that’s true, what kind of sick psychiatrist would tell a teenager they should return to a stressful school environment where they were bullied, rather than one where they supposedly have friends, and are thriving enough to be on the debate team? And what kind of rabbi would back that decision up? And what kind of parents would agree to it, rather than sacking the psychiatrist at once and moving to another synagogue? Poor Brad. I don’t think Paris is his only problem in life.
MADELINE: I read slow so I don’t miss anything.
PARIS: It’s not the Bhagavad Gita, Madeline. It’s simple instructions for the business fair.
The Shrimad Bhagavad Gita, literally meaning “the song by God” in Sanskrit, often referred to as Bhagavad Gita, or just the Gita. It’s a 700-verse Hindu scripture that is part of the epic The Mahābhārata, dated to the first millennium BC.
It is the best known of the holy scriptures of Hinduism, presenting a synthesis of Hindu philosophy and yogic ideals. It was a personal inspiration to Mahatma Ghandi, and has been often read, studied, and appreciated by westerners and non-Hindus. Many Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, and atheists have read the Bhagavad Gita for spiritual advice and life lessons.
Madeline’s comment suggests that she isn’t stupid – just slow, thorough, and careful in how she absorbs information.
LOUISE: Oh, were we reading these now?
RORY: Yeah, that’s why we’ve all been kind of quiet for the past ten minutes.
LOUISE: I thought it was, like, prayer time or something.
Louise was originally the brighter of the two out of she and Madeline, and quite a good student. She seems to have been getting steadily dimmer, until she now doesn’t seem to understand that she’s meant to read educational materials when they’re handed to her. Chilton isn’t a religious school, so why she thought they’d be opening with a ten-minute private prayer session, I don’t know. Maybe she’s playing dumb so successfully it’s actually turned her brain.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 