In the film, Ben-Hur is unfairly condemned to be a galley slave for three years, and in the famous galley scene, the slaves are shown working in time to the beat of a drum, and sometimes being whipped to make them work harder. Meanwhile the consul in charge simply sits back and watches them, apparently for sadistic pleasure, since there is no need for him to even be down there in the galley, which is dark and hot.
Deer Hill Lodge is probably inspired by historic Deer Hill House in West Cummington, Massachusetts, a small town in the foothills of the Berkshires. First built as a hotel in 1832, it has since been an inn, a dance, and a café. It is now an Airbnb property, made into four separate apartments for rent.
JOHN: Now this is a lovely property that has just become available right outside of Litchfield. SOOKIE: It’s a sales pitch? LORELAI: They spend two hours telling us nothing, then try to sell us lame property? SOOKIE: We already know the place we’re buying. LORELAI: I know.
Lorelai and Sookie say they already know the property they will buy (the Dragonfly Inn), but the owner (Fran Weston) has refused to sell it to them. Is it really such an insane idea that they might look at some available real estate that somebody actually wants to sell, if only to give them some idea of the market? Maybe they could actually use a couple of business classes.
Also, the one day seminar that Lorelai talked about seems to have ended up being the two hour class Michel derided after all. I guess Lorelai meant “one day” as in the entire course takes place on only one day, rather than over several weeks.
David Cassidy (1950-2017), actor, singer, and guitarist, and Shaun’s older half-brother. He played Keith Partridge on the 1970s musical sitcom, The Partridge Family.
Deciding whether you preferred Shaun or David Cassidy was a common pastime in the 1970s. The option to “marry” Shaun and er, “cheat” with David may have been a common solution to this dilemma.
[Picture shows David on the left and Shaun on the right]
LORELAI: We are so in luck. It was international grab bag night at Al’s. RORY: Cool. Did you peek? LORELAI: And ruin the whole point of the mystery dinner? I think not. Pick.
Another quirky offering from Al’s Pancake World – on certain nights, how often is a mystery, Al offers an international grab bag, where you apparently receive a randomly assigned dinner from any national cuisine.
Who would be interested in this? Certainly not fussy eaters or people with food allergies, at least. To add to the chaos, diners apparently don’t know when it will be international grab bag night, as Lorelai proclaims that they are “in luck” that they happened to be buying dinner on that night.
Lorelai and Rory love this insane tradition because it is a game as well as food. They each pick one of the bags without looking, smell it, then try to guess what it is. Rory guesses hers is Moroccan, which is what she always says, on the basis that if you say the same thing every time, it will eventually be correct. Lorelai takes a cover-all-bases approach by declaring hers is Pan-Asian, with a hint of English Colonial and touches of South African.
Rory strongly implies that the food is old, suggesting that “grab bag night” might be a way of selling off out of date leftovers. It’s quite stomach-churning.
In the end, neither Gilmore girl can identify what food they have bought, and they end up going to Luke’s for dinner. What a waste of time, money, and food!
PARIS: I knew that suggestion box was a bad idea. Watch Choate get Joan Didion while we’re being read “Eloise at the Plaza”.
Paris refers to Eloise: A Book for Precocious Grown-Ups, a 1955 book by Kay Thompson, illustrated by Hilary Knight. Originally marketed to adults, in 1969 it was released as a children’s book as Eloise, with no changes to the text or illustrations.
Eloise is a mischievous six-year-old girl who lives in the penthouse of the Plaza Hotel in New York City with her nanny, pet pug dog and pet turtle. Thompson based Eloise on an imaginary friend she had in childhood, although it has been speculated that her goddaughter Liza Minelli may have been a possible model. There are several books in the Eloise series, but Eloise never ages. In April 2003, a Disney television film was broadcast called Eloise at the Plaza, with Sofia Vassilieva in the title role.
A fan theory, which you may take with as many grains of salt as you wish, is that Louise was named after the character Eloise. I cannot think of any way that could be confirmed or denied, but it doesn’t seem that implausible. Louise and Eloise both have blonde hair, are rich and spoiled, rather bratty, and have unavailable, neglectful parents.
Kay Thompson died in 1998, so could not have been the commencement speaker, and famously hated her fans, so would be unlikely to agree to it anyway. Hilary Knight is still alive, but it doesn’t seem likely that he would have done it either.
PARIS: Are the [votes] for Princess Diana’s butler jokes or real?
Paris refers to Paul Burrell (born 1958), English former servant of the British Royal Household, and Princess Diana‘s butler from 1987 until her death in 1997.
In 2003 he released a memoir called A Royal Duty, detailing his life as a royal servant, and in particular focusing on Princess Diana, who he claimed had called him “the only man she ever trusted”. Princess Diana’s sons, Princes William and Harry, accused Burrell of betraying their mother’s confidences, and called the book, “a cold and overt betrayal”.
The book didn’t come out until October, but pre-publicity probably went on for a long time before that, as reviewers called it “the long-awaited” memoir. Burrell had also been in the news in November 2002, in court for theft of Diana’s possessions. The case collapsed when he was granted immunity from prosecution by the Crown.
LORELAI: Why are you being such a snob about this? You went to hotel school. MICHEL: I attended the Ecole Hôtelière de Genève.
The Ecole Hôtelière de Genève is a Swiss tertiary-level school in a 18th century mansion in Geneva, dedicated to hotel and restaurant management. It was originally the Ecole Cafetiers-Restaurants, founded in Neuchâtel, Switzerland in 1914. It moved to the Geneva property in 1951, and its current name dates to 1996. It is ranked in the top ten of the best hotel schools in the world.
Michel said that he left France at the age of 18, and presumably it was to study here in Switzerland. The diploma course lasts for three years, so Michel would have graduated when he was around 21.
Jess confronts Rory, and asks if she and Dean had agreed to meet up for the winter carnival behind his back. Rory truthfully says no, but admits that she and Dean did go out for coffee and talk, and decided they were going to be friends.
She points out that it’s a small town and they’re going to see each other around anyway, and Dean “never did anything bad to her”. There seems to be an immediate whitewashing Rory and Dean’s relationship after they break up, so that Dean becomes perfect in retrospect.
(Incidentally, I wonder how Rory would take it if Jess stayed friends with Shane, since Stars Hollow is a small town, and Shane never did anything bad to Jess? I have a feeling she would be furiously unreasonable about it).
Rory is worried that Jess will be angry with her (like “perfect” Dean would have been), but Jess says he isn’t. He does say that he would have liked to be told about it though, which Rory agrees to. This is the second time that Rory has seen Dean and kept it a secret from Jess.
She also doesn’t tell Jess that it was she who went to Dean first and asked to be friends. She says they talked “once”, which is pretty close to a lie – although Rory would say the first time they didn’t really talk, she spoke to Dean.
Unfortunately, Rory’s relationship with Jess begins with her keeping things from him and seeing her ex-boyfriend behind his back, so it’s not a very promising start.
Jess and Rory have plans to meet up at 9 pm after the winter carnival, as Jess doesn’t want to go. However, Rory “coincidentally” runs into Dean on the way, who is taking his little sister Clara to the carnival. Clara asks if Rory can go to the carnival with she and Dean, and before she has a chance to give an answer, Jess suddenly decides he is going too. He possessively puts his hand on Rory’s back while they walk behind Dean and Clara.
Jess is not only irritated that Rory is being friendly with Dean and that he feels forced to accompany Rory to the carnival, but by Clara’s insistent questions and comments to him. Clara is ten or eleven by now, but behaves more like a child of five or six in this episode.
We’ve never seen her act like this before, she’s always been quiet and rather sweet, if a little young for her age, so I wonder if Clara is deliberately trying to annoy Jess. She may see him as the horrible boy who took Rory away from Dean, and therefore away from her as well. Between Dean and Clara, Jess has the awful time at the carnival he had been expecting.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 