Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: Hey, who are you on with?
MICHEL: The Cheshire Cat Inn.
The Cheshire Cat was the B&B in Portsmouth where Lorelai and Rory stayed on their road trip to Harvard [pictured]. Apparently there is also a Cheshire Cat Inn near Stars Hollow. Oddly, neither Lorelai or Rory remarked on this coincidence when they were at the B&B. Did the writer (Daniel Palladino) just run out of ideas for names here?
DEAN: I got into Southern Connecticut State.
RORY: Oh, that’s great.
Southern Connecticut State, previously discussed.
Dean applied to the university in New Haven, seemingly as a way to impress Rory. Nothing ever seem to come of this, and the fact that Lindsay doesn’t say anything about going to college may provide a clue as to why.
[Dean sees them and waves. Lindsay glances at Rory]
LORELAI: Oh, I think she’s ready to go to the ghetto on you.
Possibly a reference to the 1998 hip-hop song, “The Geto”, by the rapper Scarface, featuring Willie D, Ice Cube, and K.B, from the album, My Homies. One part says, ” … got to go, to the ghetto”. If so, it may be an attempt to make us believe Lorelai’s earlier assertion that she is “into rap”. It sort of ends up seeming a bit racist.
RORY: He was a troubled man. He enjoyed a little bit too much of the hmm-hmm. [makes a drinking gesture]
Edgar Allan Poe has been described as a drunkard or an alcoholic, but many of these stories about him were spread by his rivals and enemies. He did sometimes drink too much, and didn’t handle alcohol very well (so that even a little was probably too much for him), but it was often months or even years between bouts of drinking. He might perhaps be best described as a binge drinker. It is sometimes speculated that alcohol played some part in his death, but this cannot be verified.
MANAGER: [to Luke]Hey. Saw you jawboning with our boy there.
Jawboning, informal American English meaning to influence or pressure by strong persuasion, usually used in a political context. Luke wasn’t really doing anything like that with Jess, so either the manager is being very protective of his star worker, or he is confusing the word with jawing, meaning “to talk, to scold”.
LORELAI: Oh, is this everyone from the Edgar Allan Poe Society?
The Edgar Allen Poe Society was established in Baltimore, Maryland on January 19 1923, the 114th anniversary of Poe’s birth. Their headquarters are The Edgar Allan Poe House and Museum, which was the home of Poe during the 1830s. The Poe Society are all volunteers who aim to provide educational resources on the author, and are not as quirky as this episode portrays. Perhaps the ones in this episode are a different Edgar Allan Poe Society.
KIRK: I got the idea when I read about something a man was doing in Portland.
LORELAI: What was he doing?
KIRK: He was printing daily T-shirts featuring a humorous topical headline of something he witnessed around town.
Portland, a port city and the largest city in Oregon, in the Pacific North West of the US. It has a population of around 600 000. Named after Portland in Maine, the settlement began to be populated in the 1840s, as it was near the end of the Oregon Trail which led wagon trains to the west. Beginning in the 1960s, Portland became noted for its growing liberal and progressive political values, earning it a reputation as a hip bastion of counterculture.
I have been unable to discover if the man in Portland with the tee shirt business was real, or fictional. I have found no trace of him, and suspect he may be the writer’s idea of something quirky that people in Portland might do.
RICHARD: Thank you for a lovely evening, and I’ll see the two of you on Friday.
The speech contest took place on Friday, so shouldn’t they be leaving for Friday Night Dinner right now? Or is the speech contest replacing the dinner, perhaps because Emily is still nursing her three friends with strokes? In which case, Richard means “see you next Friday”.
PARIS: I’m being punished. I had sex, so now I don’t get to go to Harvard.
Gilmore Girls really does seem to enjoy punishing girls and women for having sex. The consequences can be dire, and this is perhaps the first big example of that (after Lorelai getting pregnant with Rory, which happens before the show opens).
PARIS: Harvard. I thought of nothing else. Many of you out there can attest to that fact. I was on my way and nothing could stop me. And here’s the really funny thing – after four years of slaving away, I go home today and I found this. [holds up an envelope] I’m not going to Harvard. I got the tiny envelope, the one that reads, “Sorry, Paris. We’re not interested. Try again next year. Love, Harvard.” And the thing that’s really funny here is, who in the world deserves to go to Harvard more than me? Have you seen how hard I’ve worked over these past four years? I mean, can anyone here believe that I’m not going to Harvard? I can’t. I’m not going to Harvard. I am not going to Harvard. I had sex, but I’m not going to Harvard.
Paris has a very public meltdown, on C-SPAN and surrounded by distinguished guests no less, as she reveals that has been rejected by Harvard, her dream university. It’s as if it’s not enough that Rory succeed, Paris must fail – and fail spectacularly.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 