Tag: Speculation

The Final Days of Dick Nixon

RORY: Taylor’s wigging.

LORELAI: I know. He’s been sitting there like the final days of Dick Nixon for almost an hour.

Richard Nixon (1913-1994), 37th President of the US from 1969 to 1974. The Watergate Affair, the name used to describe the secret and illegal activities undertaken by members of the Nixon administration, was brought to light by reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in The Washington Post in 1972.

Nixon had hoped to weather the storm by refusing to leave, but impeachment hearings against him opened in May 1974. With loss of political support, and the near-certainty he would be impeached and removed from office, Nixon resigned on August 9 1974.

Lorelai may be specifically referring to the 1976 non-fiction book, The Final Days, by Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, describing the last months of Richard Nixon’s presidency. It was a major commercial success, and was made into a television movie of the same name in 1989, with Lane Smith as Richard Nixon.

Lorelai and Rory Help Out at the Diner

LUKE: You don’t have to do this.

LORELAI: We don’t mind. Go.

How are Lorelai and Rory helping out at the diner on a day when Luke is busy and his assistant Caesar has a day off? Don’t they have a job and school to go to? And Rory went and got Jess to help as well, are we meant to assume that Jess is just skipping school for the rest of the day? (I’m also interested as to who did the cooking on that first day – the Gilmore girls famously refuse to cook, and with Caesar off work and Luke busy, was Jess the chef for the day?).

I can see maybe Lorelai could have the freedom to work at the diner during the rush hours, but Rory needs to catch a bus, and she’ll be in Hartford all day. Plus she has homework to do after school, and didn’t they come to the diner to have breakfast? When are they going to get to eat? Also, what day of the week is this? It seems to be Friday, so do they have a Friday night dinner to get to in the evening, or will Luke be back at the diner by then?

Are we meant to assume that Lorelai and Rory just helped out in the diner before work/school for twenty minutes or so? Because that’s not very much help at all. Time just sort of stops existing for the first half of this episode – a hallmark of those written by Daniel Palladino.

By the end of the episode, it seems as if Lorelai and Rory are virtually running the diner for Luke, with the reluctant help of Jess, and I suppose Caesar, once he returns from his day off. Although they can barely navigate their own kitchen, this does make some sense, because Lorelai manages an inn, and Rory helps out there part-time, so they do understand customer service. Lorelai in particular is apparently so good at it that she becomes something of a drawcard at the diner, her natural talent and people skills shining forth once again.

Cathy Coffee, Mrs Folger, and Juan Valdez

LORELAI: We’re running out of coffee … I got it.

LUKE: Do you know how?

LORELAI: Do I . . . ugh . . . I am Cathy Coffee, mister, the bastard offspring of Mrs. Folger and Juan Valdez.

Cathy Coffee

I think a fictional coffee mascot that Lorelai has invented and is now personifying.

Mrs Folger [pictured]

Mrs Olson, or “The Folgers Coffee Woman” was in a string of television commercials for Folgers Coffee during the 1960s and ’70s. Mrs Olson was a Swedish neighbour who always recommended a cup of Folgers Coffee to other people in the commercial. She was played by an actress named Virginia Christina, born Virginia Ricketts (1920-1996).

Juan Valdez

A fictional character who has appeared in advertisements for the National Federation of Coffee Growers in Colombia since 1958. He is an icon for both coffee and Colombia. He was portrayed by a Cuban actor named José F. Duval until 1969, then by Colombian actor Carlos Sánchez. Since 2006, Juan Valdez has been portrayed by Carlos Castañeda, a coffee grower from a small town in Colombia.

Crank

RORY: Where should the poached eggs go?

LUKE: Crank in the hat.

Crank is a term to refer to someone with an unshakeable belief in something that most of their contemporaries believe to be false. The term was popularised in 1872, being applied to Horace Greeley in his campaign for the US presidency. He believed in the settlement of the Old West and a magnanimous Reconstruction of the American South, and was a proponent of socialism, vegetarianism, agrarianism, feminism, and temperance. Cranks today can take comfort in the fact that all Greeley’s cranky ideas were proven very sensible, and are mainstream today.

In North American, a crank can also be slang for a bad-tempered person. I’m not sure which one Luke was applying to Cy, the “crank in a hat”, but Cy seems to believe it’s the second one, because he makes a spirited defence by saying that Luke is the crank – he’s well known around town for being grumpy.

Louie Danes

Luke’s Uncle Louie has died shortly before this episode opens, at the age of 85. Louie was the brother of Luke’s father, William Danes, and lived in Stars Hollow until he retired and moved to Florida. This episode focuses on Luke’s efforts to organise Louie’s funeral.

(The episode never says this, but it seems possible that Luke was given the name Lucas because it sounds similar to his uncle’s name of Louis).

“While I was getting the car”

RORY: You actually got Grandma to steal a bathrobe?

LORELAI: Although I did catch her trying to return it while I was getting the car.

What car? They went to the spa in a hired limo. Perhaps Lorelai means while she was phoning for a car to collect them, or meeting the car? Or she meant to say while she was getting in the car?

Emily panicked and tried not to go through with stealing the bathrobe, but Lorelai seems to have stopped her. That seems to be enough to satisfy Lorelai, who actually appears pretty pleased with how her time at the spa with her mother turned out (probably because they came home early).

“Chairman of the Board”

ELAYNE: And now it’s time for my favourite part of the evening – our salute to the Chairman of the Board.

MARTY: I sure hope that’s not b-o-r-e-d.

A possible allusion to the 1979 song, “I’m Bored”, by punk icon Iggy Pop, from his album New Values. The album was well received, but “I’m Bored” only charted in Australia, where it reached a modest #68 in the charts. However, the album was most successful in New Zealand, reaching #18 – the only country where it was in the Top 20.

The song begins:

I’m bored

I’m the chairman of the bored

Thailand

EMILY: This is either the greatest steak I’ve ever eaten, or I’m so hungry, I’m delirious. Pass the horseradish, please.

LORELAI: I never knew you were a spicy girl.

EMILY: Oh, believe me, I can handle my heat. One summer when we were first married, your father and I stayed at this little village in Thailand where we spent two weeks eating viciously hot chillies and skinny-dipping.

Emily and Richard would have visited Thailand in the late 1960s, considered to be during the Golden Age of Tourism in Thailand. Westerners had been travelling to Thailand (Siam) since the 19th century, but it was only in 1947 that the first flights from the US to Bangkok began, when Pan Am offered it as part of its around the world ticket. By the 1960s, flights to Bangkok were cheaper and shorter.

The “little village” the Gilmores stayed in was almost certainly Pattaya – originally a fishing village with a perfect crescent of beach, only 99 miles from Bangkok, on a decent road. That made it very attractive to tourists, and by the early 1960s, some development had already begun. Today it is a modern city of more than 120 000 people with a very seedy red light district, and a major pollution problem. The once-pristine beach is now considered poor quality due to sewage dumping.

It’s interesting that Emily remembers skinny-dipping with Richard for two weeks, as he later has quite a different recollection. It is just possible that it was on this summer vacation in Thailand that Lorelai was conceived – she was born in late April 1968, meaning that she could have been conceived in July-August the previous year.

Note that Emily’s enjoyment of hot horseradish on her steak parallels Rory eating her French fries dipped in pepper and hot sauce. (And her love of Indian curry!).

[Picture shows Pattaya in 1965].

“I can’t get into poetry”

JESS: I can’t get into poetry. It’s kind of like, geez, just say it already, we’re dying here.

Jess has actually read Allen Ginsberg’s poem Howl more than forty times, so this “I’m too butch for poetry” is nothing but posturing. Maybe he’s trying provoke Rory into saying something, which would reveal to an outsider how they formed an intimate bond over her poetry book. If so, it doesn’t work.