Footnotes to the TV series
LORELAI: Well, you know, there’s some really cool places over on Peach. Or on Plum. Hm, Orange. Basically, any of your fruit named streets are pretty nice.
This seems slightly naughty of Lorelai, since Dean lives on Peach Street. I’m sure Jess wouldn’t want Dean as a neighbour! It’s as if she’s telling Jess she’d prefer Rory to date someone who lives on Peach Street.
This might suggest that the streets named after fruit trees are in a particularly nice part of Stars Hollow.
LORELAI: Sorry, it’s just . . . so excited about the ducks that, uh . . . do you want something to drink? You have good timing ‘cause we shopped yesterday, and in addition to a case of Maybelline Fresh Lash Mascara, I also bought some of that new, uh, freaky Coke with the lemon in it.
Maybelline is a multinational cosmetics company, founded in Chicago in 1914, and now based in New York. Since 1996, it has been a subsidiary of L’Oreal, previously discussed.
Maybelline’s Fresh Lash Mascara has now been replaced with Great Lash Mascara. In 1981, their Fresh Lash Mascara was advertised on television by Lynda Carter, who played superhero Wonder Woman, previously discussed as one of Lorelai’s favourites. I can imagine young Lorelai buying the mascara because of the face of the brand and remaining loyal to it.
This is the music that Jess is sleeping to when Luke wakes him up. Price Yeah!, is by the American indie rock band Pavement, first released on their EP Slay Tracks: 1933-1969 in 1989. The EP was self-recorded, and is experimental hard-core punk.
The band were partly inspired by their home town of Stockton, California, a place they considered flat and boring that they wanted to escape from – something that Jess can probably relate to.
Being an extremely limited release, copies of this EP quickly became collector’s items selling for hundreds of dollars. Jess is most likely listening to Westing (By Mustang and Sextant), a compilation of Pavement’s early EP’s and singles which was released in 1993.
The song begins:
Just cause I’m fakin’
Doesn’t mean I’m wrong
Cause I bought my price, yeah,
No I got it at cost
And there’s the things I know
Wrote them down on your nib
Just remember turning
It’s a rapid affair
Jess knows that he is faking it – but is he faking by hiding his true level of misery from Luke and the town, or is he faking by pretending to be less interested in Rory than he makes out? He’s aware of the price he is paying, but considers it worthwhile. The “rapid affair” may allude to how quickly he fell for Rory, and the things he wrote down to the annotations he made in Rory’s book.
Jess says he needs loud music on in order to sleep. Possibly he got into that habit needing to block out the sound of his mother partying or entertaining guests. Or even the sound of Liz having sex or fighting with her companion of the moment. Or they just lived in an apartment block where there was a lot of noise from other people, and little insulation against it.
Either way, it’s a sign that he didn’t have the best environment growing up. Unless he simply hasn’t adjusted to the quietness of the country after living in New York?
If Jess always needs loud music in order to sleep, how on earth has poor Luke been able to get any sleep? For that matter, why is he surprised to learn about it now? Has he just been gritting his teeth for six months and working long days on little sleep, and this is the final straw? And why haven’t any of their neighbours complained?
LORELAI: I think I have gangrene.
RORY: You do not.
LORELAI: And vertigo.
Vertigo is a condition where the person affected has the sensation of movement even when standing still, feeling like a spinning or swaying movement. It may cause nausea, vomiting, sweating, or difficulty walking, and is the most common type of dizziness. It is usually caused by a problem with the inner ear.
It is often confused with acrophobia, or a fear of heights, which is what Lorelai is probably referring to – being on the roof has made her scared to get up there again. Also, she went up on the roof before breakfast, so any dizziness she experienced could have been due to low blood sugar. Or a caffeine rush …
This is possibly a nod to the 1958 psychological thriller Vertigo, directed by Alfred Hitchcock, and based on the 1954 mystery novel The Living and the Dead, by French writing team Boileau-Narcejac. James Stewart plays a police detective forced into early retirement by acrophobia and vertigo caused by an incident in the line of duty. He is hired by an acquaintance to follow his wife, played by Kim Novak, who is behaving strangely.
Vertigo received mixed reviews upon release, but is now seen as a classic Hitchcock film and one of his defining works. Attracting significant scholarly discussion, it is regarded as among the greatest films of all time, and by some as the greatest film of all time.
Rory has co-opted Kirk and Michel to help her with the CD drop off to Lane. While Kirk distracts Mrs Kim with idle chit-chat, it is Michel’s task to jog past, secretly slipping the CD into Lane’s bag. Unfortunately, Rory forgot to tell Michel about the revised time, so the poor man was left to jog around the square for an hour waiting for Lane to show up. He is understandably miffed.
Roping Kirk into a zany scheme is a natural choice, but it’s a surprise that Michel, who can barely be bothered doing his actual job some days, is apparently willing to help Rory and Lane out like this in his free time. Perhaps he always goes jogging on Saturday morning anyway, but even so he stuck it out for over an hour until everyone else arrived. Lord knows how Rory managed to persuade him.
I feel as if the writer, Daniel Palladino, was almost forced to choose Michel as the only person in Stars Hollow who is young and fit enough to be credibly kept jogging for an hour. It’s interesting that Rory never considers asking her boyfriend Dean to be involved. Maybe he works on Saturday morning.
If this scene does connect with the Elton John song “Rocket Man“, then Michel is in the role of the “rocket man” who is “lonely out in space on such a timeless flight”, and “burning up his fuse out here alone”. And as he feared, “I think it’s gonna be a long, long time”!!!!!
LORELAI: So should it have been me?
RORY: Huh? Oops, sorry! Zero hour – I have to go. I’ll be right back. [leaves]
A possible allusion to Elton John’s 1972 song, “Rocket Man (I Think It’s Gonna Be a Long, Long Time)”, composed by Elton John and Bernie Taupin.
It might seem a bit of a stretch, but the song begins:
She packed my bags last night pre-flight
Zero hour 9 am
Rory packed Lane’s CD ready for the drop-off the night before, and it was originally timed for 9 am, before being changed to 10 am to accommodate the reverend’s handball. The song was inspired by the 1951 Ray Bradbury story, “Rocket Man” from The Illustrated Man, which seems on-brand for Rory, and science-fiction is constantly alluded to on the show. It was also one of the songs recorded by William Shatner on his spoken-word album, previously discussed. Rory planned to buy the album for Lorelai’s birthday.
“Rocket Man” was the lead single from Elton John’s album Honky Château. The song went to #2 in the UK, and #6 in the US, becoming one of Elton John’s biggest hits, and a staple at his concerts. John played the song at the 1998 launch of the Space Shuttle Discovery. Rolling Stone has it listed as one of the greatest songs of all time.
Note that Lorelai never receives an answer from Rory as to whether Lorelai and Christopher should be together.
LORELAI: What’s her music taste?
RORY: Big Bruce Springsteen fan. Seen him like twenty times.
LORELAI: Blue collar roots or is she just slumming?
RORY: Oh, her father owned a shoe store and her mom taught kindergarten.
Bruce Springsteen (born 1949), singer, songwriter, and musician. He has released twenty studio albums, many of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. Originally from the Jersey Shore, he is one of the originators of the heartland rock style of music, combining mainstream rock musical style with narrative songs about working class American life.
During a career that has spanned five decades, Springsteen has become known for his poetic, socially conscious lyrics and energetic stage performances, sometimes lasting up to four hours in length. He is nicknamed “the Boss”.
Springsteen had a lengthy, top-grossing tour over 1999 and 2000, the Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Reunion Tour. He played five concert dates in Boston in August 1999, giving Sherry several recent opportunities to see her favourite singer live. In 2002, Springsteen began his The Rising Tour, performing in Boston twice in October of that year. Sherry has probably already bought tickets.
RICHARD: Uh, what does [Sherry] do? Does she work?
CHRISTOPHER: Uh, she’s the East Coast sales rep for L’Oreal Cosmetics.
L’Oreal is a French beauty product company headquartered in Clichy, France, with a registered office in Paris. It is the largest cosmetics company in the world. It was founded in 1919 by chemist Eugène Schueller.
The US headquarters of L’Oreal are in New York City, but they certainly employ sales reps in Boston. Christopher says Sherry is the sales rep for the East Coast, as if they have only one! I’m pretty sure Sherry is only a sales rep for L’Oreal. Christopher loves to talk everything about himself up.
This does bring into question whether this business trip is really for Christopher, or was it for Sherry’s work? It seems like it’s actually her job that would involve travel, not his. Bearing in mind his comment about eating at White Castle (which is in New York), it could be that they were in New York for Sherry’s business, then decided to spend the weekend in Connecticut to see Rory. In which case, they could be staying as close as Woodbury, making their travel time to Stars Hollow even more achievable.
CHRISTOPHER: Well, [Max] and I never met. I didn’t even know he existed until late in the game. Hell, I didn’t even know you were engaged until you called me from your bachelorette party. And I wasn’t invited to the wedding – or did my invitation get lost in the mail?
LORELAI: Well, you’ve moved a lot this past year.
Lorelai and Max’s relationship moved extremely quickly and they had a significant break from it. When they got back together, they got engaged almost immediately. In fact, Lorelai only seems to call Christopher from her bachelorette party in hopes of getting talked out of it (in which case, mission accomplished).
It is interesting she never told Christopher though, considering that she was going right through her address book to tell distant relatives and the man who did her shower that she and Max were back together. Maybe she didn’t want to get talked out of it that soon. I suspect if she had sent him an invitation, it would have gone to the wrong address, and he would’ve been a no-show (again).
Christopher is getting awfully huffy about this neglect, but by the time Lorelai phones him to say she is getting married, we find out later he is already with Sherry – something which he hid from Lorelai. It looks very much as if Lorelai’s news pushed him into committing Sherry faster than he otherwise would have.
LORELAI: When I invited you to Rory’s debate, was Sherry with you?
CHRISTOPHER: Yeah, of course. She’s been with me the whole trip. Why?
LORELAI: It’s just that you gave me no indication that she was with you.
Lorelai is quite reasonably suspicious of Christopher’s motives and behaviour. He came into their lives six months ago, only telling them he had a girlfriend just before he left. Once again, he has weaselled his way into their lives without mentioning that Sherry was going to be with him.
Would Lorelai have invited him to Rory’s debate if she knew Sherry was coming too? Probably not. Christopher would no doubt say that justifies his lies of omission, so he can see Rory – although he only seems to want to see her so he can impress Sherry with what a great father he is.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 