Lorelai Tells Rory About Christopher

LORELAI: Because I have dibs on this time of year with you, not him! Me! And yes, he acknowledged that, and that was cool and all, but still – it stinks! Because he put me in a very difficult position because we were supposed to watch a lot of movies and make fun of Godfather 3, and the thing that I really, really hate about this is … is the idea of you not hanging out with me because you’re hanging out there with your stupid stepmother.

It is now revealed that Lorelai never told Rory that Christopher rang, inviting her to stay in Boston for a couple of days during the Christmas holidays. As is often the case with Lorelai, she’s being quite unreasonable by insisting that she has dibs on Christmas, when Lorelai has dibs on Rory every day of every year! It’s quite normal for children of separated parents to spend major holidays with the parent they don’t live with, and Christopher was only asking for a couple of days out of a school holiday break that lasts for weeks.

The real reason is that she is jealous of Sherrie, and hates the idea of Rory having another mother figure in her life. Rory quite rightly calls her out on it, and teases her about her attitude. It is not revealed at this point whether Rory does spend time with Christopher and Sherrie in her Christmas break, but it is later strongly implied that she didn’t. Knowing of Lorelai’s insecurities, it seems likely that Rory decided not to visit Christopher after all (with homework and the newspaper providing a plausible excuse, as usual).

Björk

JESS: It [their snow-woman] definitely has the most personality. Kind of looks like Björk.

RORY: That’s what we were going for.

Björk Guðmundsdóttir (born 1965), is an Icelandic singer and songwriter, known for her eclectic musical style that draws on a range of genres. Björk began her career at the age of 11 and gained international recognition as lead singer of the alternative rock band The Sugarcubes. After the band broke up in 1992, she embarked on a solo career; she was always more popular in the UK and Europe than in the US.

Her most recent album at this stage was Vespertine (2001), and she had attended the 2001 Oscars wearing a white dress designed to resemble a swan, which along with being from Iceland, might have been factors which inspired Rory and Lorelai to turn her into a snow-woman. That Jess could recognise the snow-woman as being based on Björk shows that he is on a similar wavelength.

(We can see during these scenes that Lorelai and Rory obviously fixed up their snow-woman and gave her a new head, so that she looks like a pretty credible entry for the contest).

Ben-Hur

LORELAI: Hey, you in the belt – get in.
LUKE: What? Oh, no, I was just sort of checking things out.
LORELAI: Come on. We can pull a Ben-Hur and take down Taylor’s sleigh.

Ben-Hur, 1959 religious epic film directed by William Wyler and starring Charlton Heston, previously discussed, in the title role. It’s based on the 1880 novel Ben-Hur: A Tale of the Christ by Lew Wallace, and a remake of the 1925 silent film version.

The film focuses on a Jewish prince named Judah Ben-Hur, living in Jerusalem during the days of Christ’s ministry. Unfairly condemned to the galleys as a slave after an accidental death, Ben-Hur is later freed and becomes a champion charioteer, the film reaching its climax with a thrilling race-to-the-death against the man who sent him to the galleys.

Ben-Hur had the largest budget and the largest sets built of any film produced at the time, leading to the phrase “bigger than Ben-Hur” to describe anything on a grand scale. It was the #1 film of 1959 at the box office, received overwhelming critical acclaim, and was the second-highest grossing film of that time, after Gone With the Wind. It won a record eleven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Best Cinematographer. It is considered one of the greatest epics of all time, and one of the best films in cinematic history.

The film was released on DVD in 2001, suggesting the possibility that Lorelai had watched it fairly recently.

Tammy Faye Bakker

RORY (looking at photo of Sherry): Nice looking lady.
LORELAI: Mm hmm. Like a young Tammy Faye Bakker.
RORY: But prettier than that.

Tammy Faye Bakker, born Tamara LaValley (1942-2007) was the ex-wife of television evangelist Jim Bakker (born 1940). She and her husband ran a televangelist program called the PTL Club, founded in 1974; it was dissolved in 1989 when Jim Bakker was convicted and imprisoned on indicted on numerous counts of fraud and conspiracy. Tammy Faye divorced Jim in 1992, and married Roe Messner, a church building contractor (so by this stage she was actually Tammy Faye Messner).

Tammy Faye was known for her eccentric and glamorous image, and her views which often diverged from mainstream evangelical Christianity. For example, she supported the LGBT community, and reached out to HIV positive patients at the height of the AIDS epidemic. She was diagnosed with colon cancer in 1996, so was already terminally ill when this episode aired.

It is unclear what age “young” Tammy Faye Bakker was that Lorelai believes Sherry resembles. Knowing what Sherry actually looks like, perhaps when Tammy Faye’s hair was brown, before she dyed it blonde. That would have been in the 1960s, when Tammy Faye and her husband Jim had a puppet show on a Christian TV network.

The viewer may decide for themselves whether Sherry looks like Tammy Faye Bakker at any age, but I personally cannot see any strong resemblance (I can barely see a weak resemblance). I’m surprised that Rory doesn’t disagree any more strenuously than by saying Sherry is “prettier than that”, and can only think that she walks on eggshells when it comes to her mother’s jealousy over Sherry.

I’m not sure how Lorelai’s frame of reference for picturing a young Tammy Faye Bakker is in the 1960s, before Lorelai was born. I find this whole reference quite confusing.

Second Cousin Stan

RORY: This is one ugly looking baby. Whose baby is this?
LORELAI: That’s your second cousin’s Stan’s. Poor kid.
RORY: Ugh, he got Stan’s everything.

If Stan is Rory’s second cousin, then surely he is the son of Lorelai’s cousin? But where did Lorelai get a cousin from? We’re only told of one aunt, Hopie, who is Emily’s sister and lives in Paris (no husband or children were mentioned). It is implied that Richard is an only child, despite the proliferation of Gilmore aunts and uncles. And could Lorelai’s cousin already be old enough to be a grandfather?

It’s possible that Lorelai (or the writer?) means that Stan is Rory’s cousin twice removed, meaning that he is Richard’s cousin – if so, he’s presumably a lot younger than Richard since he’s just welcomed a new baby. Many people get second cousins and cousins twice removed mixed up.

The baby doesn’t actually seem particularly ugly, to me it just looks like a normal baby.

Christmas in the Bahamas

LORELAI (to Richard): You and Mom, you always go out of town this time of year.
RORY: Last year it was the Bahamas.

Last year we discovered it was Richard and Emily’s annual tradition to hold a Christmas party in mid-December. This year we discover another tradition: they go out of town around Christmas time (presumably after the party, but possibly before).

I’m not sure whether they actually go away for Christmas, or if they travel in the week or so before Christmas, and get back in time for the 25^th. Richard and Emily spoke about only seeing Lorelai and Rory at Christmas and Easter, so did that just mean attending the Christmas party each year? As that was attended by their friends, it doesn’t seem as if they spent much time together as a family at all, even in the holidays. Perhaps they meant the entire Christmas season – the party, and then Christmas itself.

Richard and Emily went to the Bahamas in December 2000, after Richard had been hospitalised for an angina attack. As Christopher’s parents, Straub and Francine Hayden, live in the Bahamas, it seems very likely the Gilmores either stayed with them, or visited them, during their vacation. It was only a couple of months later that Christopher’s parents come to Hartford just as Christopher arrives for a visit to Stars Hollow, suggesting it was a plan that the elder Gilmores cooked up to bring Lorelai and Christopher together – with devastating results.

“Where are you, Heaven?”

CHRISTOPHER: Where are you, Heaven?

Christopher is listening to the harps playing in the background, although teasingly, it could also be understood as Christopher addressing Lorelai as Heaven.

Note the bowl of ripe, rich red pomegranates on the table. They are potent symbols of fertility, as a possible foreshadowing of what is to come. Red often seems to be a danger signal of love triangles in Gilmore Girls, and there could be two such triangles here – Lorelai, Christopher and Sherrie, and Lorelai, Christopher and Rory.

More pertinently, they are a reminder of the Greek myth of the fertility goddess Demeter, who lost her beloved daughter Persephone to the god of the Underworld, Hades. It was decreed that Persephone should be returned to her mother – but only if she hadn’t eaten or drunk anything in the Underworld. She had eaten six pomegranate seeds, so spent six months of every year with her husband, and the other six with her mother (thus explaining the cycles of the seasons, for nothing will bloom or grow while Demeter mourns the annual loss of her daughter).

Likewise, Christopher’s phone call brings up Lorelai’s fear of losing Rory. Already worried that her parents might lure her away into their life of luxury, she now grows afraid that she could lose Rory to her father. This seems unlikely, as Christopher is far less interested in Rory than Richard and Emily are. But as Harvard University is near Boston, it must be causing Lorelai a little anxiety for the future. The six month pomegranate deal sounds an awful lot like a shared custody arrangement.

Christopher’s Request

CHRISTOPHER: Now it’s totally your call and I don’t want to step on any plans you’ve already made, but I know Rory has a break in school coming up, and I was wondering if you’d be cool with her coming to visit for a couple of days.

Christopher finally shows some interest in his daughter, inviting her to spend a couple of days of her Christmas break with him in Boston. The fact that he mentions Sherrie had fixed up the spare room for her suggests that it might be his girlfriend encouraging him to make contact with Rory.

Although Lorelai said she’d always left the door to Rory open for Christopher, she doesn’t sound thrilled with this plan. She never seems to have considered it might mean leaving the door to Rory open for another woman as well.

Note the picture on the wall of the ominous all-seeing eye and the word OBEY on it – does Christopher feel as if he is under Sherrie’s surveillance, that he is doing her bidding? Is the phone call something she instructed him to do? It’s a hint that Christopher may be finding his first committed domestic relationship rather confining.

(I’m not sure, but I think the artwork might be by Shepard Fairey, a graphic artist and founder of OBEY Clothing who emerged from the skateboarding scene in the mid-1980s. He would later become well known for his picture of Barack Obama together with the word HOPE).

Anne Heche

SOOKIE: We are crazy for doing this.
LORELAI: We’re beyond crazy. We are ‘Anne Heche speaking her secret language to God and looking for the spaceship in Fresno’ crazy.
SOOKIE: Oh Quiness, Nakka dune notta.

LORELAI: Il el nostra doska don.

Anne Heche (born 1969), actress, director, and screenwriter. First became known as a soap opera actress, before gaining mainstream recognition in the late 1990s in films such as Donnie Brasco (1997) and Six Days, Seven Nights (1998). She was also famous for her high-profile three-year relationship with comedian Ellen De Generes, who came out to the press shortly after she and Anne began dating.

On August 19 2000, the day after her relationship with Ellen ended, Anne drove from Los Angeles to Cantua Creek, near Fresno, parking her vehicle on a roadside. She walked for more than a mile through the desert wearing shorts and a bra before knocking on a stranger’s door and asking for a shower. As she seemed reluctant to leave, the homeowner called the sheriff’s department. When deputies arrived, Heche told them that she was God, and would take everyone up to Heaven in a spaceship (she later said she had taken ecstasy). She was admitted to a psychiatric unit in Fresno, and released after a few hours.

While promoting her 2001 memoir, Call Me Crazy, Anne told interviewers that she had been mentally ill for the first thirty-one years of her life due to horrific sexual abuse by her father (a closeted gay man who died of AIDS when Anne was thirteen), which began when she was only a baby. Her surviving family strongly reject those claims, although even without that, her childhood doesn’t sound like a picnic.

Anne said that she created a fantasy world called The Fourth Dimension and had an alter ego named Celestia who was the daughter and reincarnation of God, spoke her own language, had special powers, and was in contact with extraterrestrials. It seems likely Lorelai read Call Me Crazy, as it is the sort of camp celebrity memoir she could not resist (like Mommie Dearest and Tears and Laughter), although all the information could be gleaned from the press at the time.

Anne Heche stated that she had no further mental health issues after the episode at Cantua Creek, and she has gone on to have a successful career in film and television.

Sookie’s statement means, “Oh God, I cannot do this” in Anne Heche’s invented language. Lorelai replies, “It’s too scary for me now”, in the same language. Anne said this when she believed God wanted her to heal a friend’s injured ankle, however she says she did go on to heal her friend through laying on of hands. Anne shared this information, including the example of her language, with Barbara Walters on 20/20 in early September 2001.

Like Lorelai and Sookie, and many others at the time, Amy Sherman-Palladino mocked Anne Heche mercilessly after going public. Their tone was completely mainstream for the time.

UPDATE: Anne Heche passed away after a car accident on August 12 2022, under the influence of narcotics.

The Bracebridge Dinner

LORELAI: For the Bracebridge Dinner.
JACKSON: Geez, you guys are going crazy with this dinner.
SOOKIE: Jackson, I told you, this dinner is not just about food. We are recreating an authentic 19th century meal.
LORELAI: The servers are all gonna be in period clothing, they’re gonna speak period English. Here, look at the costumes.

The Bracebridge Dinner is an annual tradition which has been held at the Ahwahnee Hotel in Yosemite National Park, California since 1927, when the hotel opened. The interior of the Ahwahnee was an inspiration for the hotel in Stanley Kubrick’s film, The Shining – a hint as to how Lorelai may have become interested in holding her own Bracebridge Dinner.

The Bracebridge Dinner is a seven-course formal gathering held in the Grand Dining Room and presented as a feast given by a Renaissance-era lord. It was inspired by the fictional Squire Bracebridge’s Yule celebration in a story from the 1820 work, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., by American author Washington Irving. Music and theatrical performances based on Irving’s story accompany the introduction of each course.

Tickets to the Bracebridge Dinner cost around $400 and are generally difficult to obtain, sometimes being awarded in a lottery system. In 1992, there were 60 000 applicants for the 1650 seats available. This could be the reason why the Trelling Paper Company from Chicago have decided to hold their own Bracebridge Dinner at the Independence Inn.

Sookie says they will be serving an authentic 19^th century meal, but in fact it is a Renaissance-themed meal. There’s not that much authentic about the dinner really, however I’m pretty sure the 19^th century one wasn’t either. It’s a bit of fun and frolic, not a history lesson.