The Macarena

LORELAI: The Macarena. You and Lane for hours and hours, for weeks on end.
RORY: Hey, we were mocking. You can’t mock the mocking.

Macarena is a Spanish dance song by Spanish group Los del Río about a woman of the same name. Appearing on the 1993 album A mí me gusta, it was an international hit and dance craze in the latter half of 1996 and part of 1997.

In mid-1996, the infectious song became a worldwide hit roughly one year after the Bayside Boys (composed of Mike Triay and Carlos de Yarza) produced a remix of the song that added English lyrics. The reworked song spent 14 weeks at #1, and was the #1 song of 1996. The song stayed in the charts for 60 weeks, the longest reign of a hit song at that time. It is often considered one of the greatest of one-hit wonders, and one of the most enjoyable “bad songs”.

In the US, the song, and its corresponding Macarena dance, became popular around the time of the 1996 Democratic National Convention in August that year. C-SPAN filmed attendees dancing to the song in an afternoon session, something which might have attracted the young Rory to the song.

Rory’s Musical Guilty Pleasures

Lorelai gets revenge by mentioning some of Rory’s musical guilty pleasures.

Bryan Adams

Born 1959, Canadian singer, composer, and guitarist who has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. Joining his first band at 15, he released his debut album, Bryan Adams, at 20, and rose to fame with his 1983 album, Cuts Like a Knife. His 1984 album Reckless made him a star, with hits such as Run to You and Summer of ’69. His 1991 song Everything I Do (I Do It For You) went to #1 around the world, and is one of the best-selling singles of all time. He did a 1996 duet with Barbra Streisand, one of Lorelai’s favourites. Rory had a poster of him on her bedroom wall for two years; this doesn’t seem quite believable, as he reached his peak when she was seven, a bit younger than the usual age kids start putting posters of pop stars on their wall. Another case of Rory being a precocious child, or perhaps, like Lorelai, she is fond of the music that was big when she was a small child?

The Spice Girls [pictured]

A British pop group formed in 1994, with a mantra of “girl power”, they are one of the most recognisable acts of the British pop music resurgence of the 1990s. Their 1996 debut single Wannabe went to #1 around the world, the start of their global success as the face of a marketing juggernaut aimed at girls and young women. They went on hiatus in 2000, but have reunited for two concert tours since. The group has sold more than 100 million records worldwide, making them the best-selling girl group of all time, and the biggest British pop success since The Beatles. They became big when Rory was twelve – bang on time for an interest in pop music. Her being a fan of a girl group seems suspiciously like Lorelai’s obsession with girl group The Bangles.

Dido

Born Florian Armstrong in 1971, English singer and songwriter with a distinctive voice. She attained international success with her 1999 debut album, No Angel, which had hit singles such as Here With Me and Thank You. It sold over 21 million copies and won several awards. This seems to be quite a recent guilty pleasure, dating to when Rory was about fifteen.

Lorelai’s Musical Guilty Pleasures

Rory teases Lorelai about some of her other musical guilty pleasures.

The Bay City Rollers

A Scottish pop group known for their teen idol popularity in the 1970s. They’ve sold more than 120 million records worldwide, and their biggest hit is Bye, Baby, Baby, from 1975. It’s never confirmed that Lorelai ever actually liked them, and Rory seems to mention them as a trick to get Lorelai to confess her real guilty pleasure.

Duran Duran

Previously discussed.

Olivia Newton-John

Born 1948, British-Australian singer, songwriter, and actress. Four-time Grammy Award winner with five #1 songs, she has sold 100 million records worldwide. Her biggest hits include I Honestly Love You (1974) and Physical (1981). In 1978, she starred in the musical film Grease, previously mentioned, whose soundtrack remains one of the most successful in history. In 1980 she starred in the musical film Xanadu, which was a box-office disappointment and panned by critics, but has become a cult classic (is this the reason Lorelai likes her?).

Lorelai Reaches Out to Emily

LORELAI: You know, I’m really lucky.
RORY: Yeah, why?
LORELAI: I have someone to complain to when life sucks or work sucks or just everything sucks. I have someone I can talk to.

Lorelai realises that she is lucky that she can confide in Rory, but that Emily does not have a daughter she can talk to when life goes wrong for her. She has a moment of insight of how lonely Emily must be without that daughterly support that she takes for granted, and for once doesn’t immediately blame Emily for not fostering their relationship, the way she has with Rory. She’s willing to acknowledge how much Emily has missed out on.

At the end of the episode, she goes to her parents’ house before her business class, and finds Emily gardening on the patio. She lets Emily know that if she ever needs someone to talk to, Lorelai will be there for her. Although Emily does not avail herself of this offer, Lorelai remains to keep her mother company. Ironically, she has ignored her own advice to never go out on the patio!

Note the bright yellow lilies in this shot, as a hint of what happiness would be possible, and a slight callback to Lorelai’s thousand yellow daisies. Do Emily and Lorelai share a love of yellow flowers?

Glass Slipper

LUKE: So, back from the ball, huh?
LORELAI: Yes, I left behind a glass slipper and a business card in case the prince is really dumb.

Yet another Cinderella reference. In the fairy tale, Cinderella loses the glass slipper at the ball by which the prince, through a laborious and long-winded process, eventually manages to track her down. Lorelai suggests leaving a business card might have led to quicker results.

Is Lorelai’s response supposed to be a hint to Luke, or just a comment on the stupidity of Christopher? Either way, it feels as if Luke’s opening gambit is his way of testing to see if Christopher is going to be sticking around or not.

I-84

LORELAI: You know, um, I happened to be looking through some old maps this afternoon and I couldn’t help but notice that Boston is not that far away.
CHRISTOPHER: Aw, you needed a map to tell you that?
LORELAI: I also noticed that that, um, I-84 is a very good road. Solid, paved.

The Interstate 84, or I-84, is a highway which travels from Dunmore in Pennsylvania to Sturbridge in Massachusetts. The Connecticut section of it passes through Danbury, Waterbury, and Hartford, making it the most obvious choice when driving from Hartford to Boston, and suggesting Stars Hollow is just off this highway.

(Slightly confusingly, there is another I-84 in Oregon. For this reason, the I-84 in Connecticut is often identified as the I-84 East).

“Tomorrow you start paying”

RORY: Thanks again for going with me.
DEAN: Tomorrow you start paying. Bye. [leaves]

Dean makes it sound as if Rory will start watching BattleBots the next day, a Sunday, but in real life, the show was broadcast on Wednesdays at this time. Maybe he taped it to watch later – all that ball preparation (tee hee) must have really cut into his television-watching schedule.

It’s a chilly and rather threatening way to end a night out with his girlfriend, and fans could well feel that Dean is also in preparation for being “phased out”.

Neptune and Ancient Greece

LORELAI: Um, guys, hi, there’s a lady up there with a rock the size of Neptune around her neck talking about the debutantes of ancient Greece. It’s a lot easier to fall asleep if you’re sitting down, trust me.

The planet Neptune, the eighth planet from the Sun, was officially discovered in 1846, although it had been previously sighted and thought to be a star. It has a mass of 1.0243×1026 kg, making it 17 times more massive than the Earth. It is named after the Roman god of the sea, who interestingly, carries a trident, which Rory referenced earlier.

Symbolically, Neptune is associated with dreams and fantasy, suggesting that the debutante ball is creating an illusion, and there is little that is solid or genuine behind it. Notice that Emily despairs that the elegant ballroom is not all that it appears, the debutantes are “false” in that they have artificially changed their appearance, and that there is something insubstantial about the proceedings – which we barely manage to see. Not to mention that the ball itself takes a rather surreal turn, as if it is all just a dream. (Is it pure coincidence that Lorelai immediately talks about falling asleep?).

Lorelai’s statement about “the debutantes of ancient Greece” can be taken as nothing more than a joke – as if the MC’s reminiscences about her own debut must be positively ancient. However, the ancient Greeks did hold puberty rites for girls, of which you could say debutante balls are the spiritual successor. It seems very unlikely the MC would really mention ancient puberty rites, but the ball is just bizarre enough for this to be taken at face value.

Jeeves

DEAN: I think you look like a cotton ball.
RORY: Why, thank you Jeeves.

DEAN: But a really cute cotton ball.

Reginald Jeeves is the valet to Bertie Wooster in the Jeeves stories by English comic writer P.G. Wodehouse. The first Jeeves story appeared in print in 1915, and the last was published in the novel Aunts Aren’t Gentlemen, in 1974. It is not certain, but quite likely, that Rory has read at least one of Wodehouse’s books starring Jeeves.

In the stories, Jeeves is the brilliant mind who helps the more simple Bertie solve his myriad life problems. He is sometimes incorrectly referred to as a butler, although he did occasionally take on butler duties for other characters.

Rory gets back at Dean for comparing her to a cotton ball in her white dress by comparing him to a valet in his formal wear. Incidentally, Rory looks much prettier in her debutante dress than just “a really cute cotton ball”!

“Move to California”

LORELAI: She’s been acting so weird lately. They’re fighting. Openly fighting. I don’t think they’ve ever done that before. I’m not sure what to do about it.
CHRISTOPHER: Move to California. That’s what I do when my parents fight.

This apparently explains why Christopher moved to California, to get away from his parents’ fighting. From what we saw of Francine, she was far too cowed to look as if she ever fought with her husband, but perhaps she’s been thoroughly brow-beaten into submission by now. Most likely, this is another of Christopher’s lies, used to justify his behaviour.

Lorelai has supposedly never seen her parents fight before – if so, they must have been very careful to keep serious conflict hidden from their daughter while she was growing up to give her a stable home environment. However, this is the same Lorelai who claimed she and Rory never had a fight until Rory was nearly sixteen. She’s possibly just forgetting all the previous fights her parents had.