LORELAI: This whole morning has been a little Twilight Zone-y. LUKE: Or Outer Limits-y … Great show, just as eerie, same era, but no one ever references it. LORELAI: Oh, I’m sorry, I don’t speak geek.
The Outer Limits, an anthology television series originally broadcast from 1963 to 1965. It is often compared to The Twilight Zone, but stories were more science-fiction based than fantasy or supernatural, and were more straight action and suspense, often showing the human spirit spirit confronting dark existential forces, either from within or without.
The Outer Limits was very influential on the development of Star Trek – one reason why Luke might be a fan of the show. The Outer Limits was revived in 1995, and its last episode shown in January 2002, so Luke may very well have only recently finished watching the new series (and could be missing the show now it’s gone).
Lorelai is completely full of it for saying she doesn’t “speak geek”. She is a huge fan of Star Trek herself.
LUKE: I mean, before you knew Patty was gonna put you on The Dating Game, you did pack this disgusting lunch and bring it out here, so who did you want to get it?
The Dating Game, television dating game show which began broadcasting in 1965 and is still on the air. The classic format had a bachelorette who would choose from three bachelors, who were hidden from her view, by asking them questions. The bachelorette and her bachelor would then go on a date together, with expenses paid by the show. The current season, beginning in 2021, is The Celebrity Dating Game.
Miss Patty did find three men for Lorelai to choose from, as she was making a private Dating Game for her.
RORY: On the bridge, that’s where we’re gonna eat? JESS: Yup.
Jess tells Rory that they will be having sharing their picnic on the bridge over the lake, a place in Stars Hollow that he has grown fond of. Later it will become a special place for he and Rory.
The scene of them having a picnic is a homage to the 1958 Southern Gothic comedy-drama film The Long Hot Summer, directed by Martin Ritter. The screenplay is partially based on the 1955 Tennessee William’s play Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and three works of William Faulkner, one of Rory’s favourite authors (she can’t resist Southern Gothic).
In the film, Paul Newman plays Ben Quick, a crude, magnetic young man with a bad reputation for burning down barns who is expelled from his town and forced to go elsewhere. Joanne Woodward plays his love interest, rich girl Clara Varner, who fights their sexual tension all the way, but eventually falls in love with him. It turns out the enigmatic drifter’s bad reputation is undeserved, and he is actually very ambitious.
The Long Hot Summer received excellent reviews from critics, but didn’t do well at the box office. Paul Newman won Best Actor at the Cannes Film Festival for his role as Ben. It’s been turned into a television series twice, once in the 1960s, then again in the 1980s.
This is another film with a bidding war over a picnic basket, which the masterful Ben wins, itself a homage to the auction in Oklahoma! There is a scene of Ben and Clara sharing their picnic near a bridge, similar to Jess and Rory on the bridge. In the scene, the icy Clara begins to thaw out to Ben, and reveal some of her true self. In the same way, this is the first time that Rory really begins to open up to Jess. Bridges are symbols of transition, showing that Rory and Jess are moving into a new stage of their relationship.
There is a strong hint from the film that Jess is not as black as he has been painted, and there is a foreshadowing of his hidden ambitious streak.
Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward fell for each other on set, and married shortly after the film. Alexis Bledel and Milo Ventimiglia also dated in real life while filming Gilmore Girls.
RORY: [follows him] Please don’t walk away like that. DEAN: Sorry, I’d do a silly walk but I’m not feeling very John Cleese right now.
John Cleese (born 1939), British actor, comedian, screenwriter, and comedian. He is most famous for being a founding member of Monty Python, the comedy troupe responsible for the surreal comedy sketch show, Monty Python’s Flying Circus, initially broadcast on BBC1 from 1969 to 1974.
Although Monty Python had little success in the US during their first American tour, Monty Python’s Flying Circus began airing on the PBS station KERA Dallas in 1974; other PBS stations followed and by 1975 it was the most popular show on these stations. It helped open the door for other British comedies in the US. Monty Python’s Flying Circus also aired on MTV in 1988.
Dean is referring to one of Cleese’s most famous sketches, “The Ministry of Silly Walks”, in series 2, episode 1, entitled “Face the Press”. In the sketch, John Cleese plays a civil servant responsible for developing silly walks, and spends the sketch walking in various silly ways in a thoroughly serious and determined manner.
Rory and Dean may have watched a DVD of the original show, or of the 1982 documentary, Monty Python Live at the Hollywood Bowl, where the Monty Python team performed both classic sketches and new material. It was the last time the “Ministry of Silly Walks” sketch was performed in public. John Cleese had a hip and knee replacement in 2010, so that he was unable to perform the silly walks again.
DEAN: You think this is funny. JESS: Well, it’s no Lenny Bruce routine but it has its moments.
Lenny Bruce, born Leonard Schneider (1925-1966), stand-up comedian, social critic, and satirist. He was known for his open, freestyle, and critical comedy, containing satire, politics, religion, sex, and vulgarity. His 1964 conviction in an obscenity trial was followed by a posthumous pardon, the first in New York state.
Lenny Bruce paved the way for counterculture era comedians, and his trial was a landmark for freedom of speech. He is considered one of the greatest American comedians of all time.
It makes perfect sense for bad boy Jess to be a Lenny Bruce fan. Lenny Bruce also appears as a character in Amy Sherman-Palladino’s television show, The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, played by Luke Kirby.
JESS: I don’t know, bet you have a lot of supporters on this. Pat Buchanon, Jerry Falwell, Kathie Lee Gifford.
Patrick “Pat” Buchanan (born 1938), right-wing political commentator, politician and broadcaster. He was an assistant and consultant to Presidents Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, and Ronald Reagan, and one of the original hosts of CNN’s current events program, Crossfire. He has expressed sympathy for Nazi war criminals and support for eugenics, denied the Holocaust, and called for the lynching and horse-whipping of the young men of colour wrongly convicted in the Central Park jogger case. In 1990, he argued the case for music censorship in a debate on Crossfire.
Jerry Falwell Sr (1933-2007) [pictured], Southern Baptist pastor, televangelist, and conservative activist. He was pro-segregation and pro-apartheid, and a supporter of Anita Bryant’s campaign to oppose equal rights for gay people (he denounced Tinky Winky from the Teletubbies as a gay icon). He sued both Penthouse and Hustler magazine in the 1980s for an article and an advertisement that he believed had defamed him or caused him distress; the courts ruled in favour of free speech.
Kathie Lee Gifford (born Kathryn Epstein in 1953), television presenter, singer, songwriter, and author. She is best known for her fifteen-year run as co-host of Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee. She became a born-again Christian at the age of 12, and was a secretary/babysitter to Anita Bryant. I’m not actually aware of any censorship she has advocated for.
RICHARD: I guess you can’t take constructive criticism. LORELAI: Nothing that came out of your mouth today might, in any universe visited by Kirk or Spock, be construed as constructive.
A reference to the original series of Star Trek, previously and frequently mentioned. In the episode “Mirror, Mirror”, Captain Kirk and other members of his crew visited a parallel universe they called the Mirror Universe, where they meet alternate versions of themselves. It is regarded as one of the best episodes of the original series, and the Mirror Universe was explored further in subsequent Star Trek shows.
RORY: No! I don’t want a Rory Curtain, I never asked for a Rory Curtain!
Thanks to Rory’s meddling, Kirk and Taylor have placed nearly all the DVDs behind a red velvet curtain which they have named in honour of Rory. The curtain is highly reminiscent of the red velvet curtain in the mysterious Red Room/Black Lodge in the television show, Twin Peaks, by Amy Sherman-Palladino’s favourite director, David Lynch. Like Twin Peaks, Stars Hollow is a quirky little town with a secret dark side, although it skews much more sweet and wholesome than the twisted Twin Peaks.
Dame Angela Lansbury (born 1925), British-Irish-American actress with a long and prolific career on radio, stage, film, and television. Her first film role was in the 1944 movie Gaslight, previously discussed. She has received an Honorary Academy Award, a Lifetime Achievement BAFTA Award, A Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screenwriters Guild, five Tony Awards, a Laurence Olivier Award, and six Golden Globe Awards.
She is best known for starring as Jessica Fletcher in the television detective series Murder She Wrote (1984-96). Jessica Fletcher was a retired schoolteacher turned detective novelist who was often called upon to solve murders in her spare time. Although reviews were mixed, the show was very popular and rated extremely well, especially with older viewers.
LORELAI: It’s going to be horrible. It is going to be a bad, depressing Lifetime movie and Nancy McKeon will be playing me. I am Jo.
Nancy McKeon (1966) is an actress best known for playing Jo Polniaczek on the sitcom The Facts of Life, a spin-off of Diff’rent Strokes which ran from 1979 to 1988, making it one of the longest-running sitcoms of the 1980s. The show was set at a private girl’s school, and Jo was an extremely intelligent but rebellious tomboy who rode a motorcycle to school and often got into trouble before graduating as class valedictorian. Jo must have been a role model for the ambitious yet wayward young Lorelai (another TV heroine with a motorcycle!).
Nancy McKeon appeared in television movies based on real life stories, as well Afterschool Special episodes with titles like, “Schoolboy Father”, and “Please Don’t Hit Me, Mom”. She starred in the 1989 domestic violence drama, A Cry for Help: The Tracey Thurman Story, and the 1992 kidnapping drama, Baby Snatcher. These are the types of “bad depressing” movies Lorelai probably has in mind.
Nancy McKeon has only ever been in one Lifetime movie, and it aired in 2003, after this episode was broadcast. Called Comfort and Joy, it’s a quirky romantic Christmas film, and not depressing at all.
The Annotated Gilmore Girls 