“Me and Morrie”

EMILY: So are we having a nice chat?
LORELAI: Yeah, we’re having a great conversation, me and Morrie.

Lorelai is referring to the best-selling 1997 memoir Tuesdays With Morrie by Mitch Albom. The memoir describes how Albom, a sports journalist in Detroit, reconnected with his terminally ill sociology professor from Brandeis University, Morrie Schwartz. Meeting at Morrie’s house in Boston each Tuesday, Morrie is able to keep teaching Mitch valuable lessons about living and dying.

On the Best Seller List for 205 weeks, Tuesdays with Morrie is one of the best-selling memoirs of all time, and was made into a highly-praised television movie in 1999 with Hank Azaria and Jack Lemmon as Mitch and Morrie. In the next season, Lorelai seems to indicate that she was thinking of the book though.

Lorelai humorously contrasts her awkward silence with her father with the meaningful conversations shared by Mitch and Morrie. It’s obviously even harder for Lorelai and Richard to communicate after their argument the previous week.

Miss September and Johnny Depp

LORELAI: And he’s staring at her like she’s Miss September, and she’s looking at him like he’s Johnny Depp, and I was just babbling like a moron. What is wrong with me?!

American men’s magazine Playboy features a nude or semi-nude centrefold model as their Playmate of the Month, with each one known as Miss January, Miss February, and so on.

John “Johnny” Depp II (born 1963) is an American actor, producer, and musician. He rose to prominence in the police show 21 Jump Street, airing from 1987 to 1991, where he became a popular teen idol. Depp played the title role in the dark fantasy Edward Scissorhands (1990), which established him as a major film star, and gained critical praise for his performances in films such as What’s Eating Gilbert Grape (1993), Ed Wood (1994), and Donnie Brasco ( 1997). He is regarded as one of the biggest stars in Hollywood.

Iron Chef

RORY: You can make soup.
LORELAI: No. I wanna really cook like on the Food Channel. I wanna sauté thing and chop things and do the BAM, and I wanna arrange things on a plate so they look like a pretty little hat. I wanna be the Iron Chef!

Iron Chef is a Japanese television cooking show which is a head-to-head contest between one of the show’s cooking masters, the titular Iron Chefs, and a challenger who is a professional chef. The timed cooking battle always requires use of a specific themed ingredient, such as eel, tofu, or asparagus, made into a multi-course meal with several dishes all using the theme ingredients in different ways.

Successful in Japan since 1993, the show became a surprise cult hit in the US after it was shown on the Food Network in 1999 and dubbed in English. American audiences were amused by the (to them) exotic flavour combinations on the show, while the dubbing gave it camp appeal.

This episode provides a rare example of Lorelai actually wanting to cook, apparently inspired by the shows she has been watching on the Food Network, a cable TV station devoted to cooking. It seems that her sudden urge for domesticity is caused by her heartbroken depression – and maybe missing Max’s cooking. Lorelai may be able to do some basic home cooking, as Rory says she can make soup, but I suspect that for the Gilmore girls, “making soup” means opening a tin of condensed soup and mixing in the water or milk before heating it on the stove.

“Relocated to a plastic bubble”

DEAN: Well, what if it’s for a really special occasion?
RORY: Well, that special occasion better include my being relocated to a plastic bubble if my grandmother’s gonna let me out of dinner.

Rory is referring to the disease severe combined immunodeficiency, a rare genetic disorder where the sufferer remains extremely vulnerable to infectious disease due to having an immune system so compromised it is effectively absent. It is sometimes called “bubble boy disease”, because high-profile patients became known for living in sterile environments.

The disease became well known after the 1976 television film The Boy in the Plastic Bubble, directed by Randal Kleiser, and with John Travolta in the title role. The film was inspired by the real-life cases of David Vetter (1971-1984) and Ted DeVita (1962-1980); DeVita actually had severe aplastic anemia, which is able to be better treated now.

Although the movie wasn’t shown on television during Rory’s childhood, bootleg copies were widely available on video, and Lorelai may have obtained one.

Tony Randall

CHRISTOPHER: Rory might be my only child.
LORELAI: That’s not true. If Tony Randall can crank one out in his seventies you have decades left to spawn.

Tony Randall, born Aryeh Rosenberg (1920-2004) was an American actor, director, and producer. He is best known for playing the role of Felix Unger in the television sitcom The Odd Couple, earlier discussed.

In 1995 Randall, then a widower aged 75, married Heather Harlan, a 25-year-old who had worked as an intern on one of his theatre productions. The couple had a daughter and son named Julia and Jefferson, so he actually fathered two children in his seventies. Tony and Heather Randall remained married until his death.

Christopher is being overly dramatic when he says he may have lost the chance to father more children, as he’s only in his early thirties. In fact he does go on to have another daughter in a future season.

“Hello, pyjamas”

When Christopher says that Lorelai’s reference to Fred Mertz from I Love Lucy was a weird one in that context, she replies, “Hello, pyjamas”, and gestures down at the pyjamas she is wearing.

It may not be immediately obvious to the viewer that Lorelai is wearing pyjamas with an I Love Lucy pattern on them, explaining not only that the show was on her mind, but that she truly loves the show and knows a lot about it.

The pyjamas are inspired by the famous Job Switching episode of I Love Lucy, which aired September 1952. In the episode, Lucy and Ethel get jobs at a candy factory while their husbands have to do the housework for a week. There is a classic scene where Lucy and Ethel try to wrap chocolates as they come off the conveyer belt, with disastrous results. It is this which Lorelai’s pyjamas commemorate.

You can buy a pair of these pyjamas from The Lucy Store, and elsewhere, for about $50.

Fred Mertz

LORELAI: My father almost hit someone. My father has probably only hit another man in college wearing boxing gloves and one of those Fred Mertz Golden Gloves pullover sweaters.
CHRISTOPHER: Fred Mertz?
LORELAI: I Love Lucy – Fred Mertz.
CHRISTOPHER: Landlord to Ricky, husband to Ethel, I know. It’s just a weird reference.

Lorelai and Christopher pretty much annotate this one themselves. On the 1950s sitcom I Love Lucy, previously and frequently mentioned, Fred Mertz (William Frawley) was Ethel’s (Vivian Vance’s) husband, and the landlord of Ricky and Lucy Ricardo in New York. After the Ricardos moved to Connecticut to start chicken farming, Fred and Ethel followed them, and the Ricardos ended up being the Mertz’s landlords.

In his heyday, Fred was a boxing champion, and in the episode Changing the Boys’ Wardrobe (December 1953) he can be seen wearing a sweater which says GOLDEN GLOVES 1909. In fact the first Golden Gloves amateur boxing championship took place in 1923 in Chicago, after which the name was applied to any number of amateur boxing contests.

Cone of Silence

CHRISTOPHER: Next time we get this group together we’re gonna have to frisk for weapons.
LORELAI: Hand out gags.
CHRISTOPHER: Employ six individual cones of silence.

Christopher is referencing the comedy television series Get Smart, which was created by Mel Brooks as a satire on the spy genre. Maxwell Smart (Don Adams) is a bumbling yet successful secret agent, ably assisted by the beautiful Agent 99 (Barbara Feldon); they work for government agency CONTROL headed by The Chief (Edward Platt). The show ran from 1965-1970, but was in re-runs for many years, including on Nick at Nite.

A running gag on the show was the Cone of Silence – two clear plastic hemispheres which were lowered over Max and the Chief’s heads as a security protocol. They were supposed to render their conversations completely silent to onlookers, but constantly malfunctioned so that they usually ended up shouting loudly at each other while outsiders could hear better that they, and not infrequently had to explain to both what the other was saying.

In common parlance, to say a conversation needs a cone of silence means that it has to remain secret (even though the real cone of silence did anything but).

Lorelai and Christopher’s Childhood Duet

CHRISTOPHER: Lucy, Schroeder, you laying on the coffee table.
LORELAI: You pretending it was a piano. God, why is that remembered?
EMILY: Because it was such a wonderful production.
LORELAI: I don’t know if it was a production, Mom. It was just one song.
CHRISTOPHER: Suppertime.
RICHARD: Did you write that? That was really very good.
LORELAI: Dad, that’s from You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown. It’s a famous musical.

At the age of ten (around 1978), Lorelai and Christopher sang a song for at least Richard and Emily, and possibly Christopher’s parents as well.

The song was Suppertime, from the 1967 musical comedy You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown by Clark Gesner, based on the characters from the Peanuts comic strip drawn by Charles M. Schulz. The show premiered off-Broadway in 1967, went to London’s West End in 1968, and opened on Broadway in 1971. It had a Broadway revival in 1999.

The show was adapted for television in 1973, when Lorelai and Christopher were about five. This might be where they knew of the musical from, although it’s a favourite for amateurs to perform, and they might have seen a local production, or even been in a school production. The musical was adapted for TV again in 1985.

Suppertime is a song sung by the dog Snoopy, about his excitement in being fed after waiting hopelessly for the food to arrive. It’s a strange song to choose as a duet, because Snoopy sings almost the entire song, with only a few interjections from Charlie Brown. I presume Lorelai sung Snoopy’s part, and Christopher sung Charlie Brown’s – it seems like her to hog the limelight, and like him to do only minimal work. Possibly they chose that song because they were performing it just before dinner was served.

Lorelai and Christopher recall playing the roles of Lucy and Schroeder, in the iconic pose of Lucy lying on the piano while Schroeder plays it. It isn’t clear how this fitted in with the song by Snoopy. In the musical, Lucy and Schroeder have a scene together where he plays Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata on the piano while Lucy expresses her love for him and asks about marriage, while Schroeder remains detached. This is ironic considering what comes later.

Christopher’s Alleged Doppelgangers

JACKSON: Boy I gotta tell you, did they get your description wrong.
CHRISTOPHER: Really?
JACKSON: Oh yeah, much more George Clooney than Brad Pitt. Hey Andrew.
ANDREW: Yup.
JACKSON: Don’t you think he’s much more George Clooney than Brad Pitt?
ANDREW: I’m going with the Billy Crudup comparison myself.

George Clooney (born 1961) is an American award-winning actor, director, producer, screenwriter, activist, businessman, and philanthropist. He made his television debut in 1978, and found fame on the medical drama ER from 1994 to 1999. During this time he took major roles in films such as Batman and Robin (1997) and Out of Sight (1998). In 1999 he had the lead role in Three Kings, a satire about the Gulf War. Clooney is generally seen as one of the handsomest men in Hollywood.

Brad Pitt (born William Bradley Pitt in 1963) is a multi award-winning actor and producer. He first gained recognition as a cowboy hitchhiker in Thelma & Louise (1991), and had leading roles in A River Runs Through It (1992), Legends of the Fall (1994), and Interview with the Vampire (1994). He received critical acclaim for Seven (1995), and Twelve Monkeys (1995), and starred in the cult film Fight Club (1999). At the peak of his career, he was seen as one of the sexiest men in Hollywood.

William “Billy” Crudup (born 1968) [pictured] is an American actor with extensive experience on the stage, mostly on Broadway. He has had supporting roles in films such as Sleepers (1996), and Almost Famous (2000). He gained financial success narrating the “Priceless” campaign for MasterCard from 1998 to 2005. Unless it’s cut very short or slicked back, Crudup has wavy hair, which may have reminded Andrew of Christopher’s locks; he’s also from a similar upper-middle class background to Christopher, who is identified as looking as if he comes from “money”.

Which of these actors Christopher most looks like is a matter of opinion. To me he doesn’t strongly resemble any of them, but presume that the Stars Hollow townsfolk are referring to different types of masculine good looks – handsome sophisticate, sexy charmer, or preppy hipster. Christopher apparently has elements of all these in his appearance.