“Silly rabbit”

RORY: When is dinner ready?
LORELAI: Do I look like a timer?
RORY: I thought you might have set one.
LORELAI: Silly rabbit.
RORY: Timers are for kids.

Lorelai and Rory are referring to the advertising campaign for Trix – a corn-based, very sugary, artificially coloured and flavoured breakfast cereal manufactured by General Mills, and first brought out in 1954. The highly popular marketing campaign began in 1955, and shows a cartoon rabbit who tries to trick children into giving him their cereal. The tagline is, “Silly rabbit – Trix are for kids!”.

Whether the breakfast cereal had anything to do with Richard Gilmore’s pet name for his mother is unknown, but he would have been ten or eleven when the cereal came out, and part of the company’s target demographic.

Lane’s Korean Name

Lane tells Rory her “Korean name” – it is unclear whether this is her legal name, and Lane is a name to be used among English-speakers, or whether Lane is her legal name, and her Korean name is a middle name given to help preserve her culture, and to be used when she is among people of Korean heritage. I suspect the latter.

The teletext says that Lane’s Korean name is Hyung-Hyung, which is highly improbable. Hyung is not a Korean name, but a title of respect given to address a male, literally meaning “older brother”. The Kims would have been completely nutty to choose that as Lane’s Korean name, and if done deliberately, must be a joke by the scriptwriter (Amy Sherman-Palladino).

It is possible that Lane actually says her Korean name is Hyun-Kyung, which can be translated as “virtuous respect”. It’s a reasonably common Korean name for girls, and there are several famous women with the name.

(Lane seems to have bought two lava lamps from Andrew’s bookstore, Stars Hollow Books).

“A study on rats”

MICHEL: I am weighing my turkey.
SOOKIE: Why?
MICHEL: A group of scientists did a study on rats where they cut their daily calories by thirty percent.
SOOKIE: And you felt left out?
MICHEL: No, the rats lived thirty percent longer. And the scientists were so impressed that they cut their own calories just like the rats.

Michel is referring to a famous and oft-cited 1934 study, which found that when scientists cut the calories of mice by 30-40% but still gave them all the nutrients they needed, they lived longer than expected – sometimes twice as long as the expected lifespan.

It has been difficult to prove conclusively that this works on humans also, and sometimes it doesn’t even work on mice – the mice have to be young and well-fed to begin with for the calorie reduction to be of any use. Older and leaner mice died earlier than expected when on a calorie-restricted diet (which doesn’t seem like good news for Michel, who isn’t all that young, and already slim). Furthermore, mice on a calorie-restricted diet can find it harder to fight infections.

Since 1997, The Calorie Restriction Society has been collecting data on its 900 human members who are on calorie-restricted diets, but it may be decades before a definitive answer is reached. However, a 2012 study on monkeys found no difference in lifespan between subjects who ate a normal healthy diet and those who ate a calorie-restricted healthy diet.

It’s notable that Michel is eating turkey, since in the Pilot episode he said he didn’t eat meat. Possibly that was a dietary fad, or perhaps he only considers red meat to be “meat”.

“Yo prefiero tener los huevos suave”

SOOKIE: Carlito, we’re running out of clarified butter. Ooh, chop that finer. No hard boiling. Yo prefiero tener los huevos suave. Ooh, that looks good. Add a little pinch of oregano, I think we’ve got it.

As Sookie gives instructions to her assistant Carlito, she partly speaks in Spanish. Her one sentence in Spanish can be translated as “I’d prefer the eggs to be soft” – I think she means the eggs to be poached or perhaps soft-boiled, but you can’t actually see what Carlito is doing.

I’m not completely sure, but as Sookie receives her lobster order just after this, it’s possible she is planning to make a variation on Lobster Benedict, where you serve lobster with poached eggs and a hollandaise sauce. Another possibility would be lobster salad with soft boiled eggs – or possibly the eggs and lobsters are for two separate dishes.

Lorelai and Max Get Engaged

At her parents’ house, after spending some time restlessly examining her empty ring finger, Lorelai phones Max in a panic. After her conversation with Luke, she begins demanding of Max where they will live, tells him that she wants to keep working, and doesn’t want to change banks. It turns out Max hasn’t thought about these issues either, but figures that if Lorelai is asking about details like which bank they will use and where they will keep their shopping coupons, she is saying yes.

We never get to see how, or even if, Lorelai accepted Max’s proposal. He seems to assume that she is saying yes, but just wants to iron out a few details. We see Lorelai’s face when she realises what Max is saying, and she looks sad and anxious rather than joyful. We never see the rest of their conversation – the next thing is Lorelai coming in, smiling at Rory, and them screaming and hugging.

Did Max and Lorelai get everything sorted out, and did Lorelai truly say yes, or has Lorelai allowed herself to be railroaded into marriage because it’s what Max and Rory want? It’s dubious whether Lorelai would have agreed to the engagement if she saw Max face to face rather than talked to him over the phone.

It’s ironic that Luke’s insistent questioning of Lorelai about her future marriage with Max, designed to put her off the idea or make her think twice, actually had the effect of pushing her into an engagement with Max. He has been well and truly punished for his poor behaviour.

The Troubadour at the Town Meeting

TROUBADOUR: I’ve been the town troubadour for six months now, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job and then, he shows up (points to other troubadour).
RIVAL TROUBADOUR: Hey.
TROUBADOUR: And there’s no room for a second troubadour in Stars Hollow.

Even though we’ve only seen the Town Troubadour since That Damn Donna Reed, which took place in February, he’s actually been in town since early November at least. We learn that the Troubadour is a real man of mystery, as we don’t know how he supports himself. He doesn’t play music in the streets for money, even refusing it when offered.

Nor do we know where he lives: he is never shown shopping or eating at the diner, and nobody seems to know anything about him, so he isn’t a regular part of the town. On the other hand, we never see him driving, cycling, catching a bus, or even walking home, so we don’t know where he goes when he finishes playing music in Stars Hollow. This is all part of the “mystique” that he believes troubadours are meant to have.

Is he even human? Is he an angel, or a spirit from the stars, sent to bring music to Stars Hollow? Is he from another dimension, or the real Grant Lee Phillips able to project himself somehow into the Gilmore Girls universe? These questions will never be answered.

His role seems to be to guide people’s lives through song, and to help them learn to express emotions – all part of Stars Hollow being a place where love can be nurtured and developed. Later in the scene, Rory stands up and says that the Troubadour is able to express how the townspeople feel through his songs, and to say what they are thinking. This certainly seems to be case in this episode.

(Interestingly, the Troubadour only seems to have come to Stars Hollow when Rory had begun dating Dean, and Lorelai had begun dating Max. Did their love affairs attract him to the town, as if they now needed his emotional guidance?)

Stretch Cunningham and Dick Tracy

LORELAI: Hey, who was the guy who used to run the auto body shop?
(We pan up to see Luke lying on the roof with a hammer.)
LUKE: The Stretch Cunningham guy?
LORELAI: No, the Dick Tracy guy.

Jerome “Stretch” Cunningham was a recurring character on the 1970s sitcom All in the Family, played by James Cromwell. Stretch was a friend and co-worker of main character Archie Bunker. (Both Sally Struthers, who played Babette, and Liz Torres, who played Miss Patty, were also in All in the Family; possibly why it was referenced several times on Gilmore Girls).

Dick Tracy is a fictional police detective who first appeared in the Dick Tracy comic strips created by Chester Gould in 1931. The Dick Tracy stories have been adapted into radio serials, comic books, novels, and films – most recently in 1990, with Warren Beatty in the title role.

There is a real mystery as to what the barely-remembered auto mechanic actually looked like. Lorelai first says he is tall and skinny, then corrects herself to say he was short and fat, and that the tall, skinny guy was actually his employee. Then she decides that he looked like Dick Tracy, who isn’t short and fat. Did the auto mechanic (who we learn was named Jim Dunning) look like a short, stocky version of Dick Tracy?

“Six-thirty in the morning!”

LORELAI: What are you doing?
LUKE: Fixing your porch rail.
LORELAI: That’s right. You are. You’re fixing my porch rail … at six-thirty in the morning!
LUKE: It was the only time I could do it.

The diner opens at 6 am, so what is Luke doing at Lorelai’s at 6.30? Has he just left Rachel and the rest of the staff to cook and run the diner while he wanders off to do handyman work for Lorelai? Or does the diner open later on Sundays?

“Dear God Almighty”

The episode begins with Lorelai asleep in bed, only to be suddenly awoken by a loud banging noise. She cries out something that sounds like, “Dear God Almighty, Mister Mirkel!”. Closed captioning suggests that Lorelai says, “Dear God Almighty Mr. Mirkle”, which is of little help.

It is possible that Lorelai actually says, “Dear God Almighty, Mr. Miracle“, and the last word comes out in a hurried screech because she has been startled awake.

If so, this could be a reference to the comic book superhero Mr. Miracle, who appears in DC Comics. First appearing in 1971, he was created by Jack Kirby. It doesn’t seem unbelievable, as Lorelai has made several references to comic book characters – particularly DC ones, such as Superman and Wonder Woman. DC is owned by Warner Bros., who made Gilmore Girls.

Interestingly, Mr. Miracle is a member of a fictional race called The New Gods, and is the son of the Highfather, the chief of the gods. It’s possible that Lorelai is using his name as a euphemism for Jesus Christ, and giving it her own geeky spin.

Prince

LORELAI: I sat her [Emily] down to listen to a Prince song once, and she looked like she was having a stroke.

Prince, born Prince Nelson (1958-2016) was an American singer, songwriter, and musician, previously mentioned. His first album, For You, was released in 1978, and his breakthrough was the 1982 double album, 1999, with hit singles such as his signature song 1999, and Little Red Corvette. His most successful album is the 1984 Purple Rain, the soundtrack to the musical film of the same name. When Doves Cry, the first single from the album, became his first #1 hit.

It is unclear which of Prince’s songs the teenaged Lorelai might have played for Emily, but it’s most likely one from 1999, which came out when Lorelai was fourteen (it was possibly the title track). By the time Purple Rain was released in late June 1984, Lorelai would have been six months pregnant, and probably past the point of trying to bond with Emily over pop music.

The incident is one based on Amy Sherman-Palladino’s own life – her mother was likewise horrified when Amy played a Prince song for her.