Tag: Vehicles

LoJack

RORY: Louise, what’s your idea?

LOUISE: A lipstick LoJack.

LoJack is a recovery system for stolen cars that uses GPS to locate vehicles, notifying police of its location and allowing recovery in less than half an hour. The LoJack system was created and patented in 1979 by William Reagan, a former police commissioner. Its name is meant to be the opposite of hijack.

Although we haven’t developed a LoJack system for lipsticks, there are now similar systems in place to find computers, laptops, and phones, and even lost car keys can give off a sound to alert the owner to their position, so Louise’s idea was ahead of its time.

Richard’s Antique Car

The car that Richard has bought to work on is a 1929 Packard Deluxe Eight Dual Cowl Sport Phaeton (type 640), a convertible sedan in a deep dark red colour. The Series Eight sedan was Packard’s best-selling model for many years, making Packard the best-selling luxury car maker, selling twice as many cars overseas as any other in its high price range; it was the number one designer and manufacturer of luxury vehicles from the turn of the twentieth century until World War II. Note the “Flying Goddess” hood ornament, this style used on Packard cars in the mid to late 1920s is considered a rare find in itself.

A classic car of this type would have cost at least $100 000 in 2002 (today it could go for $250 000), so Richard has bought himself a very expensive little hobby – which he will very soon tire of.

Emilyland

SOOKIE: Emilyland?

LORELAI: It’s an upside down world where the Horchow House is considered low-rent and diamonds less than twenty-four carats are Cracker Jack trinkets and Bentleys are for losers who can’t afford a Rolls.

Horchow House

I think Lorelai is referring to The Horchow Collection, a mail order business for luxury goods started in 1971 by Broadway producer Samuel Horchow.

Cracker Jack

A brand of caramel-coasted popcorn and peanuts, well known for containing a mystery item, a toy novelty item of low value. The first lot of Cracker Jack was sold in 1896. A 24-carat diamond is the highest quality there is.

Bentley

A British manufacturer of luxury cars, founded in London in 1919, and a subsidiary of Volkswagen since 1998.

Rolls

Referring to Rolls-Royce, a British luxury car business established in 1904 in Manchester through a partnership with Charles Rolls and Henry Royce. It changed a number of times, and in 1998 was bought by Volkswagen. The Rolls-Royce trademark was bought by BMW in 2003, and has no direction connection with the original company.

Two Fat Ladies

LORELAI: There’s always something on. Uh! Struck gold!
RORY: Not Two Fat Ladies again.
LORELAI: Why not? They’re brilliant.

Two Fat Ladies, British cooking show originally broadcast on BBC2 from 1996 to 1999. The show centred on the titular ladies, Clarissa Dickson Wright and Jennifer Paterson, travelling around the UK on a Triumph Thunderbird motorcycle – registration N88 TFL (88 is “two fat ladies” in bingo calling, the origin of the show’s name) – and a Watsonian Jubilee GP-700 “doublewide” sidecar. Paterson was the one driving the motorcycle, with Dickson Wright in the sidecar.

Two Fat Ladies was frequently repeated in the US on the Food Network, and the Cooking Channel. The show came to an end, because as Lorelai notes, one of them passed away. This was Jennifer Paterson, who died of lung cancer in 1999, one month after diagnosis. Clarissa Dickson Wright died in 2014, from pneumonia.

Rory, who is apparently tired of watching all of the repeats of the show pleads, “Can’t we find some other really fat people to watch?”, to which Lorelai responds, “Wow, that sounded a little insensitive” (really, Lorelai? But you’ve got the sweetest kid in the world!).

Fat jokes? Insensitive comments? Without even looking, I knew this episode must have been written by Daniel Palladino.

Jag

RICHARD: And drive behind me. I don’t want that thing blowing up right in front of the Jag.
DEAN: No problem. Try to keep your electrical system working long enough to get there.

Jag is short for Jaguar, a luxury British vehicle company headquartered in Coventry, originally founded in 1922 as the Swallow Sidecar Company. The current name was chosen in 1945. It holds royal warrants from Queen Elizabeth II and Prince Charles, and has manufactured cars for the British Prime Minister.

There isn’t a good shot of Richard’s Jaguar, it’s behind Rory’s car. I have been informed by a trustworthy source that the car appears to be a Jaguar XJ6 sedan, possibly a 1974 model, based on its hood ornament, chrome bumper bar and paint colour. That’s a classic car known for its performance and superb handling.

Dean mocks it for being unreliable, probably because the 1970s XJ6 sold to the US market is notoriously difficult and expensive to restore and maintain, due to its complexity and numerous issues with the electrics. However, Richard is later shown to be very interested in old cars and has a lot of money (and a chauffeur … hey, whatever happened to Lance, anyway?), so he would be well positioned to take care of an old Jag properly.

You can see Richard is being slightly hypocritical about Rory’s car, since his own vehicle is old, and probably has more safety and reliability issues than the one that Dean has rebuilt.

A Plane That Looks Like Shamu

LORELAI: Dean, now that you’re done with that, will you build me a plane? One that looks like Shamu?

Shamu is the name given to various killer whales (orcas) at Seaworld parks. The first Shamu was captured in 1965 and died in 1971. Her name means “friend of Namu” – Namu was a male orca captured in 1965, named after a fishing port in British Columbia, Canada, close to his site of capture. The whales named Shamu were always the “star” of the killer whale show.

In 1988, Southwest Airlines designed a plane called Shamu One, a Boeing 737 painted to look like a killer whale, to promote travel to Seaworld in Texas.

Southwest Airlines ended their relationship with Seaworld in 2014, after the release of the 2013 documentary Black Fish focused on the mistreatment of orcas in captivity. In 2016, Seaworld discontinued its orca breeding program.

Rory’s Car

DEAN: Your car.
RORY: No!
DEAN: Finished it yesterday.

The car that Dean rebuilds and gives to Rory is a pale blue 1961 Dodge Lancer sedan. A rebuilt Dodge Lancer would cost around $10 000 today, so it’s a significant gift, quite apart from all the work he’s put into it.

We now discover that even though they broke up on the night he told Rory he was giving her a car, Dean has continued to work on it. It seems that Rory and Lorelai have been kept informed about his progress, because they seem excited, but not surprised about it, and Lorelai seems to have already given permission for it to go ahead.

Richard’s unease with Dean giving Rory the car is probably not only the safety issue (and no car from 1961 is going to be as safe as a modern one), but because it is inappropriate as a gift from a teenage boyfriend that Rory has only been seeing for about a year (and was broken up with for three months). He may have handled it badly, but Richard has a point.

The day with Richard now becomes an unmitigated disaster, and it’s all thanks to Dean. He just shows up with the car, rather than call ahead and make sure that it’s alright. He also ignores the fact that when he arrives, Richard’s car is out the front, so he knows that they have a guest, and can probably guess who it is. Does Dean actually deliver the car that night on purpose, as a way to show Richard that he isn’t a useless waste of space, and to rub it in how special he is to Rory and Lorelai?

It’s a real slap in the face to Richard and Emily, who wanted to buy Rory a new car, but were not given permission to do so by Lorelai. It must hurt Richard that she instead gave permission for an unsafe old car, built by a teenage boy, and this no doubt informs a lot of his behaviour.