Title: The Deer Hunters

The title is referring to the 1978 film The Deer Hunter, an epic war drama about Vietnam. It starred Robert DeNiro, Christopher Walken, and Meryl Streep. Luckily, Rory’s encounter with the deer was a little less disturbing than this film.

Summary: The Girls debate school-supply personalities. Rory gets a D… the horror! Lorelai and Max have their meet-cute. Sookie has a “magic” risotto conniption. The Girls sleep at a right-angle all night so chaos ensues. Rory gets hit by a deer (really) and misses her test. Il Duce gives one of his sexist, white-haired soliloquies. All ends well – with a call from Max.

MAX: Take these home, learn from your mistakes. Look at the large red circles around various parts of your paper as friendly reminders that to err is human.

This oft-quoted proverb comes from Alexander Pope’s “Essay on Criticism”, published in 1711. The longer phrase is actually “to err is human, to forgive divine.” Pope was a well-known satirist, who also completed a beautiful and well-known translation of Homer’s Iliad and Odessey – perhaps it was this translation of the Iliad that Paris was rereading for the third in S2E10 or that Rory forgot to return to the library, something Lorelai recalls in S5E22.

DRELLA: Back off Chevalier.

I swear the first time I heard this, I assumed Chevalier was a French fashion designer. But further research tells me that this term in French actually refers to either chivalrous men or knights. Ha! It’s sarcastic, classic Drella. She’s berating him for not helping her with her harp while calling him chivalrous. Chevalier is also a somewhat-popular surname in France and could refer to numerous novelists, pianists, or motorcycle racers. But my money is on the sarcastic insult.

LORELAI: No Black Sabbath, no Steely Dan, no Boston and no Queen. DRELLA: What happened to make you so cold? LORELAI: We like that Mozart. DRELLA: I am the Artie Shaw of harpists.

Phewwwww this is a long one, buckle up.

Black Sabbath was a British rock band, probably best known for their singer Ozzy Osborne. Yes, before he was the bleeping dad on The Osbournes, Ozzy was known as the Prince of Darkness and the Godfather of Heavy Metal.  Black Sabbath (Tony Iommi, Geezer Butler, Bill Ward, and Ozzy) are often revered as the pioneers of heavy metal music. They’ve sold 70 million records worldwide and changed music history forever. I’m sure Lane has an album or two, just in the name of music history. And Lorelai even reads a rock memoir (S2E18) which includes a story of Ozzy snorting a line of ants – surprisingly not the grossest thing in that book. And no one needs to bring up the bat incident right? I just got rabies from that mental image, shudder. The details of rock/metal history may be disgusting but you can’t help agreeing they looked cool.

Steely Dan – for those of you into white guys playing jazz, or “yacht rock” as they call it, with their melodicas. Yep, that’s a real instrument.  Luke even uses the prospect of ending up a 30-year-old high school senior who listens to Steely Dan as a threat to keep Jess in school (S2E19). Not a good outlook. But Steely Dan was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2001, and VHI named them then #82 of 100 best musical artists of ALL TIME! Steely Dan pops up again in the Year in the Life episodes when Luke has planned a Steely Dan flashmob for their wedding. I think we have a closet fan here guys!

Boston – I always get them confused with Chicago. Boston is a rock band from (shocker!) Boston, Mass who were popular during the 70s and 80s and remain a mainstay on classic rock playlists. Their most well-known song is “More Than A Feeling”, which you may have heard during Mike Huckabee’s unsuccessful 2008 presidential primary campaign. He even got a cease and desist letter from the band, citing irreparable damages for being connected to the Republican while being Obama supporters themselves. Surprisingly they are still touring and releasing music even though they are mostly in their 60s. Rock on guys, but not too loud.

Queen on the harp would be so badass, why would you deny her Lorelai? Queen was a British rock band led by the incomparable Freddie Mercury with bandmates Brian May, Roger Taylor, and John Deacon. They gave us such anthems as Bohemian Rhapsody, We Are The Champions, We Will Rock You, and Another One Bites The Dust. Freddie Mercury contracted HIV and died of complications from AIDS in 1991. Though Mercury could never be replaced, May and Taylor have continued to perform under the Queen name, which personally bugs me. And for a Gilmore Girls tie-in, there is an upcoming Freddie Mercury biopic which stars Rami Malek as the man himself. Rami had a small role in Season 4 Episode 11 as Lane’s awkward Seventh Day Adventist college friend.

Not sure why she is picking on poor Artie Shaw here. She makes it seem like he was some mechanical monkey, playing whatever garbage people wanted to here, playing to the lowest common denominator. But from what I have read about him Artie was a celebrated jazz clarinet player, as well as a composer and bandleader. He led one of the most popular big bands of the 30s and 40s, and their recording of Cole Porter’s “Begin the Beguine” was one of the era’s defining musical moments. But he was a self-described difficult person, married 8 times including to actresses Ava Gardner and Lana Turner.

LORELAI:  Fresh in my first lifetime as Joan of Arc.

You must know the story of Joan of Arc, right? She is a Roman Catholic Saint and a heroine of France for her role in the Hundred Years War. She believed that God was speaking to her, asking her to lead the French Army in battle against the British. She had no military training (being a teenage girl and all) but she somehow convinced the crown prince of France to let her lead a legion of the French Army to the city of Orleans. They had a miraculous victory but soon Joan was captured by the English. They eventually burned her at the stake for witchcraft and heresy at the age of 19, likely because she claimed to hear the voice of God. And she was a badass woman military leader. So they probably had a problem with that. She became a national hero of France and was officially canonized (awarded her sainthood) in 1920.

MAX: So are you a B-52s girl?

She says no here, but she really is a B-52s girl. This is one of the Girls’ more frequent references. The B-52s are an American new wave band that gave us such gems as “Love Shack” and “Roam” (referenced by Marty in S5E9). Their name actually comes from a certain type of beehive hairstyle that resembles an aircraft of the same name. They still tour occasionally, so you too can be a B-52s girl someday!

LORELAI: Oh, honey, you once told me that you loved ‘Saved by the Bell’. What could be more humiliating than that?

Should I be embarrassed? I have also regularly proclaimed my love for Saved by the Bell. I mean, what 80s/90s girl didn’t have a Zack Morris crush? For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure of hanging with the kids from Bayside – Saved by the Bell was a TV show that aired from 1989 to 1993, and also launched two spin-off series and two movies. The show followed a crew of high school friends – Zack, Slater, Kelly, Lisa, Jessie, and Skreech – as they navigated growing up. Like most feel-good sitcoms of the day, they dealt with heavy topics like homelessness, women’s rights, environmental issues, divorce, and who could forget the caffeine pill episode? “I’m sooo excited, I’m sooo excited, I’m…soo…scarreddd!!!”

I highly recommend checking out an episode or two, if only to laugh at the huge cell phones and totally 90s outfits. But the show does have a lot of rightful critics for how awful Zack is to women or anyone for that matter, for how uninclusive the show was, and for how backward some of the storylines were. It even inspired a web series by Funny or Die, highlighting all of the awful things Zack did, including “The Time Zack Morris Used Subliminal Messages to Brainwash Girls into Sex” or “The Time Zack Morris Used Slave Labor to Sell Friendship Bracelets.” But still, it has to be up for reboot soon right??

DRELLA: Hey what do you think about Pat Benatar?

The Queen of Pop Music, a modern feminist rockstar who has been inspiring future female musicians for generations now. Pat Benatar gave us such hits as “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and “Love is a Battle Field”. She was born Patricia Mae Andrzejewski on January 10, 1953 in Brooklyn, New York. She has been singing since she was a little girl and always knew she wanted to be a singer. After seeing Liza Minelli live at the age of 17, she dropped out of high school and put her full effort into making music. And you could say she succeeded. She’s won four Grammys, has a best-selling memoir and has two multi-platinum albums, five platinum albums, three gold albums, and 15 Billboard Top 40 singles.

LORELAI: Wouldn’t want you to get in trouble with ‘Il duce’ here.

Duce is an Italian royalty title roughly translating to Duke. But Il Duce was the nickname adopted by everyone’s 3rd least favorite WWII fascist dictator – Benito Mussolini. He was officially removed from his position of Duce in 1943 by the King after kinddddd of overstepping his boundaries… Il Duce tried to make his own position after that as “Duce of the Italian Social Republic” but that collapsed pretty quickly. And after his death in 1945, the position was never used again. Except for in the Gilmore household for specific sexist, whitehaired headmasters. The Girls must hold some special affinity for Mussolini because he resurfaces again in Season 2 Episode 3 when his quote “We have buried the putrid corpse of liberty!” is featured on Lorelai and Max’s ill-fated wedding program.

LORELAI: And now I guess this goes on the ‘Boy was I wrong’ list, right above gauchos but just below the ‘Flashdance’ phase.

This would have been right up my alley if I would have been born 10 years earlier. Flashdance was a 1983 musical/romance film about an aspiring dancer who daylights as a steel welder, on a journey to achieve her dreams. It influenced other dance films of the 80s like Footloose, Purple Rain, and Top Gun. The film is most remembered for Jennifer Beals’ iconic loose neck sweatshirt that she wore for the promo poster. Beals actually said that the sweatshirt thing was an accident – she had shrunk it in the dryer and cut a hole in the neck to get it over her head. Think of how many poor sweatshirts have been cut up over the years from a simple accident?!

Flashdance comes up in other Gilmore episodes, including when Lorelai brings over the new classic dance series on DVD for Emily – Urban Cowboy, Saturday Night Fever, Grease, Footloose, and Flashdance, saying “Trust me, you’re gonna be cutting up your sweatshirts all weekend.” S3E13