Title: Rory’s Dance

Another expositional title. Rory has a dance at school and she invites her maybe-boyfriend Dean.

Summary:  Emily reads her Chilton Newsletter, Lorelai does not. Rory takes Dean to the dance, much to Tristan’s dismay. Paris brings her cousin. Madeline’s mom can make soup. Louise discovers Dean is 6’1″. Lorelai throws out her back and Emily makes her mushed banana on toast. Rory and Dean sleep on Miss Patty’s yoga mats. Lorelai and Emily freak.

RORY: Did you know the cell that Václav Havel was held in is now a hostel? You can stay there for like $50 a night.

Vaclav Havel was a Czech writer and dissident, who served as the last President of Czechoslovakia and the first President of the Czech Republic. He helped lead the Velvet Revolution in Prague that toppled the communist regime, named the Velvet Revolution because of the relatively peaceful transition of power. Havel also helped dismantle the Warsaw Pact. He received many awards for his part in the fall of communism, including the Gandhi Peace Award, and generally fought for democracy, peaceful activism, humanitarianism, and the environment.

LORELAI: Absolutely. And then we can go to Turkey and stay in that place from Midnight Express.

A 1977 non-fiction book by Billy Hayes and adapted for the screen by Oliver Stone (Scarface, Platoon, Wall Street, W.), Midnight Express is about a young American traveler who gets caught smuggling hash out of Turkey and gets sent to a Turkish prison. Sounds oddly similar to Rory’s cover story for why she gave Babette their itinerary for their European adventure in Season 4, Episode 1.

LORELAI: Mom, I promise. All I ever said to her about dances is that you go, you dance, you have punch, you eat, you take a picture, and then you get auctioned off to a biker gang from Sausalito.

This is a veiled reference but it actually makes perfect sense when you remember what movies the Girls love. In Season 2, Episode 3, they have a movie night with Max and watch The Born Losers with character Billy Jack. Billy fights a biker gang from a small coastal California town (similar to Sausalito) after they kidnap and rape four teenage girls. Apparently, the movie was inspired by a real story of Hells Angels raping girls in Monterey, CA.  Yikes, probably not going to happen at the Chilton dance.

LORELAI: Since you’ve never actually been to one you’re basing all your dance opinions on one midnight viewing of Sixteen Candles.

Ahhh, the original John Hughes teen movie! This was the first of his classics, coming before The Breakfast Club and Pretty in Pink and, my favorite, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.  Sixteen Candles has all sorts of teen drama – love triangles with a cool older guy and a young nerdy one, drunk Prom Queens, and a terrible bet involving undies. This movie didn’t really age well but it did catapult Molly Ringwald to fame. Later in Season6, Lorelai shows Pretty in Pink to April and her friends at her birthday party – introducing Molly Ringwald as the “Audrey Hepburn of her generation.”

RORY: It’ll be stuffy and boring, the music will suck and since none of the kids at school like me, I’ll be stuck in the back listening to 98° watching Tristin and Paris argue over which one of them gets to make me miserable first.

Part of the B Team of 90s boy bands, 98° consisted of brothers Nick and Drew Lachey and their two friends. In contrast to other groups of the time, they actually formed on their own and pitched their sound to a label rather than being artificially created by a producer or label from strangers or acquaintances. There’s nothing too exciting to write about them except that it eventually gave us Nick Lachey and Jessica Simpson’s Newlyweds show, and the classic fish-or-chicken incident.

LORELAI: OK. Or it’ll be all sparkly and exciting and you’ll be standing on the dance floor listening to Tom Waits with some great-looking guy staring at you so hard that you don’t even realize that Paris and Tristin have just been eaten by bears.

We know the Girls certainly have a crush on Tom Waits. Christopher even teases Lorelai in Season 2, Episode 3 that the only guy good enough for her is a young Tom Waits. The man in question is an American singer-songwriter-musician, who’s taken his turn as an actor throughout his long career. He sticks mostly to jazz and blues and is known for his signature gravelly, deep voice. You’ve definitely heard him even if you can’t name one track. Waits pops up often in Gilmore Girls, including in Season 3, Episode 3 when we meet the other-daughter at the Springsteen house who’s listening to Tom Waits as she gets ready for her gig as a birthday bunny. She even claims that she “worships” him and stalked him at his hotel. But he’s definitely worthy of it so we understand, other-daughter.

RORY: He’s my…gentleman caller. LANE: OK, Blanche.

There are two Blanche’s Lane could be referring to so let’s see:
1. The Southern Belle of the Golden Girls, Blanche Devereaux was played by Rue McClanahan. Raised on a plantation and now an art museum docent, Blanche was the most… sexually active? of the Golden Girls and was the butt of many a promiscuity joke. So she’d have had plenty of gentleman callers.
2. The character of Blanch Deveraux was based on another Southern Blanche – Blanche DuBois of Tennessee Williams’s A Streetcar Named Desire. It’s stated in the play that Blanche has had many romantic affairs so the ‘gentleman caller’ reference fits her as well. Coincidentally, in the 1951 film version of A Streetcar Named Desire Blanche is played by the incomparable Vivian Leigh who also played the Original Southern Belle – Ms. Scarlett O’Hara herself.

LANE: Because I have to go home soon and my mom threw out our TV when she caught me watching V.I.P. So I’m bored and I need some entertainment.

I had never heard of this show even though it was definitely on TV in my teenage years. Pamela Anderson stars as Vallery Irons, a no-so-real-more-of-a-figurehead celebrity bodyguard (VIP stands for Vallery Irons Protection) whose lack of investigative skills actually helps her take down the bad guys in every episode. Hilarious. I guess Andreson used the show to poke fun at her own tabloid image, and she usually featured an actual celebrity in each episode like Stone Cold Steve Austin and Charles Barkley. I can imagine Ms. Kim would NOT be a fan of this show.

LORELAI: What, Mom? She can make some cash off of it. Become a crazy Oscar Levant kind of celebrity, go on talk shows, heckle Regis.

There are very few show-biz jobs that Oscar Levant didn’t try – he was a pianist, composer, actor, television show host, author, radio host, and game show panelist. But he is most known for his biting wit and comedic one-liners including this gem: “What the world needs is more geniuses with humility, there are so few of us left.”

But as far as I can tell, he never heckled Regis. Regis Philbin is an American media personality best known for his national TV show first called Live! With Regis and Kathie Lee and then Live! With Regis and Kelly which he hosted from 1988 to 2011. He also hosted the first version of Who Wants to Be A Millionaire. Philbin is often called “the hardest working man in show business” (if they aren’t talking about James Brown) and holds the Guinness World Record for the most time spent in front of a TV camera. That’s nuts!

EMILY: You’re making her dress? You’re not using the curtains are you?

This is a clear reference to The Sound of Music. You might remember when Maria makes play clothes for the Von Trapp kids from some discarded curtains because she’s a resourceful nun, alright? The kids have a great day playing in their new fun clothes, complete with canoe tipping and tree climbing, to the disgust of their awful potential step-mom, the Baroness.  The Captain pretends he doesn’t recognize his children hanging from the trees and calls them some “local urchins” to the Baroness. A classic comedic moment from Christopher Plummer.

TRISTIN: The guy’s supposed to buy the tickets. RORY: Really. Does Susan Faludi know about this?

Susan Faludi is a well-known feminist author and journalist, who wrote two books about the condition of gender roles in America during the 90s. She argued that there was a distinct backlash from the feminist movement of the 60s-70s that led to more subliminal discrimination and oppression for women, especially because of the negative stereotypes against career-driven women. She also said that while most power belongs to men as a collective group, individual men have little power, due to class and economic influences. So I’m guessing Faludi would take offense to the antiquated idea that only the guy can buy the dance tickets. Aren’t we past this kind of restrictive gender roles??

RORY: Well I hear Squeaky Fromme is up for parole soon. You should keep a good thought.

Lynette Alice “Squeaky” Fromme is/was? a member of the Manson Family (she’s still alive but I’m guessing not still a Manson?) who attempted to assassinate President Ford in 1975 because she wanted him to protect the California Redwoods. I’m all for environmental activism but probably not a good idea to attack the President, Squeaky! She was sentenced to life in prison but was released on Parole in 2009. Certainly not early enough to go with Tristan to the dance in 2000.

PARIS: What am I, your Versateller? Wait for change.

It’s another word for an ATM, something that’s almost outdated now. I can’t remember the last time I used an ATM unless I was traveling.

LORELAI: We’re in here! EMILY: We’re in here? That’s how you answer the door?LORELAI: Well I was all out of Saran Wrap.

Oooo this is a deep reference. In Marabel Morgan’s “self-help” book The Total Woman, she advocates that women should dress in sexy outfits and give themselves in total service to their husband’s sexual whims *huuuuge eyeroll*. In an episdoe of the sitcom Maude, one of the main characters goes to open the door for who she thinks is her husband dressed in a trench coat covering her plastic-wrapped body, but it’s actually her friend at the door. She claims that she was trying to channel Morgan’s Total Woman.

LORELAI: Wow, Mom, look at you. You’d think Ann Taylor was having a sale or something.

I don’t think Emily Gilmore would be a big Ann Taylor shopper. She’s more of a St. John and Chanel woman in my mind. Ann Taylor is a mid-tier retailer of women’s suits and separates, and while they are classicly styled it’s definitely not luxury enough for Emily. The only connection that makes sense is that Ann Taylor’s first store was in New Haven, CT in 1954 so Emily might have a soft spot for her hometown brand.

LORELAI: Hey, Dean, meet my mother, Emily Post.

The Queen of etiquette herself and probably Emily Gilmore’s Patron Saint. Her great-great-granddaughters are etiquette writers, carrying on the family name that is synonymous with proper society through the Emily Post Institute. Anna Post, Lizzie Post, and Peggy Post have all published books and columns with advice on everything from weddings and parties, to how to be a twenty-something in today’s world. They’ve stayed surprisingly relevant.

RORY: And these kids at my school — awful. Have you seen The Outsiders? DEAN: Yeah, I have. RORY: Just call me Ponyboy.

Teens movies used to be so violent. They’re raping girls in The Born Losers and stabbing each other in The Outsiders, sheesh! The Outsiders is a book by S.E. Hinton, turned into a movie starring an amazing ensemble cast of  C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Tom Cruise, Patrick Swayze, Ralph Macchio, and Diane Lane. Ponyboy, played by Howell, is the youngest of the group who gets smacked around by his brothers and nearly drowned by the rival “greaser” gang. But he’s the smart, emotionally intelligent one of the group so I guess that fits Rory when compared to Paris, Madeline, and Louise.

EMILY: Oh look — Barbara Stanwyck. I just love Barbara Stanwyck. LORELAI: You know Mom, you have kind of a Barbara Stanwycky voice. EMILY: Oh I do not. LORELAI: I mean it. You could have gotten Fred MacMurray to off Dad if you’d really wanted to.

Barbara Stanwyck was a showgirl turned movie star of the 30s and 40s. In 1944 she was the highest-paid female actress in the US and starred in Double Indemnity with actor Fred MacMurray, in which she played a woman so beautiful she convinces an insurance salesman to kill her husband for her.

RORY: The Portable Dorothy Parker.

I have a feeling Amy Sherman Palladino wishes she could be Dorothy Parker, the American poet and writer known for her witty one-liners. A founding member of the Algonquin Round Table, Parker went on to write screenplays for Hollywood films including the original 1937 A Star Is Born (thank you, Parker). ASP even named her production company ‘Dorothy Parker Drank Here Productions’ and you can see the cute logo featuring Parker with a martini and cigarette in hand at the end of each episode’s credits.

The Dorothy Parker line I use the most? “What fresh hell is this?”, used liberally and for all circumstances.