Title: That Damn Donna Reed

Another straight-forward title, reflecting one of the main plot points of the episode – The Donna Reed Show.

Summary: The girls eat pizza and watch the incomparable Donna Reed Show. Dean has salad with a side of misogyny. Lorelai convinces Luke to spruce with a new coat of paint. The Gilmores won’t go to Europe in the spring. Dean doubles down on the oppressed housewife joke. Luke and Lorelai get close behind the counter. Rory plays Donna Reed with pearls and Lime Fantasy Supreme. Stella gets loose. Luke breaks the Lemon Lamp. Christopher shows up.

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LORELAI: The incomparable Donna Reed Show.

The Donna Reed Show was an American sitcom that ran from 1958 to 1966 on ABC. Ironically, it’s called the Donna Reed Show after the actress/producer/writer but her character’s name on the show was Donna Stone… kinda like The Mary Tyler Moore Show starring Mary Tyler Moore as Mary Richards. Weird. I wonder if Donna Reed was the first to have a show named after her, the lead actress, rather than the character?

The Gilmores’ assessment of the show is accurate… white, middle class mom and perfect family in all it’s vanilla-ness. But Rory’s later assessment is also correct. Donna Reed was producer and writer on the show, and it was actually the first sitcom with a female, traditional wife as the primary character. According to Donna herself, “We started breaking rules right and left. We had a female lead, for one thing, a strong, healthy woman. We had a story line told from a woman’s point of view that wasn’t soap opera.”

The opening theme song was titled “Happy Days”, which makes me wonder if the Happy Days</em> show is actually a reference to Donna Reed. The references never end.

RORY: Well said, Sister Suffragette.

“We’re clearly soldiers in petticoats. Dauntless crusaders for women’s vote.” And now this song is stuck in my head forever.

“Sister Suffragette” is a classic protest song from Disney’s 1964 Mary Poppins film. Mrs. Banks, mother to Jane and Michael and employer to Mary Poppins, is a pro-Suffrage activist much to the chagrin of her husband Mr. Banks. She comes home one day after a protest singing the song at the top of her lungs, too carried away to notice her children are missing again. I believe the subtext is that while a wealthy, white woman spends her time out of the home working on women’s rights, women of a lower class are there to watch her children and clean her home for a low wage, underscoring class intersectionality in feminism. Or at least, that’s how I always read it.

The song was actually a last-minute addition to placate the actress splaying Mrs. Banks, Glynis Johns. To the embarrassment of everyone involved, Glynis thought she was playing the title role of Mary Poppins and it wasn’t until they were about to start filming that the mix-up became clear. To make her happy, the composers took the tune of another song they had written but scraped, changed the lyrics to fit her character, and Sister Suffragette was born. “Our daughters’ daughters will adore us, and they’ll sing in grateful chorus, well done, Sister Suffragette!”

TAYLOR: When standards slip, families flee and in comes the seedy crowd. You got trouble, my friends. LORELAI: Right here in River City!

Another classic 60s musical reference, love it! This line comes from the 1962 film The Music Man, originally a Broadway production written by Meredith Willson, and starring Robert Preston in both versions at the eponymous Music Man “Professor Harold Hill”. Only, that’s not his real name and he is certainly not a professor of anything besides elaborate cons. The fake Mr. Hill’s ploy is to sell musical instruments to a towns youth, but of course the instruments never come because he never ordered them and he isn’t really a band leader, but he skips town on the next train before the town is any the wiser. Because it’s 1912, no one can really do anything about it.

But when Harold, whose real name is Greg, shows up in River City, Iowa his con is easily sniffed out by the town librarian, Marian. And yes, of course there is a song taking advantage of the Marian the Librarian rhyme, don’t worry.

As Professor Harold Hill comes into town, he starts his usual long-play con by freaking out the local River City parents about the corruption of their children becuase of a billard parlor opening in town. It’s totally bogus but Professor Hill’s catchy song whips them up in a frenzy. “You’ve got trouble, folks! Right here in River City. Trouble with a capital “T” And that rhymes with “P” and that stands for pool!” He uses that fearmongering to get them excited about his wholesome (nonexistent) marching band, and they all quickly sign their poor kids up.

If you’ve got 5 minutes, please watch this hilarious scene play out here on YouTube.

It’s a great con and a great movie, if only for the tongue-in-cheek plot and songs. Highly recommend!

LORELAI: It’s getting a little too Lewis Carroll for me.

This whole exchange about going to Europe in the spring is hilarious to me. Lorelai is referring to the whimsical back and forth they’re having, similar to any Lewis Carroll classic such as Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland or Jabberwocky. I’m sure Alice will come up again later in the series but for now, here’s just a bit of backstory on Carroll himself. Born Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, he’s better known by his pen name Lewis Carroll which he adopted in 1856 when he published his first work at the age of 24. His writing is known for it’s whimsy, word play, and fantasy elements. He spent most of his life in academics at Oxford, writing dozens of books, poems, and collections of stories. Carroll was also a respected mathematician, photographer, and inventor. He suffered from health problems throughout his life, including migraines with aura. There is even a type of migraine aura named after him called Alice in Wonderland Syndrome, where objects appear smaller or larger than reality.

He’s since been the subject of many conversations about his relationships with children and whether they were sexual in nature. Yikes! I mean, he did photograph children in the nude… but he always maintained it was never sexual for him. His family tried to hide the details of his personal relationships from the public, which made it seem kind of fishy. But his diaries do show that he had relationships with adult women and never show anything strange with children. Regardless, it’s all a little weird and I don’t want to think any more about it.

BABETTE: Well, see, Morey just got a call to play a gig at the Village Vanguard tonight so we got to go to New York.

I kind of thought the Village Vanguard was a fake place name, like the Pastorella Theatre in the Bangles episode, but it is a real place! The Village Vanguard is a jazz club in Greenwich Village, New York. It opened in 1935 and was mostly focused on folk music and beat poetry, but has been a jazz club since 1957. It’s the oldest operating Jazz Club in New York City! All the big jazz names have played the Village Vanguard including John Coltrane, Miles Davis, Carmen McCrae, and Thelonious Monk whose career was helped launch by his appearances at the Vanguard. I’m sure even Morey’s icon, Charlie Parker, played the Vanguard.

I wonder who Morey was playing with that night…

BABETTE: Oh great! We’ve got a kitchen full of food and Morey just got cable so you can watch those four girls talking dirty if you want to.

I can totally see Babette and Miss Patty watching Sex and The City together! Of course, those four girls talking dirty are non other than Carrie, Samantha, Charlotte, and Miranda from HBO’s Sex and The City. The series premiered in 1998 and ran for 6 seasons until 2004, spawning 2 movies, a prequel series, and a reboot in 2021.

The show is actually based on a collection of essays by Candace Bushnell, based on her column that appeared in the New York Observer from 1994. Carrie Bradshaw, played by Sarah Jessica Parker, is a stand-in for Candace who works as a columnist using her romantic relationships and New York escapades to inspire her writing. The show was groundbreaking for it’s fashion, open discussion of female sexuality, and portrayal of women in an anti-feminist or post-feminist way depending on who you ask. It was definitely one of the shows that pushed HBO into scripted series dominance, along with The Sopranos and The Wire.

Oh, it’s also key to mention that HBO was known for its lack of censorship for language and sex since cable channels aren’t required to follow the FCC guidelines for profanity and indecency.

LORELAI: Uh-huh. Well, Paul and Linda McCartney only spent eleven nights apart in their entire relationship. Did you know that?

This may be a random callout, but since Linda McCartney had just passed away in 1998, I can see why it would be top of mind for Lorelai. Plus I can just see her reading the Linda McCartney biography released in 2000 when Season 1 aired, since we know her love for music memoirs/biographies.

Paul McCartney and Linda Eastman met in 1967 when she was a photographer on assignment to cover their Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band premiere. They didn’t see each other for a whole year, until in 1968 when Paul was in New York to launch Apple Records. He invited Linda to dinner, and the rest is history. They had 4 children together, including Heather who Linda had from a previous marriage. Paul credits Linda with getting him through his toughest times after the Beatles broke up. But Linda got a lot of hate at the time for taking the last unattached Beatle, with John and Yoko marrying a week after the McCartneys.

Linda was an activist for animal rights and vegetarianism, as well as a respected professional photographer. She died in 1998 of breast cancer, with Paul saying he cried for a year after her death. I can’t verify the eleven nights apart bit. There are conflicting reports of how long he spent in jail in Tokyo in the 70s for a marijuana charge, could have been 9 nights or 11, but all reports show that may have been they only time they spent apart.

LORELAI: Your name is Stella. Stella’s nice and Stella was married to Stanley.

Stella and Stanley Kowalski are 2 of the main characters from the 1947 play by Tennessee Williams and 1951 film, A Streetcar Named Desire. Blanche (Vivian Leigh) comes to stay with her sister Stella and her “brutish” husband Stanley (Marlon Brando) in New Orleans under false pretenses. The plot is full of lies, domestic abuse, rape, and poker games. Stanley, in a jealous rage, yells “Stella” loudly in his apartment courtyard until she comes out to him. It’s not a pleasant story but it’s a classic so you’ve probably heard the “Stella” line before. Brando was a little-known actor when he was cast in the play and subsequent film, so if it wasn’t for Stanley we wouldn’t have Brando in The Godfather, silver linings.

LORELAI: Excuse me — do you even know what stenciling is? LUKE: Does Martha Stewart do it?

Martha Stewart is the queen of personal brand and reinvention. Had I written this back when the Lorelai first name-dropped her, I’d have written a very different story. In 2000 when this episode aired, Martha Stewart was a well-known name in home and cooking circles, but nothing more. As you probably know, she’s the queen of a very interesting empire now.

Born in New Jersey in 1941, Martha grew up with 5 siblings where she learned to cook, sew, and garden from her parents. Fun fact: She was the babysitter for multiple New York Yankees including Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra. Martha modeled throughout high school and college for extra money, appearing in magazines and TV commercials. She married Andrew Stewart in 1961 before finishing her degree with a double major in history and architectural history.

She worked as a stockbroker for a while (foreshadowing!) before getting into the gourmet foods and catering business. She caught the eye of Alan Mirken, head of Crown Publishing who helped her launch her first cookbook in 1982. She went on to write dozens of cookbooks in the 80s, plus magazine articles and newspaper columns. in 1990 she started her own magazine, Martha Stewart Living, and TV show of the same name in 1993. That’s how she became a mainstay in our culinary and home lives.

But here’s where it gets interesting. In 2004, she was convicted of insider trading of a pharmaceutical company stock she owned, saving herself about $45,000 by selling a day before the stock dropped 16%. I mean, yea that is definitely breaking the law and she was a board member of the New York Stock Exchange so that’s kind of shitty, but there were people doing way shadier things out there at the time and definitely even more now. Seems a little unfair to go after Martha.

She spent 5 months in federal prison, where she became a sort of liaison between inmates and administration, earning her the nickname M. Diddy. This new identity of “hard bitch” continued in her post-prison public persona. She went right back to work releasing new books, launching new product lines, and appearing on TV on her own show and as guest characters on Ugly Betty and Law & Order SVU. In 2015, she was hilarious when she appeared on Comedy Central’s Roast of Justin Bieber along with Snoop Dogg. She and Snoop became friends apparently and launched their own cooking show in 2016 on VH1 called Martha & Snoop’s Potluck Dinner Party. Since then, she’s kept marijuana as part of her brand identity, becoming an adviser of a Canadian cannabis company called Canopy.

This may have been a long explanation for a reference most people get, but I think her evolution is fascinating. When Luke name drops her here, she’s just a boring rich white lady teaching you how to stencil your bathroom. But today, the reference brings up totally different connotations. Fascinating.

Here’s the whole clip of her roast of Justin Bieber, to really get a picture of the new Martha. It’s hilarious.

LORELAI: OK, there’s a plastic dancing pork chop that says “I lost my head over a good chop. You should too.”

I was hoping this was a fun ad reference, but alas I can’t find anything about this one.

RORY: Well I guess that just leaves bass player for the Foo Fighters. LANE: I also wouldn’t rule out keyboardist in the Siouxsie and the Banshees reunion tour.

It’s funny that Rory suggests Lane be a bass player, and Lane counters with a keyboardist, since we know Lane is a drummer through and through. But she doesn’t know that yet.

• 2 Foo Fighters references in just a couple episodes, they were really having a moment in the late 90s, early 2000s. See S1E12 for more on the Foo Fighters.

• Siouxsie and the Banshees were a British Rock band, headed by Siouxsie Sioux (born Susan Janet Ballion). I’m definitely not in approval of her culturally appropriated name… but that is a more unique was to spell it. The group was highly influential in the punk, post-punk, new wave, etc. genres including legends like the Cure, the Smiths, PJ Harvey, Radiohead, U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers… the list goes on and on. Mojo (yes, Lane’s beloved Mojo) named their guitarist to the top 100 guitarists of all-time list. They released 11 albums throughout the 70s, 80s, and 90s, finally disbanding in 1996. Some of the members reunited in 2002 for the Seven Year Itch tour, which must be what Lane is referring to here. Steven Severin, the only other consistent member besides Siouxsie, played keyboards on that tour so I don’t think Lane would have gotten the invite.

LANE: We have classic rock, progressive rock, pretty boy rock — RORY: Excuse me? LANE: Bon Jovi, Duran Duran, The Wallflowers, Bush.

Surprisingly “pretty boy rock” is not an officially recognized genre, but we approve of your filing system Lane!

• Bon Jovi (the band) was formed by Jon Bon Jovi (the man) in New Jersey 1983 with his longtime buddy David Bryan and a handful of their musician friends and acquaintances. Bon Jovi has had a number of members throughout the years but they are still going strong, releasing 15 studio albums including one in 2020. Their sound has changed over the years, from glam metal and hard rock in the beginning to pop-rock and even country-rock in the mid 2000s. They’re definitely the band your old aunt likes, not the millennial… the Gen X+ aunt.

• Duran Duran are a new wave band from Birmingham, England who are still touring and releasing music since their formation in 1978. You know them for earworms like “Hungry Like A Wolf” and “Girls on Film” which is now stuck in my head. Thanks Duran Duran. They are often credited as part of of MTV’s rise in 1980’s, and definitely recognized as leaders of the “2nd British Invasion” along with other bands like A Flock of Seagulls, Billy Idol, Eurythmics, Culture Club, and Lorelai’s oft-referenced Bananarama. Fun Fact: Three of their members have the last name “Taylor” but none of them are related.
• I listened to a lot of The Wallflowers growing up, so this is a little nostalgia for me. The Wallflowers, despite being plural, is a solo project by singer-songwriter Jakob Dylan… son of the great Bob Dylan. You’ve probably heard his tracks “One Headlight” or “6th Avenue Heartache”. The Wallflowers popularity probably peaked in 1998 when he won Best Rock Song for “One Headlight” at the Grammy’s. He’s still releasing music and was scheduled to tour with another 90s band, Matchbox Twenty, in 2020 but we know COVID derailed that. You’ll see below, he is very pretty in a Bob Dylan way.

• Finally, we have Bush, a British rock band fronted by Gavin Rossdale (yes of “Just Like Gwen and Gavin” fame, S6E12). Their sound is often genre’d as grunge or post-grunge as they signaled the end of the grunge era for many fans. Matt Diehl of Rolling Stone described Bush as “the most successful and shameless mimics of Nirvana’s music” but author Chuck Klosterman more kindly said “Bush was a good band who just happened to signal the beginning of the end; ultimately, they would become the grunge Warrant” referring to one of the last glam metal band’s who gave us the sex-dripping classic”Cherry Pie”. Bush is also still making music like our other “Pretty Boy Rock” friends above, releasing an album in 2020.

LANE: OK, well over there we have jazz, jazz vocals, classical, country, rockabilly, Sinatra — The Capitol Years. Oh wait! The miscellaneous section.

Frank Sinatra, widely considered one of the best musical artists on the 20th century, joined Capitol Records in 1955 – a move that is considered a turning point in his musical career. He found early career success with Columbia Records in the early 40s but by the early 50s, he had hit a slump. So he did what we all do when we are feeling down… head to Vegas! Sinatra helped put the desert town on the map and pioneered the “residency” concept with his shows at the Desert Inn and The Sands. He was a major force in Las Vegas through the 50s and 60s, along with his other Rat Pack members Dean Martin, Sammy Davis Jr., and others. Riding high on his success in Vegas and the film From Here to Eternity, Sinatra signed with Capitol Records in 1955. While with Capitol, he recorded some of his most critically acclaimed albums like Come Fly with Me and Songs for Young Lovers. His albums at Capitol Records are also regarded as some of the first “concept” albums which given Lane’s love for musical history, makes sense why she would have them.

RORY: Hey, that sounds right. William Shatner. Is this the one where he sings Tambourine Man? LANE: And Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.

You probably know William Shatner as Captain James Tiberius Kirk from Star Trek or the beauty pagent host in Miss Congeniality. But did you know he also has a well-known musical career? In 1968, two years after becoming famous as Captain Kirk, Shatner decided to expand his horizons by releasing a spoken word album called The Transformed Man. The album is full of dramatic readings of famous song lyrics like Mr. Tambourine Man by Bob Dylan and Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds by The Beatles, along with readings of famous plays. If you’ve seen Miss Congeniality and you remember him “singing” Miss United States as the winner gets crowned, the album is basically like that.

He went on to release 9 more albums like that, and though they are widely parodied Shatner seems to be in on the joke. He’s acted in music videos for country singer Brad Paisley, playing himself being heartbroken when told he can’t sing. He’s been on The Tonight Show to do dramatic readings of tweets. He performed all 5 “Best Song” nominees at the 1992 MTV Movie Awards.

Pray that we can all be as multi-talented, and full of humor, as William Shatner.

RORY: (holding up “Music from a Sparkling Planet” by Esquivel) Hey, that’s it. Can I? LANE: Take it.

This is the music we hear playing and Babette and Morey’s when Rory and Dean are having dinner. It definitely has peppy 1950’s dinner party vibes. The album Music from a Sparkling Planet was released in 1995 by Juan Garcia Esquivel. The track we hear in this episode is “Flower Girl from Bourdeaux” but you might also recognize other songs by Esquivel in different shows and movies, like “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” and “Mucha Muchacha”. The album Music from a Sparkling Planet was actually a rerelease of tracks from other albums from the 50s and 60s, released on CD rather than vinyl.

Esquivel! (as it was usually stylized) was a Mexican composer and band leader known as the “King of Space Age Pop” and is credited for popularizing the quirky experimental pop of the 50s and 60s, called “Space Age Bachelor Pad Music”. Today I learned!

LORELAI: All day long, just chirps like a maniac at the top of her lungs. Now, nothing. Silence. Marcel Marceau chicken.

When you think mime, you are thinking of Marcel Marceau. Marceau was a french actor and mime artist, known for his popular character “Bip the Clown”. He called mime “the art of silence” so that’s the joke Lorelai is making here… Stella the chicken has turned into a silent mime.

Marceau was Jewish and because he was born in 1923, that means he grew up during and survived the era of Nazi terror. He lived in hiding and worked with the French resistance in World War II, giving his first big performance for 3,000 French troops after the liberation of Paris in 1944. He went on to perform worldwide for more than 60 years, passing away in 2007.

LORELAI: Or do I pull a Lucy Ricardo and walk like a chicken so she thinks I’m her mother?

I Love Lucy might be the top pop culture reference in Gilmore Girls. Remember Kirk breaking character in S2E10 during the Bracebridge Dinner to argue which I Love Lucy episodes were best? OR when Marty goes on a rant about the Hollywood episodes and Harpo Marx during he and Rory’s Duck Soup marathon?

The reference here is to one of the last few episodes of the series, when Lucy and Ricky have moved out to the country. They decide to raise chickens for a profit and for the fresh eggs, but Lucy gets to excited and orders 500 baby chicks. Obviously hilarity ensues when Little Ricky accidentally leaves the door open and the chickens escape in to the house. To lure them out of hiding, Lucy pretends to be a mother hen by walking like a chicken. Apparently Lucy actually did a funny chicken walk once at their home so the writers wrote it into the show.

SOOKIE: Wow, that’s very Wild Kingdom of you. LORELAI: Yeah. I’m like the Marlin Perkins of Stars Hollow.

Wild Kingdom was a very popular documentary wiidlife/nature show on NBC from 1963 to 1988. It was hosted by Marlin Perkins, a zoologist who had worked at zoos across the country and hosted other animal tv shows before WIld Kingdom. Perkins used the popularity of Wild Kingdom to introduce Americans to the environmental and conservation movements, as well as advocating for protection for endangered species. The show aired every Sunday for 25 years and has been revived a few times over the years on Animal Planet and YouTube. Many fans of wildlife and nature shows credit Wild Kingdom with starting the genre, so we may not even have Discovery Channel or Animal Planet if it weren’t for Marlin Perkins.

LORELAI: ‘Streetcar Named Desire’. SOOKIE: Vivian Leigh or Jessica Tandy?

As mentioned above, A Streetcar Named Desire was a 1947 play by Tennessee Williams, adapted into the 1951 film. The play and the film have the same main cast, except for Blanche who was played by Jessica Tandy on stage and swapped with Vivian Leigh for the film. Leigh was added to give the film more “star-power” after her success in Gone With the Wind, but she clashed with the other actors on set. Marlon Brando disliked her British stuffiness (his words, not mine) but eventually the two became friends. Despite the fact that Tandy won a Tony Award for her stage performance, Brando later said that she lacked the “finesse or cultivated femininity that the part required”. In his memoirs, he wrote that Vivian Leigh was perfectly cast as Blanche, saying “In many ways she was Blanche”.

LORELAI: OK, so now the fact that I suggested painting Luke’s diner also means that I wanted to get him in bed. All of a sudden I’m trying to get any poor, unsuspecting person in bed with me. I’m like — I’m Michael Douglas!

Poor Michael Douglas, this is not a good look for him. I’m not sure I agree with this slight, though. Yes, he is 25 years older than Catherine Zeta-Jones making him 55 and her 30 when they got married. And yes, he did marry a 19-year-old when he was 32. And yes, he was linked to a number of his costars and fellow actors like Sharon Stone. 

But he’s Michael Douglas! He’s not trying to trick women into sleeping with him. He has charisma, charm, and good looks if you ask me. Watch Wall Street and tell me he doesn’t have qi in spades, as Babette would say. “Sexy men like him often do.”

LORELAI: Joan and Melissa Rivers here think I’m being morbid.

Joan and Melissa Rivers are mother-daughter duo of red carpet commentators, among other things. They are known for their honest but savage take-downs of celebrities. Joan started her career as a stand-up comedian, doing shows in New York with people like George Carlin, Woody Allen, and Richard Pryor. After appearing as a guest for Johnny CArson on The Tonight Show, she got her own late night program and became the first woman to host a late night network television talk show. She went on to have other daytime talk shows before becoming known for her hilarious red carpet celebrity interviews.

Melissa, Joan’s only child, was born in 1968. Melissa’s father died by suicide in 1987, 4 days after Joan asked for a divorce. This sad event drove the two apart, as Melissa blamed her mother for her father’s death. Melissa became and actor and had small roles in 90s shows like 90210 and some made-for-tv movies. But then in 1994, for reasons no sane person will never understand, Joan and Melissa starred as themselves in a docudrama about their lives titled Tears and Laughter: The Joan and Melissa Rivers Story. The plot centers around their husband/father’s suicide, and is apparently terribly acted and full of campy creepiness. What a bold move. Only legends like Joan Rivers could pull that off.

Joan and Melissa hosted the E! red carpet for many years, but moved on to their own reality show and other media like their popular show Fashion Police. Here’s a great list of Joan’s fashion zingers, but here’s one of my favorites that displays her self-deprecating humor:

“If I wanted to see something old and pink with white fur around it, I’d just get naked and look down.”

Classic.

LORELAI: Houdini habits.

Harry Houdini, maybe the greatest escape artist the world has ever seen, so famous his name is now a verb. Born Erick Weiss in Budapest, Hungary, he took on the name Harry Houdini after arriving in the US and starting his magician career. After mild success with sleight of hand tricks, he moved on to escape stunts and the rest is history. Some of his most famous stunts include escaping a sealed milk can full of water, locking his feet in stocks and being lowered upside down in a tank of water, escaping a nailed box thrown overboard in a river while handcuffed inside, and being buried alive. 

While some have said his escapes were faked, Houdini was actually a clever inventor who used his own creations to develop and escape these elaborate stunts. He usually would not file patents for his inventions, to keep his secrets safe. So to keep imitators from stealing his tricks, he would perform them for an audience of 1 usually and then copyright the performance, preventing anyone else from performing the same trick. That’s genius. 

Stella the chick may be a beginner escape artist, but she’s no Houdini.