Title: Christopher Returns

Christopher is back, or for us watching it’s our first time meeting the person responsible for 50% of Rory’s DNA. We also find out it’s his first time visiting Stars Hollow, so not really a return.

Summary: Christopher rides in on a motorcycle, the scourge of Taylor Doose. Rory tries to bury him in blankets, then shows him her Dean. The town tries to decide if he’s more Brad Pitt or Billy Crudup. Straub and Francine make a true villain entrance. Lorelai experiences Jose Cuervo’s magical powers then has to rectify a ratty transgression. Christopher can’t afford to buy a book but still thinks he can marry Lorelai. Offspring sucks and Metallica rules.

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LORELAI: My father hit his head surfing Rincon a couple of years ago. His judgment’s a little off.

The Rincon Classic is one of the oldest and most prestigious surfing events in California. It was started in 1979 by a bunch of local surfers and is hosted every year at Rincon Point off Highway 101 in Ventura County. Rincon is ranked #24 of the best surf spots around the world. The host it in one weekend during a 6-week waiting period in January-February, to be sure waves are the best for competition. It’s only open to locals so Richard Gilmore wouldn’t be allowed. 

Honestly, this one is a pretty deep cut for Lorelai. How would she know the name of a surf competition that is only open to local residents of Ventura County, CA? As far as I know, she hasn’t ever showed interest in surfing or the left coast. And it doesn’t seem like Rincon is well-known enough to have name recognition in non-surfers. It was also on hiatus from 1996 to 2000 due to financial struggles, so it hadn’t happened in 4 years when this episode aired. 

This might be one of the most perplexing references. If anyone has any insight, like Rincon was featured in an 80s or 90s movie, please let me know!

CHRISTOPHER: And you were the girl in the Pinky Tuscadero t-shirt sitting right next to me.

Carol “Pinky” Tuscadero was a love interest for Arthur “Fonzie” Fonzarelli on Happy Days season 4. She only appeared in 3 episodes but clearly left a big impression, enough so that they made t-shirts. And honestly, I can see why. Pinky was a demolition derby driver, known for her pink motorcycle and derby car. Season 4 ran from 1976 to 1977, making Lorelai 9 years old at the time when Pinky Tuscadero came on the scene. Pinky was also a main character in the Happy Days spin-off Blansky’s Beauties in 1977. She was billed as sort of the female Fonz, so it makes sense she’d get a ton of merchandise as well since The Fonz was one of the most recognizable characters of the 70s.

KIRK: I’m dumbing it down for you Alfalfa.

Alfalfa is the beloved main character of the Little Rascals franchise. He’s known for his sweet but simple demeanor, and undying love for Darla. Anyone born in the 80s or later probably knows Little Rascals from the 1994 film which introduced us to Alfalfa, Darla, Spanky, Froggy, and the “He-Man-Woman-Haters Club”. But this movie is actually based on Our Gang, a series of short films also known as The Little Rascals from the 20s, 30s, and 40s spanning the silent and early sound film eras. All Little Rascals/Our Gang content follows a group of poor neighborhood kids and their adventures. The shows were unique in their portrayal of natural kid behavior, rather than trying to get the kid actors to behave like little adults.  They also depicted white and black children as equals, which was groundbreaking in the Jim Crow era. 

CHRISTOPHER: No I had some time so I rode my bike out from Berkeley. DEAN: Really? What do you got? RORY: [proudly] It’s a 2000 Indian. DEAN: I got an ’86 Suzuki.

First, I cannot believe Christopher drove his motorcycle all the way from Berkeley, CA. No seriously, I don’t think this is actually true. Since we find out later in this episode that he is actually lying about how good his business is doing in California, was he actually lying about the business altogether? Or, is 2000 Indian bike would have been brand new… did he actually come home months ago from California after crashing and burning at work, buy a new motorcycle to make himself feel better? This should have been a red flag to Rory and Lorelai. Someone who is enjoying business success during the Dotcom/Silicon Valley boom does not have time to ride their motorcycle cross country. It’s obvious then his business must have gone under.

But I digress. Indian Motorcycles are one of the classic American motorcycle companies. In 1999, they resumed operations in Gilroy, CA after years of ownership changes, trademark disputes, bankruptcies, and all sorts of business drama. They started manufacturing new versions of the Chief, Scout, and Spirit models in 1999, 2000, and 2001. So Christopher having a 2000 Indian motorcycle was actually a big deal and a coveted bike for American motorcycle enthusiasts.

Dean’s 1986 Suzuki on the other hand is not a very exciting bike. I’m not sure exactly which model Dean had, since we never see it. But the Indian and Suzuki motorcycles aren’t in the same echelon, foreshadowing the contrast between Rory’s Stars Hollow and Chilton/Yale lives. 

We actually see Chris’s motorcycle again in S3E2 when he shows up unannounced at the Gilmore dinner to try to get Lorelai back after he found out Sherry was pregnant. Lor goes back outside after their fight and after he gets kicked out by Emily, and Chris is sitting in the driveway on his red 2000 Indian Chief. 

LORELAI: I’m assuming you mean ‘did we get our toaster fixed’ and no, it’s been cold pop-tarts for a week, it’s like a damn Dickens novel.

Charles Dickens is one of the most well-known British authors whose books are still widely read today.  Oliver Twist, Nicholas Nickelby, A Christmas Carol, A Tale of Two Cities, Great Expectations, David Copperfield… all Dickens. He usually published his novels in serial segments in the local newspaper, which popularized this format. He used cliffhangers to keep people reading, and sometimes took reader feedback in developing the next pieces of the plot. 

Many of his stories featured satire and commentary on Victorian society, including featuring terrible conditions for the poor class. The term “Dickensian” refers to writing that includes poor social conditions and comically terrible characters. 

Oliver Twist, for example, features all sorts of happy elements… child labor, domestic violence, criminals, street children, abuse of orphans, and so on. The main character, Oliver, is an orphan and is sold into “apprenticeship” a.k.a. slavery after asking for a little more food in the workhouse, hence the famous quote “Please sir, I want some more”. 

Lorelai’s sarcasm on cold pop tarts making her Oliver Twist is gold here, along with her deliberately withholding the gossip about Christopher visiting from Sookie.

LORELAI: [sighs] This man knows all my secrets. All of my bad girl moments happened with him – my worst fashion choices, my big hair days, the wearing of the Bonne Bell lip smackers around my neck – it was all with Christopher.

If you’ve never enjoyed the sweet taste of an artificially flavored Bonne Bell Lip Smacker, I feel sorry for you. They are still around at your local drugstore but now that I’m a grown-up, it’s not the same. 

Jesse Bell founded the Bonne Bell cosmetics company, named after his daughter Bonne, in 1927. They mostly made skincare and sunblock for skiers and joggers, sponsoring the US Olympic Team, marathons, professional sports, and charitable races in the 60s and 70s. But they shifted focus to teens and struck gold in 1973 when they introduced the first flavored lip balm in the US. It may have originally been geared towards skiers, but teens found it quickly and the rest is history.

Lip Smackers started with strawberry, lemon, and green apple flavors then quickly expanded to a true flavor explosion. Dr. Pepper, Skittles, Coca-Cola, 7-up, Good N’ Plenty, pina colada, cotton candy, chocolate, pink lemonade… any flavor you could imagine. They added necklaces, keychains, and all sorts of accessories to the Lip Smackers, making them the ultimate teen must-have in the 80s and 90s. 

Bonne Bell sold the Lip Smackers brand in 2015, so our favorite lip adornment lives on but not as Bonne Bell. 

JACKSON: Don’t you think he’s much more George Clooney than Brad Pitt? ANDREW: I’m going with the Billy Crudup comparison myself.

In March of 2001 when this episode aired, George Clooney and Brad Pitt were the Hollywood hotties. So nothing really has changed. George Clooney had just finished 5 years on ER as the hottest doctor to ever wear a lab coat. By then, he had also starred in the rom-com One Fine Day with Michelle Pfieffer, as Batman alongside Chris O’Donnell, in Three Kings with Mark Wahlberg and Ice Cube, dramatic disaster movie The Perfect Storm, and one of my favorites O’ Brother Where Art Thou. The dude has range.  This is still months before Ocean’s 11 would premiere, cementing Clooney as a true A-Lister. 

In 2001, Brad Pitt was as sexy as ever. By then he’d already done Thelma & Louise, A River Runs Through It, Interview with a Vampire, Legends of the Fall, Seven, 12 Monkeys, Seven Years in Tibet, Fight Club, and Snatch. He was named People’s sexiest man in 2000, plus he married Jennifer Aniston that year making him one half of the biggest celebrity couple at the time. So he was as big as they come in 2001 when he gets named dropped by Jackson here. I once read an article describing Brad Pitt as a character actor in leading man’s body, saying he’s really his best self when he plays a supporting role but he keeps getting cast as the lead because he’s so attractive. And it’s true, his most memorable characters have all been the outlandish side role… Tyler Durden in Fight Club, Mickey in Snatch, Rusty in Ocean’s 11, Chad in Burn After Reading, Floyd in True Romance. Somehow this fact makes him even more attractive. I’m stuck in a thirst trap, I need to take a writing break. Phew!

Billy Crudup has had a different Hollywood story. Instead of going the leading man, big-budget route he stuck with broody independent films for the most part. His first film was Sleepers in 1995 with Brad Pitt, then he went on to star in sports drama Without Limits, crime drama Grind, and romance Inventing the Abbotts. But his big breakout was as lead guitarist of the fictional band Stillwater for Almost Famous, opposite Kate Hudson. He’s been in plenty of big and small films since, as well as TV and stage shows. He also has a history of dating leading ladies including Mary-Louise Parker, Claire Danes, and Naomi Watts.

For the record, I only see the Billy Crudup comparison. 

CHRISTOPHER: Holy mother. This is the monolith from 2001.

2001: A Space Odyssey was released in 1968 by writer/director Stanley Kubrick. It’s a truey epic science fiction film that incorporates a level of surrealism that allows its true interpretation to be debated even now more than 50 years later. 

The monolith, the black box hovering in the room above, is a machine built by a mysterious race of aliens that are never seen in the film. The monolith shows up at critical times in the plot, as a way to influence human evolution and potentially introduce us to a new way of being. There’s plenty of analyses out there for Space Odyssey and for the monolith so I won’t go into too much detail here. But the dictionary in this scene really does resemble the monolith… it’s huge!

CHRISTOPHER: Hey, I play guitar. LORELAI: You know the opening lick to ‘Smoke on the Water’. CHRISTOPHER: And I’ve since mastered the opening like to ‘Jumping Jack Flash’.

“Smoke on the Water” is a 1972 track from British rock band Deep Purple. It’s ranked #426 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, and it’s #4 in Total Guitar magazine’s Greatest Guitar Riffs Ever list. If you learned guitar as a teenager in the 80s like Christopher, this would probably be the riff you’d learn first… kinda like “Seven Nation Army from the White Stripes” for teens in the early 2000s. Here’s a link to listen to “Smoke on the Water“, it’ll be familiar as soon as you hear it.

“Jumpin’ Jack Flash” is by another British band The Rolling Stones, released as a non-album single in 1968. It’s one of the bands most recognizable songs, and another very popular riff to learn among amateur guitar players. It gets a pretty respectable #144 on Rolling Stone’s list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time. Here’s the link for this track if you are interested, you’ve definitely heard this one too.

I’m not sure Christopher even knows how to play either of these melodies, I think the joke is more that these are the ones any rookie would try to learn and then brag about. 

GRANDPA: I’m a Chuck Berry man myself.  LORELAI: So we’re talking pre-‘My-ding-aling’?

This is the first time we hear about Richard’s Chuck Berry fandom. It’ll pop up later in S3E10 when Rory gifts him Chuck Berry: Live at the Fillmore, and in S7E13 when Richard is in the hospital and Rory brings him the record to cheer him up. That album makes another appearance in A Year in the Life, but it’s too sad to talk about. 

Chuck Berry was an American musician, singer, and songwriter who is widely credited with pioneering rock and roll, dubbed the “Father of Rock and Roll”. He was known for his performance style, showmanship, and guitar riffs – many of which he adopted from blues musicians like T-Bone Walker. He’s ranked #5 on Rolling Stone‘s list of 100 Greatest Musicians of All Time. Remember in Back to the Future when Marty wakes up the sleepy Under the Sea dance with a loud rocking track? That’s Chuck Berry’s “Johnny B. Goode”. That song is even included o the Voyager Golden Records that are in space, meant to represent the best of humanity. If that isn’t the biggest honor, I’m not sure what is. 

But then we come to “My Ding-Aling”. Originally written and recorded by big band/jazz musician Dave Barthelomew about a toy given to him by his grandmother, Chuck Berry covered it live in 1972. He really played up the double-entendre of the lyrics with his signature performance style, making it a huge hit and the subject of outrage for many pearl-clutchers. In fact, it’s Berry’s only Billboard Top 100 single. 

I can verify that Richard’s Chuck Berry love comes pre-“My Ding-Aling”, since the Live at the Fillmore Auditorium album he loves was released in 1967.

CHRISTOPHER: Lucy, Schroeder, you laying on the coffee table. LORELAI: You pretending it was a piano. God, why is that remembered? GRANDMA: Because it was such a wonderful production. LORELAI: I don’t know if it was a production mom. It was just one song. CHRISTOPHER: ‘Suppertime’. GRANDPA: Did you write that? That was really very good. LORELAI: Dad, that’s from ‘You’re a good man Charlie Brown’ It’s a famous musical.

I quoted quite a bit of this exchange… partly because it gives a whole picture of the pop culture reference rather than just a quick quip, and partly because thinking of Chris and Lorelai as kids together is so cute. I’m a closet Chris apologizer, not for the crappy dad he was (that’s unforgivable) but because he and Lorelai have so much history and sometimes you need to be with someone who knows you that well. Don’t @ me. 

But I digress. The reference here is the beloved Peanuts cartoons, specifically to the 1967 musical and 1985 TV special “You’re a Good Man, Charlie Brown.” Lucy is in love with Schroeder, who really couldn’t care less. All he wants to do is play his piano, like his beloved Beethoven. Lucy is often pictured hanging on the piano while Schroeder plays, trying to get his attention. 

The thing is, why would they play “Suppertime”? In the animated TV special, that song accompanies a scene with Snoopy who is starving on top of his dog house, a.k.a Charlie is 5 minutes late with his dinner. If they were doing Schroeder and Lucy, then they should have done Moonlight Sonata where Lucy drops this gem of a line after Schroeder dismisses her marriage talk… “My aunt Marian was right; never try to discuss marriage with a musician.”

LORELAI: I hate President Bush. LORELAI: He’s stupid and his face is too tiny for his head and I just want to toss him out.

President George W. Bush probably needs no introduction but I thought I’d provide a little context here. In March 2001 when this aired, he was just a couple months into office after being inaugurated on January 20, 2001. This election was a big controversy because of a really close electoral college and popular vote. The winner wasn’t determined until December 12, after a Supreme Court decision. The story is stranger than fiction and involves Florida, hanging chads, the invention of the internet, and all sorts of strategery. So the nation was already on edge at this point, and Lorelai bringing up Bush was always going to backfire.

I’m not sure I’d say his face is too small for his head. His ears are too big for his head, though. I’ll give her that.

LORELAI: Oh yes, it was beautiful in there. We should commemorate it with an oil painting or a severed head or something.

The severed head is a definite reference to The Godfather, and maybe our first of many for the series?

Early in the 1972 masterpiece that is The Godfather, Don Vito played by the incomparable Marlon Brando, puts the screws to a studio head to give a part to his godson Johnny Fontane. When the studio exec refuses, he wakes up the next morning with the severed head of his beloved racehorse under the covers with him. That’s how you send a message, don’t mess with the Corleones. It’s a real tone-setter for the movie, showing the depth of how far Vito Corleone will go to get what he wants and what will happen to those who disobey him. 

In this reference, is Lorelai Vito or is she Jack Woltz with his dead horse’s head in his bed?

CHRISTOPHER: Employ six individual cones of silence.

The Cone of Silence is a recurring gag on the 1960s spy spoof show, Get Smart. The joke is that it’s supposed to be a place to have a secret meeting between 2 parties but in reality, it doesn’t work very well and only those outside the cone can hear what those inside are saying. 

A device of the same name originated around the same time in the science-fiction novel Dune by Frank Herbert. It’s a much more serious (and successful) device in the Dune series, employed by the scary Baron Harkonnen. If you’ve seen the 2021 Dune film, you know how scary he is. Almost as frightening as Strobe Hayden.

6 individual cones probably would help. Strobe wouldn’t have heard Lorelai’s Bush joke and no one would have had to listen to Strobe’s bullshit at all. 

LORELAI: Mrs. Dominski undulating in her big fat underalls is forever carved into my brain.

I pictured some huge, ugly “granny panties” from Christopher’s description. But despite the not-very-sexy-sounding name, Underalls were actually invented to reduce panty lines and not “spoil the view”, the slogan from one ad. Underalls are a pantyhose/undies hybrid invented by Hanes in 1976 and produced until the early 90s. They relied on risque (for the time) ads with women saying things like “Look! I don’t wear panties anymore” and “Oh, I love my Underalls…’cause they make me look like I’m not wearin’ nothin'”. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

LORELAI: No, they were directing them at me because I screwed up their big ‘Citizen Kane’ plans. That’s all.

I wonder if Lorelai meant Kane’s mother’s plans for him or how Kane manipulated his 2nd wife into a career she didn’t want just to make him happy. Charles Foster Kane is the titular character of Orson Welles’s 1941 film Citizen Kane, based on the composite lives of many powerful businessmen like William Randolph Hearst and Joseph Pulitzer. Hearst even banned it from being mentioned in his newspapers, so it probably hit a little close to home for him.

Kane’s mother sends him away as a young boy to be raised by her banker after she becomes wealthy unexpectedly. As his wealth and power grows, Kane becomes insufferable. He forces his 2nd wife to become an opera singer even though she is not talented and has no interest in opera. He builds her a beautiful opera hall but then allows a terrible review of her to be printed in his papers. Sounds like a Strobe Hayden move to me. “You will have the life I want you to have, and even when you try but fail I will be there to destroy you.”

RORY: Where does dad have a misspelled tattoo? LORELAI: Ah, ah, another story for another time, possibly before your first trip to Mazatlan. 

This isn’t quite a pop culture reference but just in case you, my beloved reader, are not based in the US, here’s some context. Mazatlan, Mexico is your classic party/spring break/holiday locale, especially for teens and college kids. It’s on the Pacific coast of Mexico and is mainly resorts, beaches, tequila shots, and party boats.

I’d say it’s the equivalent of Mallorca or the Canary Islands for Western Europe or Thailand for Eastern Europe. 

CHRISTOPHER: Well I know you well enough to know that when you say no to coffee, especially in the morning, all is not right in Whoville.

I think this is the Gilmore equivalent to the phrase “Something is rotten in of Denmark”, meaning an effed-up situation. 

Whoville is the fictional setting for Dr. Seuss’s How the Grinch Stole Christmas and Horton Hears a Who!, though the town seems different in each story. In Horton Hears a Who! the town is described as floating within a speck of dust and the Grinch films show Whoville as being inside a tiny snowflake. The Whos are small, whimsical, human-looking folks who are shown to have warm hearts and happy spirits. 

LORELAI: Ah, last night was Chernobyl and the Hindenburg combined.

That’s a little dramatic, Lorelai. You sleeping with Christopher is equal to two of the world’s most infamous disasters?

Chernobyl refers to the nuclear disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the city of Pripyat, Ukraine when it was part of the USSR. On the morning of April 26, 1986 the reactor lost power during a failed safety test which caused an uncontrolled chain reaction, leading to a meltdown of the reactor core, destruction of the reactor building, and an uncontrolled reactor fire. Yikes! The fire sent a ton of radioactive contamination into the air which lasted for 9 days and fell over 1,000 square miles. It’s the worst nuclear accident in world history and is rated 7 on the nuclear accident scale. The only other 7 is the Fukushima Daiichi accident in Japan in 2011. If you watched the HBO miniseries Chernobyl in 2019, you know all the gory details. 

On May 6, 1937 the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed when it tried to dock at the Naval Air Station in Manchester, NJ. 35 of the 97 people on-board were killed, plus one unlucky person on the ground near the crash. Since it was a giant blimp filled with highly flammable hydrogen gas, it was probably only a matter of time before one blew up. There are conflicting theories on exactly what caused the Hindenburg to catch fire but it’s explosion was covered with great interest around the world in newspapers, radio coverage, and newsreels. The Hindenburg disaster made everyone think twice about riding in an airship, effectively ending the short-lived but very popular airship era. Here’s a picture of it over New York just before it arrived/blew up in New Jersey. 

LORELAI: My father almost hit someone. My father has probably only hit another man in college wearing boxing gloves and one of those Fred Mertz golden gloves pullover sweaters. CHRISTOPHER: Fred Mertz?
LORELAI: ‘I Love Lucy’ – Fred Mertz. CHRISTOPHER: Landlord to Ricki, husband to Ethel, I know. It’s just a weird reference.

Another perfect I Love Lucy reference and an early addition to the banter between Lorelai and Chris showing how well they know each other. Their speech patterns are similar. 

Fred Mertz, landlord to Ricki, husband to Ethel is one of the 4 main characters on the I Love Lucy sitcom. In one episode, it’s mentioned that Fred was a winner of the 1909 Golden Gloves boxing competition. Golden Gloves is a series of amateur boxing competitions in the US, from local to regional and national competitions taking place every year since the 20s. But that means Fred’s 1909 boxing champion sweater makes no sense!

LORELAI: You are out of your mind. You are completely insane. You have flipped your lid. Charlie Manson is freaked out by you right now!

Lorelai calling Charles Manson “Charlie” is extra creepy for some reason. We’ve had one Charles Manson reference already to his cult member Squeaky Fromme, but this is the first direct reference in what I remember to be quite a few as the seasons go on. 

Charles Manson was a criminal, cult leader, and all-around creep at the center of the Manson Family cult in California. He had a terrible upbringing, born to a teen mom who spent his youth drinking and falling in and out of prison. He started getting into trouble at a young age, setting his school on fire at age 9. He spent more than half of his life, before the infamous murders, in custody at various institutions and was often subject to terrible treatment. His story is very sad but he also caused a lot of sadness for others, starting by pimping out teens when he was just a teen himself and other various crimes. 

In the late 60s, he moved to Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco where he got into the music and free-love scene. He also become a subject of LSD and meth usage research by NIH-funded doctors, where his change in personality was the most abrupt his doctor had observed in his entire professional career. So things are not looking good. 

Manson started developing a cult following among the runaways and outcasts that hung out in Haight-Ashbury. He used drugs, mostly LSD, and sex to grow his following and to submit new members to his will. in 1969, his cult became obsessed with the race war Manson was sure was coming, something he referred to as Helter Skelter after the recent Beatles song. In August of 1969, Manson Family members killed 7 people including pregnant actress Sharon Tate, in an apparent effort to kickstart the race war. The murder trial would go on to be the longest in US history at that point, 9.5 months full of crazy court-room antics, mysterious deaths, and everyone on trial carving an X in their forehead. 

For a more lighthearted telling of the Sharon Tate murder, watch Once Upon a Time in Hollywood with my favorite character-actor-in-a-leading-man’s-body Brad Pitt. 

LORELAI: What? The Offspring is your favorite band. CHRISTOPHER: So? You’re into Metallica. LORELAI: Well Metallica is way more substantial than The Offspring. CHRISTOPHER: Here we go, it’s the same Black Sabbath riff all over again. LORELAI: Oh! The Offspring have like one chord progression.

The Offspring’s Americana album was one of the first I ever bought after Spice Girls Spice World. “Pretty Fly”, “The Kids Aren’t Alright”, and “Why Don’t You Get a Job” all live rent-free in my head. The Offspring is an American rock band from CA founded in 1984 and headed by Dexter Holland. They, along with Green Day and Rancid, are credited with reviving punk music in the US in the 90s. Dexter Holland actually has a PhD in molecular biology from USC, something Rory mentions in S4E4 when Zack is complaining about Dave moving to California for college. 

I’m surprised Chris’s favorite band would be The Offspring since they really only became popular in the mid-90s when he was almost 30. Btw, the Offspring tracks do all have a similar sound like Lorelai says. 

Metallica is probably one of the best known heavy metal bands of all time, a California band since it’s founding in 1981. Even if you aren’t into heavy metal, you’ve definitely heard Metallica. “Enter Sandman”, “Master of Puppets”, “One”, “Fade to Black”… all Metallica. Led by James Hetfield and Lars Ulrich, they found commercial success in 1986 with their third album Master of Puppets. They were heavily influenced by British band Black Sabbath, the group that gave us Ozzy Osbourne, but I think Metallica has a sound all their own. 

I actually see Christopher as more of the Metallica fan. In S2E14 when he shows up in his Volvo, he’s listening to German metal band Rammstein. Later in that episode, Lorelai mentions the sound system he got is great for “cranking Metallica,” much to Richard’s disgust. 

CHRISTOPHER: What about last night. What did our having sex mean to you? LORELAI: It meant that Jose Cuervo still has amazing magical powers. 

Jose Cuervo, the most popular tequila for teens and college kids, quite certainly does have magical powers over its victims. Who hasn’t had too many shots of Cuervo and decided this is the moment to break out your most embarrassing dance moves? There is an urban legends that Jose Cuervo is really just a mix of a bunch of other alcohols, which a little tequila thrown in. Finally, something to blame the hangovers on!

CHRISTOPHER: So let’s get married and get to know each other as adults. LORELAI: Well, that’s very Fiddler on the Roof of you.

Fiddler on the Roof, the 1964 Broadway musical and 1971 film, is a story of traditional Jewish-Russian dairy farmer Tevye and his mission to keep his beloved traditions by marrying off his daughters. His 5 girls want to marry for love, but Tevye doesn’t like their choices and thinks they should agree to his arranged marriages like he did with their mother. There’s more nuance to the story, like the Russian Revolution and pogroms, but I won’t get into it. The musical and film include many beloved songs like “Matchmaker, Matchmaker” and “If I Were a Rich Man”, plus “Do You Love Me?” sung by Tevye and his wife Golde about how they grew to love each other like Christopher suggests above. If it sounds familiar it’s because we hear Kirk sing it when he stars in the Star Hollow Elementary School production of Fiddler on the Roof in S5E15. 

Fun fact: Bea Arthur, of Golden Girls fame, starred as Yente the town matchmaker in the original Broadway production!

LORELAI: That’s not true. If Tony Randall can crank one out in his seventies you have decades left to spawn.

Tony Randall, beloved American actor known for his role as Felix in The Off Couple, married a 25-year-old intern when he was 75. His first wife, his high school sweetheart, died in 1992 leaving Randall heartbroken. But in 1995 he married Heather Harlan and they had 2 children when Randall was 77 and 78. Men can have kids in their 70s but women run out of eggs in their 30s? Nothing is fair.