Season 2 Episode 6: “Presenting Lorelai Gilmore”

Episode 6: Presenting Lorelai Gilmore

written by Sheila R. Lawrence   directed by Chris Long

 original airdate: 11/6/01 (Tuesday)

To please Emily, Rory agrees to come out at a debutantes’ ball. Lorelai gets a second surprise when Christopher agrees to fulfill his fatherly deb duties.

 

References (in order of appearance)

• Brigitta and Gretl

Lorelai: Okay, Liesl. I’m Brigitta, this is Gretl. And, uh, Emily and Richard are expecting us.

Upon hearing the maid’s name is the same as the eldest von Trapp daughter, Lorelai announces herself and Rory with the names of two of the other von Trapp daughters from The Sound of Music.

 

 

• George and Martha

Rory: What is going on?

Lorelai: I don’t know. I think George and Martha are joining us for dinner.

George and Martha are an alcoholic, argumentative couple from the film and play Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?

 

 

• Starlight Foundation

Emily: I have been the co-chair of the Starlight Foundation for the last eight years.

Starlight Children’s Foundation is a nonprofit organization founded in 1982 to bring joy and comfort for hospitalized kids and their families.

 

 

• Hartford, Mark Twain, and Harriet Beecher Stowe

Emily: The Hartford Zoological Silent Auction, the Mark Twain House Restoration Fund luncheon, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Literacy Auction.

Hartford is the capital of the U.S. state of Connecticut.

Mark Twain was an American author and humorist.

Harriet Beecher Stowe was an American abolitionist and author.

 

 

• The Lion King

Lorelai: Hey, we stumbled in here completely innocently. We came for dinner as usual, per their request. We had no idea we were walking into The Lion King without the puppet heads.

The Lion King is a 1994 American animated feature produced by Walt Disney Feature Animation.

 

 

• Terence McNally

Lorelai: [claps] Brava! Encore! I’m sorry, does Terrence McNally know about you too? Get me the phone!

Terence McNally is a 4-time Tony winning dramatist, and considered one of the leading dramatists currently writing. His most well known work is probably Love! Valour! Compassion!

 

 

• CNN

Rory: This is not how you raise a child. You don’t send them out there with a false sense of pride because out there, in the real world, no one will coddle you. I’d rather know right now if I’m gonna be working at CNN or carrying a basket around it’s offices with sandwiches in it.

Cable News Network (CNN) is a U.S. cable news channel founded in 1980 by Ted Turner.

 

 

• Luke: Thank you. [Jess walks into the diner from the stairway] Jess, you were supposed to be down here…what the hell is that?
  Jess: What?
  Luke: That.
  Jess: That is a shirt.
  Luke: Change.
  Jess: What?
  Luke: Go upstairs and change your shirt.
  Jess: I like this shirt.
  Luke: How can you like that shirt?
  Jess: It brings out my eyes.
  Luke: Hey, part of the deal of you staying here is that you work here, and when you work here you will wear proper work attire, and that is not proper work attire. Now go upstairs and change into something that won’t scare the hell out of my customers.
  Jess: Whatever you say Uncle Luke. [goes upstairs]
  Lorelai: Gross shirt.
  Rory: Yeah.
  Lorelai: Good band.
  Rory: Oh yeah.

Jess is wearing a Metallica shirt, which is an American heavy metal band based in San Rafael, California.

 

 

• Salisbury, Cristal, and concubine

Emily: They broke up at the Schafer’s cocktail party?

Nattie: He has another family in Salisbury.

Emily: No!

Lady 3: She’s 26, with a 2 year old.

Emily: How did Truly find out?

Nattie: The little tart sent her a letter.

Emily: Oh my God.

Lady 1: So Truly confronted Eugene after consuming a bottle and a half of Cristal, and he admitted it. He said he was going to leave her and marry the Salisbury concubine.

Salisbury is a city in and the county seat of Wicomico County, Maryland, United States, and the largest city in the state’s Eastern Shore region.

Cristal is the brand name of a Champagne produced by Louis Roederer.

Concubinage is the state of a woman in an ongoing, usually matrimonially-oriented relationship with a man who cannot be married to her, often because of a difference in social status.

 

 

• Daughters of the American Revolution and debutante

Lady 3: Well you know, the Daughters of the Daughters of the American Revolution Debutante Ball is next week.

The Daughters of the American Revolution (DAR) is a lineage-based membership service organization for women who are directly descended from a person involved in the United States’ struggle for independence.

A debutante or deb is a girl or young woman of an aristocratic or upper-class family who has reached maturity and, as a new adult, comes out into society at a formal “debut”.

 

 

• Spinal Tap

Rory: And when I got back from Grandpa’s office, they all invited me out onto the patio.

Lorelai: No no no, please tell me you did not go out onto the patio.

Rory: I went out onto the patio.

Lorelai: Ugh, Rory, that’s like accepting the position as the drummer in Spinal Tap.

In the 1984 Rob Reiner movie This Is Spinal Tap, spoof “rockumentary” about the fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap, it’s not unusual for their drummers to die in a freak gardening accident, to explode onstage, or even to die from choking on someone else’s vomit.

 

 

• Lily Tomlin and John Travolta

Lorelai: I am still convinced she had something to do with Lily Tomlin doing that movie with John Travolta.

Lily Tomlin/John Travolta Movie– Moment By Moment, a film starring John Travolta and Lily Tomlin as a couple in a May-December romance that was both a critical and box-office disaster.

 

 

• Dowry and Cinderella

Lorelai: All right then. If you’re sure, where do we start? Uh, let’s see. Well, you have a dress. You need a dowry, I guess. There you go. And uh, you’ll need shoes, hose, gloves, some mice, a dog, a pumpkin. What’s wrong?

A dowry is the money, goods, or estate that a woman brings to her husband in marriage.

“You’ll need shoes, hose, gloves, some mice, a dog, a pumpkin” – In the Disney version of Cinderella, the fairy godmother turns mice, a dog, and a pumpkin into horses, a footman, and a carriage.

 

 

• Boston, Baked beans, cream pie, tea party, strangler, Helsinki, and Nordic

Christopher: Hello?

Lorelai: Ugh, hi. Where the hell are you?

Christopher: Boston.

Lorelai: Boston? [walks into living room]

Christopher: Yeah, Boston. Baked Beans, cream pie, tea party, strangler.

Lorelai: Oh, that Boston.

Christopher: And you?

Lorelai: Me.

Christopher: Where are you?

Lorelai: Helsinki.

Christopher: Really.

Lorelai: Yeah, I finally got the girl band together and after a week opening stateside, we headed across the Atlantic and now we’re huge with the Nordic set.

Boston is the capital and largest city in Massachusetts, and is one of the oldest cities in the United States.

Boston baked beans are a variety of baked beans, typically sweetened with molasses or maple syrup, and flavored with salt pork or bacon.

A Boston cream pie is a yellow butter cake that is filled with custard or cream and topped with chocolate glaze.

The Boston Tea Party was a direct action by colonists in Boston, a town in the British colony of Massachusetts, against the British government.

The Boston Strangler is a name attributed to the murderer (or murderers) of several women in Boston, Massachusetts, United States, in the early 1960s.

Helsinki is the capital and largest city of Finland.

The Nordic countries make up a region in Northern Europe and the North Atlantic which consists of Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden and their associated territories which include the Faroe Islands, Greenland, Svalbard and Åland.

 

 

• Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Gloria Vanderbilt, and Cary Grant

Christopher: Well, did you tell her about Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, Gloria Vanderbilt?

Lorelai: Yes, and she’s perfectly willing to marry Cary Grant, get offed by her crazy butler and start designing blue jeans as soon as the ball ends.

Barbara Hutton, Doris Duke, and Gloria Vanderbilt– High society heiresses all three, Hutton was the heir to the Woolworth fortune who was married famously seven times, at one point to Cary Grant; Duke, the daughter of American Tobacco Company founder and Duke University benefactor James Buchanan Duke and a famous collector of art and antiques; Vanderbilt, a member of the prominent Vanderbilt family and most famous as a spokesperson for high-end blue jeans.

 

 

• 976 numbers

Lorelai: Now comes the reason for my phone call.

Christopher: All your regular 976 numbers are busy.

In the U.S. 976 numbers are numbers that charge you a higher than normal rate for calling in exchange for certain services, often associated with adult chat lines.

 

 

• Endless Love and Kate Spade

Lorelai: Now, I know you would rather sit through Endless Love than ever be a part of this scene again. But this is very important to your daughter and she has never asked you for anything, and although no one’s keeping track, it would seem that your constant non-presence in her life and your lack of ever showing up when you say you’re going to or calling when you say you’re going to or basically doing anything when you say you’re going to would tend to indicate that you owe her, big time. Now before you say no, I want you to take a minute and remember you have a great daughter who needs you and she has a mother who will hunt you down like a half-priced Kate Spade purse if you disappoint her.

Endless Love is a movie about teenagers who fall in love and become very obsessive about each other.

Kate Spade is the co-founder and namesake of the designer brand, Kate Spade New York.

 

 

• Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Neil Young

Rory: It’s good huh?

Dean: It’s the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction.

Rory: And doesn’t Neil Young look cool?

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum is a museum located on the shore of Lake Erie in downtown Cleveland, Ohio, United States, dedicated to archiving the history of some of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, and other people who have in some major way influenced the music industry, particularly in the area of rock music.

Neil Young is a Canadian singer-songwriter who is widely regarded as one of the most influential musicians of his generation.

 

 

• Battlebots

Rory: Remember Neil Young. Remember that you love me. Remember that I’ll be watching Battlebots with you for a month.

Battlebots is a television series on Comedy Central in which remote controlled robots attempt to destroy one another.

 

 

• Compact Oxford English Dictionary

Christopher: Well, I needed a little more space. Had something big to haul. I believe this belongs to you. [hands Rory a box from the trunk]

Rory: The Compact Oxford English Dictionary!

The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a descriptive dictionary of the English language, published by the Oxford University Press.

 

 

• Volvo and bingo

Christopher: Thank you. So back to mocking my car?

Lorelai: Oh yeah. A Volvo sedan, are you kidding?

Christopher: This is a great car.

Lorelai: For driving to bingo.

AB Volvo is a Swedish builder of commercial vehicles, including trucks, buses and construction equipment.

Bingo is a game of chance played with randomly drawn numbers which players match against numbers that have been pre-printed on 5×5 matrices.

 

 

• George Lucas and Alpine

Lorelai: Yes, but only if you promise we won’t go over 25 miles an hour on the motorway. [Lorelai gets in as Christopher blasts some music] Oh my God, George Lucas wishes he had this sound system.

Christopher: I’ve got Alpine head units, two subs, and two twelves. In exchange, no passenger-side airbag.

George Lucas, Jr. is an American film producer, screenwriter, director and founder/chairman of Lucasfilm Ltd.

Alpine Electronics, Inc. is traditionally known as an aftermarket car audio and navigation systems manufacturer, famed for their high quality, premium in-car audio units commonly known as head units.

 

 

• Jujutsu

Lorelai: Mom, there’d have to be a 12k run and a jujutsu demonstration for her to go through twelve pairs of pantyhose.

Jujutsu is Japanese martial art and a method of close combat for defeating an armed and armored opponent in which one uses no weapon, or only a short weapon.

 

 

• Lorelai: Well, maybe you just need a glittery glove and a really freaky face.

Reference to Michael Jackson, an American recording artist, singer-songwriter, and philanthropist.

 

 

• Rory: At one point Miss Patty thought Dean was gonna get hurt, she made me sit in the corner and watch.
  Lorelai: Hey! Nobody puts Baby in a corner.“Nobody puts Baby in a corner”– Quote from the 1987 film Dirty Dancing, which stars Patrick Swayze and Gilmore Girls’ Kelly Bishop.

 

 

• Viennese Waltz, Brady Bunch, and “Rapture”

Lorelai: Did you know you still knew how to do that?

Christopher: I wish I didn’t. Imagine what we could do if we freed up the brain space that holds onto the Viennese Waltz.

Lorelai: Yeah, it’s right up there in between old Brady Bunch reruns and the lyrics to “Rapture.”

Viennese Waltz is the genre of a ballroom dance.

The Brady Bunch is an American television sitcom starring Robert Reed, Florence Henderson, and Ann B. Davis, which revolves around a large blended family.

“Rapture” is a single by the American new wave band Blondie.

 

 

• Yoga

Lorelai: Huh. Well, since you still haven’t told me what exactly it is that you do, I’m gonna go with yoga instructor or chiropractor.

Yoga is a group of physical, mental, and spiritual practices or disciplines which originated in ancient India.

 

 

• Cotillion and Children of the American Revolution

Dean: So, how do you know how to do this?

Christopher: Seventeen cotillions, a dozen debutante balls, and a brief but scarring experiment with the Children of the American Revolution.

In American usage, a cotillion is a formal ball, often the venue for presenting debutantes.

The Children of the American Revolution (C.A.R.) was founded in 1895 by Harriett Lothrop.

 

 

• Aneurysm

Christopher: Maybe you should talk to them. I’m sorry, was that me that said that? I must’ve had an aneurysm.

An aneurysm is a localized, blood-filled balloon-like bulge of a blood vessel.

 

 

• Chanel and Final Net

Lorelai: Look for the toxic cloud of Chanel and Final Net.

Chanel is a brand of expensive perfume.

Final Net is a hairspray.

 

 

• Cirque de Soleil

Rory: Wow, what if you trip? I mean, not that you would. You wouldn’t. I might. Probably will actually. Could be a real Cirque du Soleil kind of night.

Cirque du Soleil is a famous performing troop that does spectacular acrobatic feats.

 

 

• Spain

Lorelai: Hmm. Mom, you’re here.

Emily: Where should I be, Spain?

Spain is a country and member state of the European Union located in southwestern Europe on the Iberian Peninsula.

 

 

• County General

Emily: Well, I’m here now, so it’s not weird anymore. Look at these flowers. Baby’s breath. What is this, County General?

County General Hospital is a fictional public hospital, featured in the TV series ER, that served the city of Chicago from 1949 to the present day.

 

 

• Shakey’s

Emily: I wanted my granddaughter to be presented to society in a beautiful elegant ballroom, not a Shakey’s.

Shakey’s is a chain of pizza restaurants in the U.S.

 

 

• Midori

[Rory is sitting down reading when Libby walks over to her holding a flask.]

Libby: Midori sour?

Rory: Oh, no thanks.

Midori is a bright, green-colored, muskmelon-flavored cordial made by Suntory.

 

 

• Trident

Libby: You know, they say four out of five debs marry their escorts.

Rory: Kind of like the dentists with Trident.

Trident gum used to advertise the fact that four out of five dentists recommended chewing the sugar free gum.

 

 

• Curtsey

Christopher: I’ll see you later.

Lorelai: Curtsey pretty.

A curtsey is a traditional gesture of greeting, in which a girl or woman bends her knees while bowing her head.

 

 

• Jeeves

Dean: I think you look like a cotton ball.

Rory: Why, thank you Jeeves.

Reginald Jeeves is a fictional character in the short stories and novels of P. G. Wodehouse, being the “gentleman’s personal gentleman” (valet) of Bertie Wooster (Bertram Wilberforce Wooster).

 

 

• Neptune and Ancient Greece

Lorelai: Um, guys, hi, there’s a lady up there with a rock the size of Neptune around her neck talking about the debutantes of Ancient Greece. It’s a lot easier to fall asleep if you’re sitting down, trust me.

Neptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in our Solar System.

Ancient Greece was a civilization belonging to a period of Greek history from the Greek Dark Ages of the 12th–9th centuries BC to the end of antiquity (c. 600 AD).

 

 

• Lorelai: Bye. And then there were three.

Reference to And Then There Were None, a mystery novel by English writer Agatha Christie, widely considered her masterpiece and described by her as the most difficult of her books to write.

 

 

• Journey

Rory: He’s got a new girlfriend, you know.

Lorelai: Sherri.

Rory: Yeah.

Lorelai: Poor girl’s named after a Journey song, that’s gotta be rough.

Journey is an American rock band formed in 1973 in San Francisco, California, by former members of Santana.

The song Lorelai is referring to is “Oh Sherrie”, a song written by American singer Steve Perry, Randy Goodrum, Craig Krampf, and Bill Cuomo.

 

 

• Luke: So, back from the ball huh?

Lorelai: Yes, I left behind a glass slipper and a business card in case the prince is really dumb.

Reference to “Cinderella,” a classic folk tale embodying a myth-element of unjust oppression/triumphant reward.

 

 

• Shecky

Lorelai: I have someone to complain to when life sucks or work sucks or just everything sucks. I have someone I can talk to.

Rory: Yeah, who?

Lorelai: Oh Shecky, you kill me. It just must be really lonely not to have that.

Shecky Greene is a comedian and actor.

 

 

Trivia

• When Jess comes down dressed as Luke, he is wearing the hat that Luke wore in the first half of season 1, before Lorelai gave him the blue hat he currently wears, in episode 10 “Forgiveness and Stuff.”

 

• Libby, the girl who is having her fifth “coming out,” makes another appearance in Season 6 when Logan and Rory attend Logan’s sister’s wedding. There she plays one of Honor’s bridesmaids, Walker.

 

• In the final scene, when Lorelai drops by her parents’ house, she says she went to hang. She clarifies, “Talk. Don’t talk. Whatever.” This is the exact same quote that Lane says to Rory in season 1 episode 17 “The Breakup, Part 2.”

 

• When Rory runs out to meet her dad, the first clip shows her running and stopping then switches to another shot where she is stopping again.

 

• When Christopher and Lorelai walk into Miss Patty’s, the music is loud and then when they are talking to Dean and Rory the music is turned down and then it isn’t even on. When Lorelai and Christopher start dancing, Christopher turns the music on and it’s at the beginning of the song again.

 

• At the diner at the end, Rory’s pinkie finger goes up at the request of Lorelai for her to act like a lady. When the camera is behind her, the finger stays up, but when the angle moves around, in a split second, it is back on the burger.

 

• In the episode “Love and War and Snow,” Rory pulls out a picture album of old photos. Inside that album was a picture of Lorelai in her debutant dress. The dress in the picture looked nothing like the one that Rory was wearing, even though they were supposed to be the same dress. Why are the dresses different?

 

• When Rory is at Luke’s after her coming out, her burger changes from ‘bitten into’ to ‘untouched’ and back again.

 

• At Rory’s coming out, Lorelai does not have a necklace on while sitting down, but does when she walks up to her parents.

 

• To help her mother write down a phone number, Rory gives Lorelai a gum wrapper, which is replaced by a notebook in the very next scene.

 

• Jean St. James (Mom #2) previously guest starred as an irate mother in “Kill Me Now.”

 

• Music:
  “The Way You Look Tonight” by Frank Sinatra
  “Thank Heaven For Little Girls” by Maurice Chevalier
  “Jubilee” by Grant Lee Buffalo
  “Du Hast” by Rammstein