'Gilmore Girls Pop Culture Reference Guide': A fan must

Watching "Gilmore Girls" over the seven seasons it ran on the WB and the CW, one thing was quite obvious — the characters sure could talk fast, no doubt as a result of all that caffeine they consumed at Luke's Diner.

Throughout those mile-a-minute sentences spouted by Lauren Graham, Alexis Bledel, Melissa McCarthy and the others who played the townsfolk in fictional Stars Hollow, Connecticut, came a plethora of pop-culture references ranging from the obvious (Mick Jagger, "The Lord of the Rings") to the obscure (English rock band Babyshambles, cosmetics company Bonnie Bell Lip Smackers). Now they've all been compiled in the "Gilmore Girls Pop Culture Reference Guide" by Matt Browning, who also penned the similarly themed "Definitive Golden Girls Cultural Reference Guide." 

For "Gilmore Girls," Browning breaks down all 153 episodes of the 2000-2007 series as well as the less memorable four-part 2016 Netflix reboot subtitled "A Year in the Life." He lists every pop-culture reference uttered as well as a definition of what it means. The book serves as an armchair companion allowing you to hit pause while watching the show so that you can look up the meaning of, say, the Clarence Hotel in the season 4 opener. (Incidentally, it's a four-star hotel in Dublin owned by U2's Bono and The Edge from 1992 to 2019.)

"Gilmore Girls" also gave several shout-outs to Long Island over its seven-year run including Mariah Carey (her 2001 movie megabomb "Glitter" pops up in episode 8 of season 2), Howard Stern (season 3, episode 13) and Alec Baldwin (season 4, episode 15). Also name-dropped in the sixth episode of season 3 is Hamptons social butterfly Lizzie Grubman, who famously backed her Mercedes-Benz into a crowd of 16 people in 2002.

Browning, whose love of the show is so deep that he even has a Stars Hollow Books tattoo on his left arm, has done a truly Herculean job of catching every pop culture tidbit. He also points out that many of the references are repeated in other episodes, but only their initial mention is cited in the book.

Though we don't want to sound too much like Kelly Bishop's persnickety matriarch Emily Gilmore, there are a couple of things that would have made the book even better. One minor point is that a little more context as to how the references were woven into the episode would have been helpful. A major omission, however, is that there are no photos in the book. That's like Luke serving up a burger and then forgetting the fries.

Still, the book will be a must for diehard fans of the show as well as a handy guide for new generations discovering it. And it goes down as smooth as cup of coffee at Luke's.