“Gilmore Girls” is known as one of the most rewatchable comfort shows of the aughts. It’s beloved for its mile-a-minute dialogue, surreally perfect small-town setting, and a warm central relationship that’s held together via the power of mom-daughter love and a shared fondness for junk food and pop culture. It’s that last part that makes one of the show’s own pop culture connections especially ironic: Lorelai (Lauren Graham) and Rory (Alexis Bledel) love classic TV, but they’re blissfully unaware that they’re living with two stars of one of the most talked-about early sitcoms.
The pair live next door to a woman named Babette, a true eccentric who’s as adorable as she is overbearing. Babette often says whatever comes to mind in her signature raspy voice, and she brings a sort of benevolent chaos to the series that counters some of Stars Hollows’ more genuinely annoying characters (I’m looking at you, Taylor Doose). In a bit of great casting, she’s also played by classic TV legend Sally Struthers, who’s known for her turns on “Dinosaurs,” “The Pebbles and Bamm-Bamm Show,” and most importantly, “All in the Family.”
Struthers played Gloria Stivic, the daughter to bigoted patriarch Archie Bunker (Carroll O’Connor) and kind but old-fashioned housewife Edith Bunker (Jean Stapleton) in the wildly popular sitcom “All in the Family.” Throughout the show’s ’70s run, Gloria came into her own, steadily becoming more progressive after marrying countercultural Michael (Rob Reiner). “Gilmore Girls” actually served as an “All in the Family” reunion for Struthers, as co-star Liz Torres, who played glamorous dance teacher and town busybody Miss Patty, was also on the Norman Lear sitcom.
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Miss Patty and Babette are two of a kind as characters — both sweet, both offbeat, both rooting for Rory, and both on the more endearing end of the Stars Hollow townsfolk spectrum. In the scenes they share together, Struthers and Torres have a great, joyful energy, which makes sense given that the pair had already established a working relationship decades earlier. In “All in the Family,” Torres played Teresa Betancourt, a Puerto Rican nurse who helped Archie recover from surgery and later rented a room in the Bunker house in season 7. Struthers and Torres shared several scenes together, but Teresa left the show by its eighth season.
Given how pop culture savvy Lorelai and Rory are, it’s no surprise that “Gilmore Girls” drifted into meta territory with “All in the Family” references on a few occasions. In the season 2 premiere, Lorelai jokes about miming suicide the way Archie did when Edith “would be yapping about something” in the old sitcom. Another time, Rory jokes that her trip to Washington, D.C. was worth it because she got to see Archie Bunker’s chair at the Smithsonian.
Torres reprised the role of Miss Patty opposite Struthers in “Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life,” and spoke about reuniting with her old pal in an interview shared by Looper. “I saw Sally was there, and we are like Martin and Lewis [or] Abbott and Costello — the old-time vaudevillians,” Torres recalled. “I had such a good time with her.” Struthers returned the love, telling Vanity Fair that Torres is “one of [her] favorite human beings to ever walk the planet.” Apparently, the pair had such a good time catching up on gossip on the “Gilmore Girls” set that they had to be split up, like “recalcitrant children in first grade,” as Struthers put it.
