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.
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