The Life And Death Brigade

If you love Gilmore Girls or at least have seen the series, the fifth season to be exact, then you must be familiar to "The Life and Death Brigade". I've been a Gilmore Girls junkie myself since many years ago, and recently I'm Marathon DVD-ing the series all over again. When it come to season 5, on the episode "You Jump, I Jump, Jack" is where this article begin. This particular episode is where Rory (Alexis Bledel) joins Logan (Matt Czuchry) on an event of a Yale secret society club called "The Life and Death Brigade" for the Yale Daily News feature. That's bringing me to dig in (in other word of googling) more info about that secret club, and I found some and then collected them here.

The Life and Death Brigade is loosely based on Skull and Bones, a secret society at Yale that was founded in 1832. Skull and Bones, sometimes known as The Brotherhood of Death, may have had some early inspiration from the notorious Illuminati. Like The Life and Death Brigade, the Skull and Bones group is said to meet regularly and to have a private island for gatherings. Such gatherings would include elegant catered meals.

The motto of Skull and Bones was ‘Bari Quippe Boni’, Latin for ‘Nature makes only a few who are good’. In Gilmore Girls, The Life and Death Brigade’s motto was ‘In omnia paratus’, which means ‘ready for anything.’

But according to Amy Sherman-Palladino and Dan Palladino (Gilmore Girls's creator & producers) in the commentary for this episode, the Life and Death Brigade was based off of a different club, the Dangerous Sports Club at Oxford, rather than Skull and Bones at Yale. This club pursues adventures and extreme sports and also invented modern day bungee jumping, making the first public jump from a bridge in England. Like the Skull and Bones society and the fictional Life and Death Brigade, the Dangerous Sports Club was for the elite. Members of this club were well known to have put a twist on ordinary games and come up with a big stunt to cap up a mad-cap outing and they were often seen at social gatherings in top hats and drinking champagne.

Back to Gilmore Girls version of "The Life and Death Brigade", here's some quotes from the episode "You Jump I Jump, Jack" that can related to the club:

Logan: It'll be fun, it'll be a thrill. Something stupid, something bad for you. Just something different. Isn't this the point of being young? It's your choice, Ace. People can live a hundred years without really living for a minute. You climb up here with me, it's one less minute you haven't lived.

Rory: High. We are very high.
Logan: I've been higher.
Rory: I meant distance from the ground.
Logan: That too.

Rory: I am not a fan of ladders.
Logan: They scare the crap out of me too.

I also giving you the sneak peek from that episode, the scene where Rory does "the jump" with Logan on "The Life and Death Brigade" event.

One of my favorite episodes from the series I might add, makes me wanna do the jump too, um.. with Logan Huntzberger *cough*. And as for "The Life and Death Brigade" itself, don't you think it's an interesting club, isn't it?

*Taken from many sources