Kim Deal

LANE: You are not telling me that you did not know that Kim Deal was in the Pixies before the Breeders! I refuse to accept that! [hangs up] These kids have no sense of history.

Kimberley “Kim” Deal (born 1961), singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist. She was the bassist and co-vocalist in alternative rock band Pixies, previously discussed, joining in 1986. During the band’s hiatus, she formed the alternative rock band the Breeders in 1989. After the Pixies broke up in 1993, she returned her focus to the Breeders, who themselves went into hiatus in 1994, during which time Deal formed the short-lived rock band the Amps, performing under the name Tammy Ampersand. She reformed the Breeders in 2002, then returned to the Pixies when the band reunited in 2004. In 2013, she left the Pixies to concentrate on the Breeders, who released their fifth album, All Nerve, in 2018.

One of the reasons the person on the phone may not have known that Kim Deal was previously in the Pixies is because she performed under the stage name Mrs John Murphy while in the band.

Lane is not just looking for any band to drum for – it needs to be a band who shares her obsession with alternative rock and indie music, and knows their music history.

Bananarama

LORELAI: Hey, maybe instead of going to college, you should drop out and I could quit my job and we can form an all-girl band with Lane, you know, like Bananarama.

Bananarama, English pop group, formed in 1980 by Sara Dallin, Siobhan Fahey, and Keren Woodward. Their success on both pop and dance charts saw them listed in the Guinness World Book of Records for achieving the world’s highest number of chart entries by an all-female group. Between 1982 and 2009, they had 30 singles reach the Top 50 of the UK Singles Chart, including “Shy Boy” (1982), “Cruel Summer” (1983), and “Robert de Niro’s Waiting” (1984). They performed on the 1984 charity record, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?”. They had eleven singles reach the top 10 in the US, including their #1 hit, a cover of “Venus”, (1986).

Note that this is yet another reference to Lorelai forming an all-girl band.

Progressive Rock

LANE: [on phone] No, wait, wait, wait, progressive rock is a really passé style now but I listed it as an influence because it was a progenitor of great things that came afterwards.

Progressive rock, usually shortened to prog rock or just prog, a broad genre of rock music developed during the mid-to late 1960s, peaking in the early 1970s. Initially termed “progressive pop”, the style grew out of psychedelic bands who abandoned standard pop traditions in favour of instrumentation and composition more often associated with jazz, folk, or classical music.

Additionally, lyrics were more poetic, technology was harnessed for new sounds, music approached the condition of “art”, and the studio, rather than the stage, became the focus of musical activity, which often involved creating music for listening rather than dancing. Examples of prog rock bands include Emerson Lake & Palmer, Genesis, King Crimson, The Moody Blues, and Pink Floyd.

Lane says that progressive rock is passé, in that its heyday was in the 1970s, but in fact there were a wave of bands in the 2000s who revived the genre, such as System of a Down and Thirty Seconds to Mars. Perhaps that’s what she means by it being a progenitor of great things?

Lane is receiving responses to the advertisement she posted looking for a band that needed a drummer. Naturally she is deluged with enquiries, beginning early in the morning! Yes, the local area is filled with bands looking for a drummer, scanning the advertisements for one, and eagerly calling before breakfast to find them! We are in complete fantasy land here. Instead of being stunned that she gets any answers at all, Lane is irritated that they aren’t all on her musical wavelength.

Paris Freaks Out

PARIS: What the hell did Romaine mean when he was going on about weeding out the hyper-intense in the interview process? He stopped just short of calling me by name, I’m losing it!

Paris also freaks out over the college panel, even having to run home and throw up out of anxiety. She’s especially upset that Mr Romaine mentioned weeding out “the hyper-intense” during college interviews. In a future episode, Paris will indeed miss out on a place in her first choice of college because of her hyper-intense interview.

Note that Rory has a cell phone for the first time in this scene – previously, she always used a pager. Don’t get attached to the cell phone, she will revert to using a pager in the very next episode. It’s possible that Paris called Lorelai’s phone, and Rory was borrowing it; Lorelai has lent Rory her phone before.

The Competition for Harvard

EMILY: I’ve unearthed some shocking statistics. I mean, do you have any idea how hot the competition is to get into a school like Harvard?

LORELAI: Well, yeah, it’s very hot. It’s one of the top schools in the country.

EMILY: In the world. People from China, Russia, India, children from every country apply to Harvard. There’s more competition than ever before.

Lorelai should have already known this. Why is it Emily reading the college magazines to educate herself, why not Lorelai? You can forgive Emily and Richard for being behind the times on college applications in the 21^st century, as competition was much less when they went to college, and Emily is trying to catch up.

Lorelai tells Emily that she already knows how hard it is to get into Harvard – which is true, she discovered how low the acceptance rate was in Season 2, when she took Rory for a day trip to Harvard. However, this episode makes clear that she hasn’t really been thinking about it, because the minute she’s forced to, she goes into a panic. And that’s when Lorelai and Emily start getting application anxiety as well.

“College paraphernalia”

MS. SAMUELS: I’ve seen applications where the student has circled every activity listed. Again, you’re trying too hard there. One can’t be interested in everything.

MR. ROMAINE: They’re the ones who’ve had college paraphernalia on their walls their whole lives.

MS. SAMUELS: Too hungry, it’s a little immature.

Two more blows to Rory – she wanted to circle every activity on the college application except sports – now she finds out it will come across as someone trying too hard. And she’s had Harvard paraphernalia on her bedroom wall since she was about eleven, and wore a Harvard sweatshirt when she was four years old.

Yes, it’s a little immature, and of course Rory’s college dreams are immature. Her dream of going of Harvard was thought up by her teenaged mother, a girl who’d lost her own dreams and was working as a maid and living in a shed to support Rory. Is it any wonder Lorelai wished for Rory to achieve everything she never could? And can you blame Rory for wanting to make her mother proud and happy, knowing the sacrifices she was making for her daughter?

Rory looks increasingly unhappy throughout this scene, as her path to Harvard now looks far from certain. She now has – application anxiety!

“Extracurriculars and volunteer activities”

MR. ROMAINE: If your extracurriculars and volunteer activities are too by-the-book, that says something we don’t like.

MS. SAMUELS: Yes, those activities should have a personality behind them – a focus, a direction.

And here comes the devastating blow to Paris, who now discovers what Chilton really should have explained to her years ago – her volunteering efforts have been too diffuse and various. As explained in an earlier post, she’s done so many different types of volunteer work that there is no focus to them, no pattern to build on that shows what kind of person she is, or what her goals are.

I think Paris should really feel worse than Rory over the advice given so far. Rory has simply had a lame idea for an essay that she hasn’t even started writing yet. She has plenty of time to pick a different topic and work on it. Paris has wasted literally years of her life and probably crippled herself socially doing hours and hours of useless volunteer work that is very unlikely to help her get into Harvard.

“Brain-dead bint in a skirt”

PARIS: Personal anecdote – when I was twelve and I was writing the first of my trial essays in practice for the day I’d write my real essay, I chose Hillary Clinton. Then I realized every brain-dead bint in a skirt would be writing about Hillary, but it was good to clear the pipes.

Bint: British slang, derogatory term for a girl or woman. It dates to the late 19^th century, and is borrowed from the Arabic بِنْت‎ (bint, “girl, daughter”). It was adopted by British soldiers to refer to their girlfriends, as the Arabic word is reminiscent of English words for women such as bit, bird, and bitch.

Paris has not only been practising college application essays since she was twelve years old, but has also been a fan of Hillary Clinton since at least the same age. Paris would have been aged twelve in 1996/1997 – at this time, Hillary Clinton had been First Lady of the US since 1993. She took an important role from the very beginning, and was the first First Lady to receive her own office in the West Wing of the White House. She was considered the most openly empowered First Lady since Eleanor Roosevelt.

“Hillary Clinton and her profound influence”

MR. ROMAINE: I’m talking about run of the mill responses, a lack of originality, particularly in the essay category. If I read one more over-adulating piece of prose about Hillary Clinton and her profound influence, my head will explode.

A devastating blow to Rory, who now discovers her winning essay topic is in fact an unoriginal, commonplace idea, which many other girls will choose. Apparently writing an essay about any famous person, or a person you don’t personally know, is a sure-fire loser of an idea. Rory would do better to write an essay about Lorelai – which, for all we know, is what she eventually does.

Princeton University and Ivy League College Consultant

PARIS: My panelists are Jim Romaine, admissions officer at Princeton University, and Ivy League college consultant, Rose Samuels.

Princeton University, previously discussed. Paris’ boyfriend attends Princeton – I don’t know whether that had any bearing on Paris getting their admissions officer on their panel. I wouldn’t put it past Paris, though.

Jim Romaine and Rose Samuels are of course fictional characters, played by Philip Pavel and Karen Bankhead respectively.

In real life, an admissions officer at Princeton University, Stephen LeMenager, had just been removed (in August 2002) after gaining unauthorised access to student’s files on a Yale admissions website the previous April. The investigation and subsequent scandal may have been what put the idea of using Princeton in this episode – they could have had a representative from any Ivy League university, after all.

Ivy League college consultants, also called independent education counsellors, work with students and their parents to decide which schools a student should apply to. They also guide them through the application and essay-writing processes. Top tier college consultants can cost a small fortune, so this is yet another area where being very wealthy can help you on your path to college.