Jackson Browne and “Doctor, My Eyes”

LORELAI: And what’s with Jackson Browne making the list?

LANE: Ah, see, cool people know that he’s more than a mellow hippie-dippy folkie, that he actually wrote some of Nico’s best songs and was in fact her lover before he bored us with “Doctor, My Eyes.” That will separate the poseurs from the non-poseurs.

Clyde Jackson Browne (born 1948), musician, songwriter, and political activist. A precocious teenaged songwriter from Los Angeles in the 1960s, he had his first success writing songs for others. As a sixteen-year-old, he wrote “These Days” for the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, which became a minor hit for German singer Nico, previously mentioned as one of Lane’s music idols, in 1967. After moving to Greenwich Village, he backed Nico, and they were romantically involved. He was a significant contributor to her debut album, Chelsea Girl, writing and playing guitar on several of the songs.

Jackson Browne’s self-titled debut album came out in 1972, and this includes the track “Doctor, My Eyes”, an upbeat-sounding track about being world-weary. It was a surprise hit, reaching #8 on the US charts, and most popular in Canada at #4. It’s become one of his concert mainstays, but Lane seems to regard his debut album as the start of Browne being “boring”!

Jackson Browne continued to have successful albums, with his signature work being 1977’s Running On Empty, peaking at #3, and with the title track reaching #11 in the US (#4 in Canada). His success continued through the 1980s, and his most recent album is Downhill from Everywhere (2021). He is regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time.

Note that Lane has no problems telling Lorelai that she has been lumped in with the uncool “poseurs” for not knowing about Jackson Browne and Nico – even though Lorelai has helped form many of Lane’s musical tastes (this seems very believable from a teenager). Viewers may find it amusing that Lane sees herself as having the ability to separate the poseurs from the non-poseurs, considering she’s quite the musical poseur herself.

“I even cleaned the table”

LORELAI: This is an uncontaminated area. I even cleaned the table using something other than the sleeve of my sweater and spit.

Although there are several jokes in the show about Lorelai’s poor housekeeping skills, their home never looks dirty, or even very messy – cosy clutter and a light layer of dust is about the worse we ever see. (It’s hard to make a television set, which is not lived in, really look like a dirty house).

It does make sense that Lorelai is not keen on housework – besides being a single parent working full-time (and until recently, studying part-time), which is reason enough. She worked as a maid for several years, and her job is to run the inn and keep it looking nice now, so it’s believable that she wouldn’t feel like taking care of the house as well when she gets home from work.

The Application for Harvard

RORY: Oh my God … It’s here … My application to Harvard.

This episode is focused on Rory receiving her application for Harvard University, and the stress she goes through as a result. The US university application process is somewhat different to many other countries, so it’s necessary to understand a little bit of how it works.

It’s not the case that you simply send off your academic results to the university and if you make the cutoff point, you get in. You are also expected to tell the university about yourself, about your interests, goals, and contributions you’ve made to society, and supply letters of recommendation from teachers and community leaders to bolster your case.

Most importantly, you need to write a short essay, usually around 600 words or so, that somehow convinces them you’re more than academically gifted, you’re also a wonderful person who deserves a college education, but are far too modest to actually say that. As these essays tend to end up very much alike, they also need to be fascinating enough to keep the admissions officer reading them! But they can’t be too edgy or creative either, because then you’ll seem too weird for the college to handle. Stressful or what?

There are also opportunities to have an in-depth personal interview with an alumnus of the university, who hasn’t read your application, and doesn’t know anything about you except your name and contact details. It’s basically a job interview, but instead of trying to get a job, you’re trying to get into college, answering questions about all your positive traits that will serve to make the college a better place, while letting them see what kind of person you are.

The harder a university is to get into, the more rigorous and exacting the entire process is – you will need to have higher grades, more impressive goals and aspirations, and have made some kind of major contribution to the world. You will do well to have letters of recommendation from people who are leaders in their field, or actually famous. Your essay will preferably be of publishable standard. You will dazzle, astound, charm, and knock the socks off your interviewer. And that’s just to get in!

Rory’s application arrives in what appears to be mid-to-late September, but that’s just to fit in with the timing of the season in Gilmore Girls. In real life, Harvard usually sends its applications out around the start of August.

Rory and Jess Meet at the Market

JESS: I’m sorry, did I hear from you at all this summer? Did I just happen to miss the thousands of phone calls you made to me, or did the postman happen to lose all those letters you wrote to me? You kiss me, you tell me not to say anything . . . very flattering, by the way. You go off to Washington . . . then nothing. Then you come back here all put out because I didn’t just sit around and wait for you like Dean would’ve done? And yeah, what about Dean? Are you still with him? ‘Cause last time I checked, you were, and I haven’t heard anything to the contrary.

While popping into Doose’s Market to buy food for a second dinner after Friday Night Dinner (because the meal Emily provided was either insubstantial, or they were too upset to eat very much), Rory runs into Jess while shopping (he’s apparently buying one can of something). She lets him know she’s surprised and not exactly thrilled he found a girlfriend over the summer vacation, and Jess absolutely lets her have it.

Jess makes it clear he’s not going to put up with being badly treated, the way Dean often seems to allow. Rory kissed him, told him to keep quiet about it – as he says, not exactly flattering – then goes to Washington, not calling or writing to him in the interim (again, there seems to be some sort of fiction that Rory went straight to Washington from the wedding, which definitely didn’t happen, and couldn’t have happened). Then she comes back to Stars Hollow, clearly still with her boyfriend, Dean.

Jess doesn’t know that Rory tried to write to him while she was away, but didn’t know what to say, and that she tried to come to the festival in town without Dean, all dressed up, hoping to see him. But even if he did, I’m not sure it would radically alter his position. Rory still didn’t contact him, and she didn’t break up with her boyfriend – I think Jess is making it clear that he doesn’t want to keep flirting with Rory until she ditches Dean. Which is pretty honourable, considering how much cheating goes on in this show, with very little angst over committing it.

Note that Rory and Jess in this scene mirror Christopher and Lorelai earlier in the episode, with Rory taking the same position as her father – she wishes things could be different, but isn’t willing to do the work necessary to get there. Like Lorelai, Jess says that until things change, he’s not interested. Unfortunately, Rory resembles her father emotionally far too much at times.

When Rory comes out of the supermarket, Lorelai asks if she’s done (shopping), and Rory says angrily, “Oh, I’m done”. Needless to say, she is very far from being done with Jess!

Helmut Newton

PARIS: How are we going to get a professional photographer?

LOUISE: Helmut Newton is my godfather.

PARIS: Okay, sign him up – and tell him to leave the whips and chains at home.

Helmut Newton, born Helmut Neustädter (1920-2004), German-Australian fashion photographer whose black and white photographs were a mainstay of Vogue, Harper’s Bazaar, and other magazines. His photos were erotic and stylised, often with fetishistic or sado-masochistic overtones – hence Paris’ instructions not to include whips and chains. Clearly Newton is not really appropriate as a school photographer!

It is interesting to speculate how Helmut Newton became Louise’s godfather. Presumably one or both of her parents have a connection with the fashion world. At this stage of his life, Helmut Newton lived in Monaco, but spent his winters in Los Angeles.

Love Is in the Air

This is the song that Luke sings to Lorelai, in order to tease her about being asked out by Kirk. “Love Is in the Air” is a 1977 disco song by Australian singer John Paul Young, written by George Young and Harry Vanda, and released as the lead single from John Paul Young’s album Love Is in the Air. It went to #3 in Australia, and was a world-wide hit, going to #5 in the UK and #7 in the US, but most popular in Norway, Sweden and South Africa, where it went to #2. It went to #1 on the Billboard Adult Contemporary chart.

The song was featured in the 1992 Baz Luhrmann film Strictly Ballroom, remixed with a ’90s dance beat. Re-released as a single from the Strictly Ballroom soundtrack, it went to #3 in Australia, and was most popular in New Zealand at #2.

It is a bit surprising that Luke knows this song, and most likely watched Strictly Ballroom, which doesn’t seem like his sort of film. Maybe he went to it with a girlfriend?

Francie Ambushes Rory

Francie Jarvis, portrayed by Emily Bergl, turns up again early in Season 3. We first met Francie in the previous season, as the President of the Puffs, a supposedly powerful secret sorority at Chilton that Rory and Paris almost joined. It was a rather silly story line that went precisely nowhere, but we now discover it was just to set up this silly story line that goes nowhere in Season 3.

Francie is now the president of the senior class, and is using all her mighty influence … to get skirt hemlines raised an inch and a half. Apparently this requires all sorts of backdoor machinations, such as kidnapping Rory into a girl’s bathroom and making her fulfil Francie’s evil scheme! The evil scheme to get hemlines raised slightly.

Oddly, Francie never acknowledges that she knows Rory and Paris well enough to have begun the process of accepting them into the Puffs – something which went very, very wrong for everyone except Rory. Possibly this helps explain Francie’s antagonistic attitude towards Rory and Paris.

Note that Francie first speaks with Rory while looking in the mirror, to indicate duplicity and double dealings – not to mention that Rory is “through the looking glass”.

“Putting her on an iceberg”

RORY: Are you sure the first thing you wanna do in office is to get a ninety-three year old woman sacked?

PARIS: Hey, at least I’m not putting her on an iceberg and shoving her off to sea …

Paris refers to a stereotype of Eskimo culture where the elderly were put on an ice floe to die when they became a burden. Although some Eskimos did practice senilicide (the killing of the elderly), it was rare, usually only practised during famines, and there is no record of anyone being put out on the ice to die – simple abandonment was probably the most common method. In many cases, it may have been what we might refer to as assisted suicide. It is no longer practised in Eskimo culture, and hasn’t been for a very long time.

The idea of elderly Eskimos being pushed out to sea on ice floes might have come from the 1960 adventure film, The Savage Innocents, directed and co-written by Nicholas Ray, and based on the 1950 novel Top of the World by Swiss author Hans Ruesch. The film stars Anthony Quinn as an Inuit hunter – which is believed to be the inspiration for Bob Dylan’s 1967 song, “Quinn the Eskimo (The Mighty Quinn)”, successfully recorded by British band Manfred Mann in 1968.

In the film, the hunter’s mother-in-law is put on the ice to die, but is rescued soon after. In another scene, the hunter’s wife walks across the ice to commit suicide; a piece of ice breaks off and she briefly floats on the ice floe before drowning herself. The two scenes together may have suggested the popular idea of the elderly being set adrift on the ice to die.

Although Paris is made to seem a monster by getting rid of the librarian, she is ninety-three years old, and is in intensive care during this episode! Surely it is time for her to retire, on health grounds? I don’t feel as if Paris is being that unreasonable here.

Soup for Breakfast

LUKE: It’s the third day in a row you’ve ordered soup for breakfast.

Because she has a cold, Lorelai has ordered chicken noodle soup and mashed potato for breakfast at the diner. Mashed potato is soft and easy to eat, even with a sore throat, while chicken noodle soup is well known as a home remedy for colds, clearing nasal congestion and providing nutrition and hydration at the same time. I have never heard of anyone eating them for breakfast though, even when ill, and I would have thought it wasn’t a good idea to go out to breakfast when you have a cold, spreading your germs in a place where people eat.

“Your father and I were shocked and upset”

EMILY: Your father and I were shocked and upset … You didn’t give us five minutes to digest the news … You simply dumped it on us and walked out. I hardly think that’s fair.

In fact, Lorelai attempted to give them the news about Christopher briefly and undramatically. Emily insisted on dragging all the details out of Lorelai so that she and Richard could attack her, then Richard went off in a sulk. You can’t really blame Lorelai for not sticking around for any more.

It is Emily who is not being fair at this point.