Application Anxiety
Rory's Harvard application arrives, and people from Harvard come to Chilton to talk about their strict requirements. Lane is writing an ad to find a band that wants a drummer. Taylor wants to start a soda shop. Lorelai and Rory end up having dinner at the house of a Harvard alumnus. Lane meets Dave Rygalski. Dean wants to talk about how they'll deal with Rory going away to college.
Tropes:
- Anachronism Stew: Paris thinks their supervisor does this when he compares her "Charlie Rose on big screens" vision of the Harvard team interview to The Beatles at Shea stadium, because they didn't even have big screens in the 60's.
- Blatant Lies:
- Paris wasn't going to write an essay about Hillary like every other braindead teenager.
- Lorelai and Rory claiming to love sports. Or rather, that they "enjoy certain aspects of various sporting endeavors."
- Inverted when Carol thinks Rory is making it up, but Rory sincerely wanted to go to Harvard when she was four. Subverted, as she can't have known what it meant, but 20-year-old Lorelai certainly encouraged her.
- Bookworm: Rory only figures out what mythic creature Darren is talking about when he gives the hint that it is also the title of a novel by Robertson Davis.
- Brick Joke: Meta example. Ash, an alternative rock band from the 90's, is the oddball on Lane's list of required band interests in her ad, as the others are largely hard rock or punk bands from the 70's and early 80's. Ash's "Girl From Mars" plays in the background of the final scene of "Nick & Nora/Sid & Nancy."
- Call-Back: Rory tells the Springsteens about when Lorelai graduated from community college with an Associate's degree.
- Captain Obvious: Mr. Hunter told Paris the conference isn't a Beatles concert.
- Comically Missing the Point: Deliberately with Taylor's model of a soda shop with an out-of-proportion horse figurine.
- Embarrassing Nickname:
- Droopy Drawers when Rory was little and her drawers drooped.
- Trixie and Bambi McBimbo.
- Grammar Nazi:
- Rory keeps correcting Lorelai's use of alumnus/alumna/alumni.
- Luke takes issue with Taylor spelling it "shoppe."
- Gratuitous French: And Yiddish.
- Human Popsicle: Luke decides to sign up for cryonics so he can keep saying "no" to Taylor.
- Incest Subtext: Lorelai makes a joke about the Springsteen kids showering together. It gets awkward when Darren says they'll argue over the (chicken) breast as usual.
- Innocent Innuendo: Enforced by Lorelai when Rory tells her that "alumni," being the plural of both "alumnus" and "alumna," can be both male and female.Lorelai: Kinky!
Rory: (patiently) No, not kinky, just what it is. - Ivy League for Everyone: Everyone's kids seem bound for Princeton or Harvard. Subverted with Carol, who is a high school drop-out.
- No Sense of Personal Space: The Springsteen's daughter.
- Product Placement: Possibly C-span.
- Real Men Wear Pink: Subverted, as modern art isn't necessarily feminine, but Jackson gets teased for liking it anyway.
- Sarcasm-Blind: Kirk's tendency to take you at your word causes him to apply for a job at a fictional shop.
- Sarcasm Mode: Luke after yelling at Taylor for sending pretend customers.
- Self-Deprecation: Lorelai is well aware that she is not modest.
- Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness: Rory trying to row away from being accused of liking sports.
- Shout-Out:
- Lorelai and Rory can't believe The Brady Bunch ended up on a list of "50 Worst TV Shows."
- Bowie, AC/DC, The Animals, a-ha, and a number of other bands Lane is into get a mention.Rory: (reading) Drummer with strong beat seeks band into The Accelerators, The Adolescents, The Advents, Agent Orange, The Angelic Upstarts, The Agnostic Front, Ash… you went alphabetically.
- William Faulkner and Sylvia Plath were influences on Rory.
- Rory tells Lane to rewrite her ad with the words "Wax on, wax off."
- Lorelai thinks they should send Harvard the photo of them putting their faces through the carved-out holes of Johnny Bravo and Spongebob Squarepants.
- Lane has to listen to The Ramones to make cuts.
- Hillary Clinton is everyone's essay topic.
- Paris wants the cafeteria to look like the stage on 60 Minutes.
- The Beatles at Shea stadium.
- Emily misnames 2000's celebrities the Brat Pack.
- Kate Hudson has the nerve to want to go to college.
- According to Lane you can draw a straight line from Yes to Jethro Tull to The Jam to Nirvana.
- Lorelai jokes about Rory giving up on Harvard and forming a girl band with her and Lane, like Bananarama.
- Lane finds it scandalous that a caller doesn't know that Kim Deal was in The Pixies before The Breeders.
- Luke wants to be buried next to Ted Williams.
- Darren Springsteen is not related to Bruce.
- Lorelai's pumpkin joke sounds like a Dr. Seuss novel.
- Darren's art collection includes Hockney, Kline, Diebenkorn, and Zoltan Kemeny.
- Rory reads, not Leo Tolstoy or Ivan Turgenev, but Nikolai Gogol's Dead Souls.
- There is a lot of talk about William Shakespeare around the dinner table: Macbeth, Henry IV, and The Merry Wives of Windsor.
- The Springsteens love the Kennedys.
- The Manticore is also a mythological figure.
- Lorelai doesn't know when Germany won the Franco-Prussian war, but she can reference They Might Be Giants.
- Carol, the eldest daughter listens to Tom Waits and mildly stalked him once.
- Lane wears a Dead Kennedys t-shirt. She thinks it's a drag that Jello Biafra is no longer their vocalist, but has been replaced with that kid from The Courtship of Eddie's Father.
- She wonders if the next thing is Urkel joining the Wu-Tang Clan and Malcolm in the Middle fronting for the Butthole Surfers.
- Take That Me: Harvard admission officers don't seem to like fans of Harvard University.
- Teen Pregnancy: Lorelai's gets passed over.
