1990s
One Night at Vassar
This was the prospective video the Office of Admissions sent out in 1990 and 1991 to college applicants with their acceptance letter. I’ve saved it all these years and was about to put it up...when I find that Vassar threw it on YouTube a few months back. This is truly priceless.
The Simpsons (5 episodes)
Almost everyone seems to know about these references, which now are a running joke/character point across all 30+ years of this show’s run. My understanding is that there was a relation to the college among the writing staff, and some jokes leaked out into a few episodes. The standard joke was for Lisa, as the know-it-all, to want to go to Vassar, though there are some unusual characterizations of the Seven Sisters here as well — Vassar is pegged as being a place for radical, non-conforming hippies.
Law & Order (9 episodes + 1 from Law & Order: SVU)
There must have been some grads among the writers’ of this long-running NY-based show. Here’s a bunch of quick shots of the Vassar grads who have populated the L & O world...victims, friends, witnesses, and people of interest to the investigators.
Thanks to Eric Black ’94, Bronwen Pardes ’95 and Jim German for the tips.
Designing Women
Another iconic ’80s sitcom. Vassar as character point to reference a place where well-bred and intelligent women attend.
Thanks to Christine Beers for the tip.
Women & Men: Stories of Seduction (The Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt)
This was a made-for-HBO movie of three famous love stories. Mary McCarthy—one of the college’s more famous alumna–has her story treated here with Beau Bridges discussing his wife with the woman he hopes to be his mistress as they cross the country on a train. Vassar as character point for smart, radical, and worldly.
Thanks to Jim German for the tip.
Quantum Leap
Our first science-fiction entry—but not one set in the future (see Futurama and Babylon 5). The show’s concept is that the hero travels through time and embodies someone in that time period—so all the other characters see him as the person they know. This episode is set in the 1950s on a luxury vessel, and Vassar is, as it so often is, a character point for wealthy and well-bred.
Thanks to Paige Swartley ’92 for the tip.
Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead
This is also quite well-known—Christina Applegate has faked her resume in order to get a job at a fashion house. Her Vassar status is part of what gives her entrée, and makes the boss believe she can do great work. A later line seems to imply that the boss may herself be a Vassar graduate. A character point for intelligent, determined, and capable.
Grand Canyon
Thanks to Evelyn Starr for this incredible catch—those are Vassar running shorts and you can see it if you pause it at just the right point. Evelyn says she read an article where Mary McDonnell pointedly wanted the character to be a graduate, and ordered the shorts from the bookstore herself.
The Portrait
An obscure movie adaptation of the Pulitzer-finalist play, Painting Churches, about an artist daughter and her aging parents. Great cast here, and a decently funny if out-of-date riff on the stuck-up Vassar girl.
A Woman Named Jackie
Three scenes from this TV movie on the life of Jackie Kennedy meet her at different stages of her life: just out of college, being courted by the Kennedys, and as the First Lady.
Beverly Hills 90210
This was the hot show during my time as a student—large crowds gathered in the dorm multi-purpose rooms to watch and be snarky every week. Andrea was the only character in the crew with half a brain, so Vassar seems a logical school for her to be interested in. Vassar as character point for a place for smart people.
The State
This was a sketch comedy show from the mid-90s with a lot of great people. Its very first episode had a Vassar joke, as a marker for "high-class." Plus it sounds funny.
Shining Through
An unusual contrary, negative viewpoint about Vassar. (See also Coming Soon.) Melanie Griffith in this World War II drama is not a member of the upper class; here she is confronted with being shut out of a job because of that and she throws back the line about the quality of Vassar students into the interviewer’s face.
Blossom
Another family sitcom with a smart daughter looking at colleges. Vassar makes the list of possible options. Vassar as character point for smart, as we’re seeing more often in this period. With a little twist in a joke around how expensive it is. (See also Gunsmoke about Vassar’s cost.)
Thanks to Davida Sidrane and Christopher Deutsch for the tip.
Mystery Science Theater 3000
This show has a curious science-fiction premise, where Earth's worst movies are screened by the bad guys for our hero and two robots. They would then make snarky comments about the movie. (And the movies are all real, Z-grade schlocky films.) Two episodes feature the crew making a Vassar joke; the first is while viewing a film called Warrior of the Lost World--I don’t have the strength to figure out the movie’s whole premise...especially since the Vassar joke is in one of the snarky comments, not the movie itself. Vassar sort of as character point for a place for a strong female. And the second is while watching The Horror of Party Beach.
Thanks to Whitney Freemesser ’95 for the tip
Highlander
A science-fiction series based off the camp-classic movie, about a group of immortals who fight each other with swords until only one is left. In the course of this episode, the hero meets a wealthy businessman with a Vassar daughter. Vassar as character point for a smart and wealthy woman.
Dolores Claiborne
Another famous one, based on a Stephen King novel. King’s sons were going to Vassar around this time and Vassar starts showing up in his books in the period—sometimes outright, sometimes more coded (Needful Things had a character named Mr. Jewett). The character point was retained for the screenplay, but this is far from the typical presentation of a Vassar girl—an angry, embittered, dark, jittery, and heavily self-medicated woman who went to Vassar on scholarship.
The Daytrippers
A funny indie movie starring Hope Davis ’86. Davis is looking for her husband, who’s lied to her about his whereabouts; she tracks him to a party and finds a drunk Marcia Gay Harden. Vassar as character point to no real purpose, except perhaps as an in-joke since Davis is actually an alum.
Thanks to Jim German for the tip.
The Substance of Fire
The film, based on the play by Jon Robin Baitz, follows three children of a Holocaust survivor and book publishing magnate who is beginning to lose his mind to dementia. In the play, the younger son is established as teaching landscape architecture at Vassar; here, played by Timothy Hutton, it's not said, though his sister (Sarah Jessica Parker) does appear in a Vassar T-shirt (with odd colors).
Living Single
An African-American-led sitcom from the 90s and one of the few instances of Vassar in African-American-themed material. Vassar here as a character point for class distinctions; not really a joke, but setting up toward one.
Friends
One of the most iconic sitcoms of the ’90s, and no great surprise to find a Vassar reference here since Lisa Kudrow ’85 had a starring role. Our scene doesn’t feature her, though. It’s a bit of a strained joke about Vassar and football.
Kingpin
We’ve seen little digs at Vassar being a hotbed of sexual activity, but here that idea is writ large. Woody Harrelson has a rubber prosthetic hand and is known on the competitive bowling circuit as “Rubberman”; this fact has attracted a new sponsor.
Thanks to Soyon Im ’91 for the tip.
Saturday Night Live
See the separate post for a reference in the 1977 season as well.
Several episodes in the 90s and 2010s of this classic, long-running comedy sketch show had Vassar jokes. Four complete sketches are here, though unless you’re a fan you might want to skip past the first one (the line is a throwaway in the first minute. Steve Buscemi’s “Judge Judy” sketch and the Aladdin parody are funnier. And the Weekend Update segment in 2019 is a bit of a weird comment.
Thanks to Erica Slutsky ’05 and Christian Bagin ’91 for the tips.
Dharma & Greg (4 episodes)
A character point for the wealthy, stuffy mother of Greg, a modern-day Mrs. Howell. What’s fun here, though, is that one of the episodes mentions one of Vassar’s oldest traditions—either we had a graduate on the writing staff or they really did some research for the character!
Thanks to Liz Gates ’97, Prof. Denise Walen, Jim German, and Randy Nathan ’79 for the tip.
The Nanny
Another prominent ’90s sitcom, about a wealthy, highbrow family and their lowbrow, Queens-born nanny. Nothing too special, just Vassar as a character point for a place for elite girls.
Thanks to M. Davis for the tip.
Poltergeist: The Legacy
Sort of a supernatural NCIS, investigators in this episode of this cable horror show (in both senses) are looking into reports of witchcraft at an elite boarding school. One of the teachers was particularly creepy in an interview and here the team is pulling her background.
Cupid
A high-concept, low-rated show (remade a decade later) where Jeremy Piven believes he is—and might actually be—Cupid, sent to earth without his godly powers. To return to Olympus, he must unite 100 couples in love, but just through his bro-y charm and the power of Bartending.
Babylon 5
One of two scenes in the collection set far in the future. Good to know Vassar’s still around in the 23rd century! (And the 31st; see Futurama.)
Thanks to Miriam Vega and Jon Cruz ‘05 for the tip.
Thursday
An obscure attempt to copy Pulp Fiction but without being nearly as intelligent or funny. Our scene, though, offers a somewhat unusual take on a Vassar girl. Vassar as character point for a hard-partying grifter.
Jane Austen’s Mafia!
This is a broad Godfather parody from the folks who made Airplane! and The Naked Gun. It may not be entirely clear in the clip but the film is set, as was The Godfather, in the late ’50s/early ’60s, and so there were no men at Vassar.
Spin City
The show is about the mayoral staff in New York’s City Hall. There’s not too much to say here; it’s just a character point for a smart, ambitious career woman.
Thanks to Jason Evans ’94 for the tip.
Coming Soon
This was a teen sex comedy positioned as a more intelligent American Pie that played in one theater for one week. A major plotline follows a number of Manhattan prep-school girls applying to college. Here, one young woman gets news she doesn’t like; a contrary view, to be sure!
Suits
Another small indie film, but noteworthy here for being the first time Vassar is a character point for a gay man. (There’s also one in the Law & Order group, but this came first.)
If You Believe
A TV movie about a woman who gets a bump on the head and goes back in time to meet her younger, more carefree and not-embittered self. This first of the two references is from the movie’s first sequence, where we see the lead character at the Christmas dinner table at different ages. Later, her seven-year-old self cheers her on and references some of her life's high points. Ultimately, just another character point for a smart, ambitious and career-minded woman.
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