The Moth Chase

Like the cheesy blasters that open the new season, this episode had a little bit of everything, in that random, coherent 30 Rock way we love. Under the banner of “the recession” and “reaching out to the middle” the cast sets off on various explorations to get in touch with their roots. Jenna dons a cowgirl outfit to open off-season tennis season and Tracy sets out to reconnect with the people, if he can remember which elevator doesn’t scare him. Both explorations land them in Kenneth’s picket line, who has taken to the streets, not to win back overtime, but to defend his honor and honesty.

There were many priceless moments: Pete’s wife welcoming Liz into their love making, Jack drinking cough syrup in Kenneth’s kitchen, the picket line’s leading chant (“What do we want? To get you lunch! When do we want it? When its convenient to you!”).

But it remains to be seen, at least for me, how 30 Rock is going to live into the post-Bush, post-election year era. Maybe the recession will be enough to get them through, but so much of the humor is a baiting of red/blue and in this particular moment it seems like the one thing we need more than anything is to move beyond that self-protective move.

I wonder, then, if we need to stick with Kenneth and his religious garments knotted in a twist…or at least with Jack’s last line to Kenneth: “Massage it, Kenneth.”

Posted by Kathryn.

—

Any episode that includes Will Arnett is bound to make me laugh – especially when his new rise to power is accomplished through a chatty relationship with the Obama girls (“what?! you have to invite everyone to your party? Even Zach S.?”). In general, this episode kept me laughing pretty consistently: Jack’s laser shield, Tina’s retainer, the exchange between Jack and Devon during the ‘weaked’ public hearing,Jack’s story about mountain climbing with Connie Chung, Jenna’s supernatural wearwolf Icelandic thriller with a nod to Twilight and True Blood… and that is without even getting into Tracy’s subsidized erotica habits.

Compared to last week’s episode, this was a marathon of witty banter and a return to the fast-paced, watch-that-again-so-you-don’t-miss-anything humor that makes 30 Rock some of the smartest comedy on TV. But compared to earlier seasons, it still fell a little flat to me. There isn’t anything particularly new about this humor and the characters are starting to live out the same repetitive patterns, which, while funny, start to feel a little tired – kind of like the microwave. You can add four doors and a transistor radio design, but no one’s going to buy it anymore.

And let’s not forget the running gag throughtout the entire episode – the plot line that connects it all – Liz’s long awaited book Dealbreakers. Did anyone else find it a little disconcerting that Liz is forced to write herself into a porno simply because she made some hilarious and pretty obvious observations about the unattractiveness of borishness? The show can take jabs at just about everything sacrosanct, but proto-feminist critique, that is just a joke that deserves to be punished. Even Liz doesn’t really defend herself, just proving once again that she is exactly the butt of all angry man-repellent feminist jokes she is set up to be. A woman who says the obvious about juvenile male behavior? That’s a dealbreaker.

Still, kind of like Jenna who only needs to be portrayed by the more attractive porn star to come back to Liz with open arms, it doesn’t take that much to keep me coming back.

posted by Kathryn.

****************

All God’s Children are Terrible: Transcending the liberal/conservative binary

Ok, sometimes the fact that I’m a dorky academic is going to come across in my choice of blog-post titles, but Lemon really said it right, all God’s children are terrible – New York, Georgia, and the various versions of sexcriminalboat all produce folks who manipulate people to get ahead at work or get into gay Hallowe’en, who try to kill Betty White or Jimmy Fallon, who are prejudiced and sexist, and who are willing to eat a baby horse or a blind guy’s hot dog.

I’m really enjoying this season’s theme of searching out the ‘real America’. Because the real America includes manipulators and true friends, racism, sexism, homophobia and genuine civil rights advancements that might come too slowly, but inevitably come, brilliant New York chefs and delicious sandwiches, and, for those of us who are lucky, gay Hallowe’ens that come once a year. 30 Rock isn’t just a surprisingly successful liberal show (SNL manages that most weeks) – it’s a surprisingly successful show that more than often manages to transcend the liberal/conservative divide by poking fun at both and, even more interestingly, by exposing the dependence of both on each other for their own definitions. We’re all a little bit blue and a little bit red in the 30 Rock world.

And so Liz’s worldview is, to me, a genuine vision of hope. Hers is a world in which our differences are overcome through a shared love of something truly simple: transcendence happens in the perfect sandwich, and thank God for it.

Other great moments – the full close up shot of Liz’s sensible, tan bra in the opening scenes; Kenneth declaring that it’s the usual things that make him laugh – two hobos sharing a bean, lady airline pilots; Jenna’s “No more making fun of me when I misuse dated cultural references, ok? Are we cowabunga on this?”; and of course, Jack’s description of San Francisco as The People’s gay public of drugafornia (although, btw writers, I think Calipornia would have been even better!).

Posted by Natalie

—

The Code of the Robot

Natalie and I are both flying to Montreal today for the annual academic conference in our field. Since I am behind on a dozen things, including packing and finding my passport, I will offer a few reflections and questions, instead of a full-out post:–while ostensibly the episode was governed by Jack’s day of slumming it with the common man (thanks to a bad case of bedbugs, or as Kenneth tells us Ozark Kisses or Blue Ridge Quilt Ticklers) – another part of the search for the real America – I found his flip-flop ideology of robot verses caring human to be much more salient commentary on American life. As unemployment hits a 26 year record high, lots of Americans – employees and bosses – are caught in exactly this dichotomy: obeying the law of the bottom line with cool, calculating rationalism, or responding to the real human needs, lives, and emotions that are caught up in the economic crisis. In the end it is the caring robot, the only one who extends a helping, if silver painted hand, to ostracized Jack, whose code of conduct is praised. Though hiring him as the new TGS actor only emphasizes what kind of syncophantic bubble Jack still lives in, no matter how many Woodsman’s Companions accompany him through the day.

–I choked on my Pad Thai when they pulled a Susan Boyle. Though I am really glad we didn’t have to watch the grand finale, removed underwear and all.

–Jack asking for assistance transferring to the 4 train: painful, over the top, but oh so accurate in its portrayal of the “look the other way” dynamic. I am amazed at myself, and other metro riders, when a homeless person starts making a plea for money and we all turn up our iPods, look more firmly at the print of our books, or stare blankly ahead. We might as well physically recoil.

–dot.com’s acting turn – I so wish I could have seen that performance of The Seagull.

Posted by Kathryn

—

This is what I love about 30 Rock: the central romance, the ‘Ross and Rachel,’ ‘Jim and Pam,’ push and pull of ‘are they gonna get together/ aren’t they gonna get together?’ is reframed in Liz and Jack.  No one wants them to hook up, but watching the beautiful development of their friendship fills us with the same emotions – indeed, better versions of these emotions – than we get watching other intimate relationships unfold on sitcoms. Liz and Jack offer us a new version of the sitcom-romance – something in which the the pleasure, excitement, desire and care is all about deep friendship rather than sexual attraction.  When Jack moves the candle so Liz’s sleeve doesn’t catch on fire; when we realize that both of them can finish each other’s sentences and anticipate what the other will do; when Jack realizes not only that he wants to make Liz’s life better, but also that it’s always been her who he wants to do business with; and when Liz realizes that Jack’s not trying to screw her over in so doing…these moments of lovely intimacy and friendship caught me up more than any canned primetime romance has managed in recent years.

This is a key narrative of the sexual revolution.  As women have entered professional domains previously dominated by men, it’s not necessarily opposite-sexed romances that have come about, but rather opposite-sexed friendships.  I have loved watching this type of relationship unfold over these four seasons of 30 Rock, and I for one find it not only refreshing, but beautiful.

But workplace equality and politics aside, last night was a pretty hilarious episode.  We had classic 30 Rock moments of playful self-referentiality with Jack reminding Liz that successful acting only requires that you “hit your mark, stay in your light and do the same thing every take for continuity,” only to cut away to LIz wearing a red scarf and drinking a coke, both of which disappear in the next shot.  We have a fabulous new actor, whose Canadianness, I love: “All right hosers, I want all 12 of us fighting for every meter on all three downs or we’re gonna make this a boxing day the prime minister will never forget” – genius!  And, of course, Kenneth’s declaration of feeling about as useless as a mom’s college degree.  There has been some talk over the last few weeks that 30 Rock has had a hard time finding it’s stride this season.  If last night’s episode doesn’t shut such rumors up, I don’t know what will.

Posted by Natalie.

—

This whole episode, despite its “green week” subplot, was all about family values and family possibilities. Tracy confronts the constraints and limitations of having children (at least, of taking his son to work), which basically boils down to not being able to tell filthy stories about strip club antics. When Jack watches the Geiss family implode and decides to cut off the prospect of posterity by having a vasectomy, his anxieties fuel Tracy’s discontents and they go in for the procedure together. Meanwhile, Liz takes another gem of advice from Jack and starts a series of sabotage attempts to drive her upstairs neighbor out of his apartment so she can buy it and begin plotting for the family she may or may not ever have.

In perfect 30 Rock style we get a hodge-podge of reasons for reproducing – fulfilling domestic fantasies (complete with astronaut husbands), seeing one’s self in one’s posterity and the pride and joy of being wanted, needed, and loved by a Tracy, Jr., balancing domestic chaos with the introduction of a double x chromosome – all of them laced with petty individualism and self-interest. Except that throughout the episode we see the 30 Rock office functioning as an alternative family, forcing its members to learn from each other (Jack and Tracy, Jr., Jack and Tracy, Liz and Frank), give up some of their desires to accommodate others (make room for more sun tea), and help each other out in times of crisis (Dot.com taking one in the knees from Liz’s gay hipster cop roommate). While Tracy, Jack, and Liz each plot and scheme to arrange for their biological posterity, they are emeshed in another kind of family, which is giving them far more than they even know how to desire from their imagined nuclear family bliss. The 30 Rock family might be like check in at an Italian airport – anything goes – but at least it is taking them somewhere.

Other thoughts: I loved the riff on the Cosby family. Since it was one of the only shows I was allowed to watch as a child, it did some serious damage searing my mind with images of domestic harmony, wit, and banter. And yet, like Tracy, I still want to believe! My favorite single line: Kenneth walks into Jenna’s dressing room and she says “I’m doing my Kegels. What is it?” Since I am about to head to pregnant lady yoga and do several rounds of Kegels with a group of random strangers, I laughed pretty hard at that one.

Posted by Kathryn.

—

Your Hair is… Fine.

I haven’t really gotten into the bash-30 Rock frenzy of the season so far, though I will concur that this season has been a lot more touch and go than earlier seasons. Last night, however, was just fantastic! I laughed in genuine delight and humor consistently throughout the episode and I felt like we were watching the characters in all their shallow, two-dimensional glory, shine. Perhaps my favorite, slid-by moment was the high def camera gag revealing Pete as a shriveled naked man. Why naked? I don’t know. But it so worked!And Liz’s ultimately truncated journey from writer to performer was actually incredibly funny, even if I could have done without the Gollum-esque split personality speech at the end. What made that whole storyline work for me was the way it actually built on the last few episodes, where we have watched the show hone in on the Jack/Liz relationship. In the end it is about Jack making money and not losing face in a showdown with Devon Banks: Jack’s most convincing and effective speech is when he finally appeals to “old Liz” to talk some sense into “performer Liz” so that he can make some cash. His awkwardness around performer Liz and his uncertainty how to relate to her only drove home how much he thinks of old Liz as an equal and collaborator. Her devolution into a Jenna-like character upsets the balance of their relationship, and in the end restoring that balance is more important to both of them than successfully launching “Dealbreakers.”

We learned more about the precarious balance of relationships in the Frank-becomes-Liz side story. The looks of genuine humor, delight, and derision on the faces of the other writers when Frank comes in wearing a cardigan and square glasses, spouting angry rants at his co-workers about their irresponsibility mirrored my own. The moment successfully made fun of Liz, Frank, the whole writers block, while at the same time highlighting the genuine stresses of responsibility that drive Liz’s personality and make her the successful counter-weight to Jack.

Perhaps my favorite line from the episode: “That’s why people come to Yakov’s Nubian Bling Explosion.”

This is how I cry now.

Posted by Kathryn.

—-

The spirit of Christmas continues to come early this year, with Christmas specials on both 30 Rock and The Office. It is no easy task reinvigorating a worn out theme and overplayed tropes, much less doing so with humor, but last night’s episode of 30 Rock did more to get me in the spirit of the season than a dozen carols pumped over mall speakers ever can. The theme of the episode, in ways obvious and oblique, was gift giving.  Coming from a family where our parents gave up shopping for us years ago – we each get cash, buy our own gifts, wrap them, put them under the tree, and open them in front of everyone on Christmas morning – the idea of “perfect gift giving” totally intrigues me. What does it mean to give someone the priceless gift in a Mastercard age? How do we prevent the pleasures of creativity and spontaneity from being overrun by the threat of competition?

The secret seems to be in attention – knowing your givee well enough to meet them where they are. Liz and Jack’s exchange gave us this lesson most obviously, and I loved Liz’s near combustion trying to come up with the most “creative gift” (since creativity is, for her, like a friendly bird that embraces all ideas and shoots out its eyes all kinds of beauty). In the end, she managed to come up with a gift that gave Jack exactly what he wanted and, unbeknown to her, gave Kenneth the priceless gift of restored faith in a vengeful God. Jack’s carefully presented playbill? ticket stub? old poster? from her high school performance of “The Gender Blind Crucible” seemed thoughtful, but a bit too material, in comparison.

But Danny’s gift to Jenna – purposefully botching the Christmas carol duet – was equally thoughtful in terms of knowing what she wanted/needed and sacrificing his own moment in the spotlight to give it to her. While I absolutely loved every moment of Julianne Moore’s south Boston accented screen time, I worried at first that she was just the set up to Liz’s gift giving glory. Then I realized that she gave Jack a gift that even Liz’s bomb threat couldn’t perfect – the rare opportunity to see himself as the younger, more idealistic man he used to be, pining away for his unattainable high school drama co-star. That quick flash of homesickness might have been the best gift of all.

The season started out playing up themes of “the real America” and “American values” and while there was some humor in the appeal to the heartland, the last few episodes have done more to explore this theme than the best blue state/red state jokes ever could. You only have to watch ten minutes of advertising at this time of year to be overwhelmed by the sentimentality of commercialized displays of affection. Cruel, petty, twisted, and silly though our cast may be, they manage to crawl in, under, and through the schmaltz of the season to something like care for each other that pays attention to the very unique bundle of imperfections they each are.

Round up of favorite lines/moments: Danny to Pete: “I’m sorry are you being sarcastic? Canadians have a hard time recognizing it because we don’t have a big Jewish population.” Kenneth: “A picture of President Obama – for the Muslims.” Tracy to Kenneth: “That’s what religion is – a bunch of rules and rituals to manipulate people.” Jenna to Danny: “So I’d have to sit on every Santa’s lap in the Bakersfield area and scream ‘you ought to be ashamed of yourself Travis!’”

And remember, if you can’t think of the perfect gift, just fingertag someone.

Posted by Kathryn.

************************

A Clean Break and Those Dirty Thirties

Dear Natalie,

Perhaps we all just needed a nice little New Year’s break, but 30 Rock’s 2010 hour long debut had me snorting out my honey nut cheerios as I was watching on DVR this morning. Maybe it was just one of those weeks, but I needed a few belly laughs and last night’s first episode - Klaus and Greta - provided. From hallucinogenic, vomit-inducing Phoenician wine to a creepy pillow-loving James Franco, this episode had the relentless drive of earlier seasons and made me so grateful there was a follow-up episode on its heels. I’ll let you take over that discussion, but let’s start with a quick round-up.

The cast of TGS returns from their New Year’s holidays, recounting stories of relationships lost and begun: namely, Jack and all his guests imbibed the fumes of the aforementioned ancient toxic wine and spent the evening in a blissed out state of purging, literally and spiritually. Jack thinks that this evening’s purgations have left him free of the spell of his high school sweetheart Nancy Donovan, but discovers that he drunk dialed her at 3:30 on New Year’s morning. He enlists Kenneth (who proves his litheness over Jonathan with a wire hanger stunt) to help break-in to Nancy’s house while she and her husband are on vacation. While there, he discovers signs that Nancy and her husband may be on the rocks and begins to wonder if he has a shot with her. Meanwhile, Jenna is enlisted by James Franco’s agent to engage in a fake romance to waylay suspicions that James is in an obsessive relationship with a Japanese pillow doll. Jenna is in love with the attention, until she realizes that she might in fact want something more, um, real. Whereas James realizes that what he has with Kumiko-Tan is as real as it gets for him. Liz returns from the New Year having outed her cousin Randy, who shows up in New York to explore his new identity with “cool cousin Liz.” Liz totally lemons the situation by squarely suggesting they stay in and make nachos and see who can fall asleep the fastest. Aware that she is hypocritically advising Jenna to seize happiness but not doing so herself, Liz agrees to go out with Randy, where she meets James Franco and Kumiko-Tan and engages in a threesome we can only be glad is kept off screen.

The theme running through all these plot lines is of new beginnings and clean breaks – or rather, the difficulty of them. Liz, as usual, can see the good for everyone else, but has a hard time seeing it for herself (and when she does decide to seize the moment, she picks the weirdo with the Japanese pillow fetish). Jack tries to wash his hands of his pre-Christmas kiss with Nancy, only to discover that the ties forged in high school German class are not so easily broken (did you find Alex Baldwin speaking German incredibly sexy, or should I be embarrassed to admit that?). Nor are his own controlling habits as he tries to manage the possibility of this adulterous relationship through carefully orchestrated voice mails. Even James Franco abandons the PR campaign to protect his image, giving himself over to his true love and common-law pillow wife. And let me just say that I loved that 30 Rock didn’t give us Lars and the Real Girl - James’ object-love is not a necessary attachment as he negotiates more complicated relationships; he is perfectly happy to let it stay right at the level it is. The only characters who manifest any sign of change in the New Year are Jenna, who gives up her ploy for fame for the prospect of meaningful love, and Tracy, who begins what promises to be a longer exploration of his misogynistic treatment of women when he faces the prospect of having a daughter.

What I loved, and what I love in general about this show, are the ways the characters enable each other’s changes and each other’s comfortable falls back into old patterns. The new year isn’t so much about radical reinvention, as learning, a bit more, to rely on those around you to make it through, neuroses and all. I’ll leave it it to you, however, to talk about Jack and Liz’s competition for Danny’s affections in the second of last night’s episodes.

Favorite quotes of the episode: James Franco: “Objects are made by men and used for many purposes. But we never love objects.” James Franco to Jenna: “Your hand is like a pillow that’s been in the microwave.” Kenneth to Jack: “did you not learn your nation’s airport codes in high school?”

over to you,

K

—————–

Hey Kathryn,

Ok, first things first – no you should not be embarrassed to admit that Alec Baldwin speaking German is sexy!  Although I think it’s actually Jack Donaghy speaking German, not Alec Baldwin, that is truly sexy!  In fact, that’s one of the things I loved about that moment – that even Jack’s drunk dials are smooth, sophisticated, peppered with foreign language and performed while holding a snifter of some expensive looking single malt (unlike Liz’s drunk dials to Floyd that you may remember from season 2 that involved a couple of bottles of cheap chardonnay, that hilarious piled-on-top-of-the-head pony-tail she reserves for drunken episodes and casual sex, and screaming tears from the bathroom floor).

So the segue between these two episodes was Tracy deciding to add a woman to the entourage (and poor Sue finally gets some lines in the show, while also leaving me wondering what 30 Rock’s obsession with the German language really is – jokes about it pop up all the time!).  And in that we move from themes around the (in)ability to make clean breaks to the themes of gender and competition that 30 Rock does so well.

The final arrival of a manly man (please note: he’s Canadian…shout out to my home up North, it’s true – real men tend to be Canadian!) sends both Liz and Jack into a tizzy and, much as we love the beautiful friendship between those two, we get to see that it just can’t give them everything they need.  While Jack mocks Liz for her lack of femininity, she still can’t be a guy-friend for him.  And poor perimenopausal, getting-her-groove-back(for-the-first-time) Liz needs a booty call that Jack just can’t offer.

In a funny way, I actually saw their competition as an affirmation of their friendship – what it gives them, as well as its limits.  I’ve noted before on this blog that I get very nervous when I think they’re threatening a hook-up between Jack and Liz – that is the absolute last thing that should happen on this show, and even then it shouldn’t happen.  But sitcoms struggle when they can’t have that corny romantic plot – Jerry and Elaine on Seinfeld come close to escaping it, but even that relies on their previous romantic history.  And so to keep this friendship spark alive between Jack and Liz without delving into romance, I do think they need to play with the limits of their relationship, which they did perfectly last night.

And I do love this sexually awakened Liz – between the James Franco threesome, which was *awesome*, and her sexy role-play with Danny as the cop from CHIPS and a lumberjack…our girl is now a far cry from sex only on Saturday nights with the beeper king.  She’s not just doing it, she’s doing it in a somewhat kinky way…and she’s doing it with some ridiculously cute boys!  (Ok, so it’s a pretty creeped out version of James Franco, but still – way to hit that, Liz!).

Ok, other great moments: Lutz’s bra and his insistence that it’s not what you think, it’s just a garment to keep his boobs in place; Liz’s line, “women are allowed to get angrier than men about double standards” – I swear I had to repeat that one to myself 3 or 4 times before I totally got it…hilarious!; and Liz’s description of Madonna hanging on to her youth with her Golum arms.

Finally, Jenna’s attempt to grasp at youth was perfect.  I find Jenna so annoying at times, but then I still end up respecting Jane Krakowski’s courage to act such a pathetic role with such gusto.  Her ‘this is so tandem’ was dead on, as was her grip on the Twilight book and gum chewing – as if she were resorting to becoming a 12 year old rather than the 21 year old she wished to be.

And I can’t let this one pass from Klaus and Greta – JF’s delivery of the line “too provocative for America” – I don’t know why or how, but it totally took me back to his character in Freaks and Geeks…I don’t know how he performs his lines so hilariously and yet so cutely.  Pillow or not, he might just be the perfect guy for Liz!

K, can you believe it – next Thursday all our stories are back!  We’ll have new 30 Rock, The Office and Vampire Diaries.  Our Friday morning is going to be busy!

ox,
Natalie

********************

The New Face of Abstinence

Ok, let’s start by saying how brilliant Kenneth was last night!  How does he make an abstinence, gender-neutralizing sack look so teeth-baringly menacing?  Facing that hooded creature at a rally would put me off of sex for life!  But in the midst of his own alternative Valentine’s Day oddball practices, he also found time to give a little strange love to Jenna, reeling from the loss of her long-time stalker.  Perhaps this is why I love Kenneth so much – while his weird religious, traditional Southern country-folk upbringing (and continued existence) should make him the most closed-minded judgmental character on the show, he’s the one most able to love folks where they’re at, seeking to give them what they need in the most screwball versions of their own desires…even if those desires go by the name of Doug.

So I’m not sure who I was more excited to see: Dennis, Floyd or Drew…or Bon Jovi (why was he always a palm tree for Liz?).  For all the ways we laugh at Liz, she’s had three pretty great relationships that have met some form of her own romantic needs.  Floyd was obviously the best catch for her – sweet, smart, funny and totally in sync with her lifestyle…unfortunately wanting to live that lifestyle in the Cleve.  Drew was…well, Drew was freaking hot in a sweet, take him to your mama (so your mama can drool on him too) kind of way.  And Dennis, well, Dennis used to take her cheeseburgers in bed and wanted sex only on Saturday nights and even then only briefly…in his own way, a perfect match for Liz!  And I have to admit, the word “dummy” has started to sound quite affectionate to my ears.

Even so, in the end it was friendship that won out when it came to Liz’s needs, as Jack risked his newest Valentine (finally right wing, corporate Republican Jack gets a genuinely right-wing, corporate Republican lady!) to bail out a drugged-up Lemon.  And we were reminded of one of the facets of what makes the Jack/Liz friendship so lovely to watch unfold – as Avery mocked his phone excuses as too nonsensical to believe, I realized that’s what makes this friendship so great.  It is nonsensical!  It doesn’t make sense that this bigwig would befriend the producer/writer/creator of this silly little, totally not popular, drain of a show to the point of such deep caring.  And it doesn’t make sense that this flighty, but hilariously intellectual screwball writer would care so much about this guy in corporate.  There’s something ludicrous to their bond that reminds each one of us of the magic of some of our least explainable relationships…the mystery of what it is to care for someone with whom we’re not all that compatible but who teaches us a new way to live (even if it’s not a way we’d want to live).  Just as Kenneth blissfully skips along loving these crazy TGS kids in all their foibles, so too Liz and Jack love each other unconditionally.  And that this love never verges on the sexual is perhaps what makes it most magical of all!

Perhaps my favourite moment in the episode, though, was Lutz’s insistence on his fake girlfriend, Karen, for whom he had established an obviously fake web-site…something along the lines of www.jpluzt.com/girlfriend/karen/proof.  So perhaps I’m the only one who’s had a friend so pathetic that they pathologically lie about their life making up fake partners, jobs and hobbies (ok, I’ve actually had a couple!), but that’s really how it goes.  And there really is that mix of anger with them and occasional liking of them that Lutz’s colleagues experience with him.  It’s another nonsensical form of relationship that 30 Rock brilliantly brings into the light!

Posted by Natalie.

****************

Wanting to be book is not book

Fair advice from Jack to a desperate Jenna, not that it helped him in his endeavors to pick the ideal lady…as far as I’m concerned, Avery is the right choice, anyway.  She’s perfect for Jack, not least of all because she knows how to appreciate a party at which the Riddler might show up!  At least we know for certain that it’s not going to be Liz!  That hand touch to Jack’s face and giggle was perfect (plus Tina Fey recently promised in an Esquire article that they wouldn’t be hooking Jack and Liz up ever).  Much as I love Julianne Moore, her accent is getting on my last nerve, and Avery brings a breath of hilarious right wing humour to the show that I wouldn’t want to lose.  Nancy could never fit into the life Jack lives now…she doesn’t even seem to like sex all that much, whereas Jack once commented he views it as a contact sport.  Avery, on the other hand, is willing to entertain a grandmother fetish with moth-balls and peppermints.  Plus she’s willing to steal cufflinks off the secured body of a dead president.  So while the past might make this a tough call for Jack, the choice is clear to me – what do you think Moth Chase friends?  Nancy or Avery?  Who is better for Jack or, more importantly, which guest star would you like to see kicking it around NBC for a little longer.

While Jack’s lovelife is overwhelmed, to my mind Liz’s singleness might be taking up too much of center stage right now.  The storyline that women are disadvantaged and can’t have both love and a career feels old and unrealistic, especially considering that Liz seems to be consistently based on Fey’s own life, and Fey herself is happily married with children and has a wildly successful career.  It’s a plotline that could be funny if pulled out once in a while, but which just feels overdone and overwrought when we come back to it week after week.  Liz was never starved for dates – she’s dated a lot of great guys.  So why pretend that wasn’t the case now, as if she’s so incapable of meeting someone she has to go to the YMCA and share a wine and cheese social with a kids’ karate class?  It just feels like  30 Rock is missing the boat a little on this one.

And speaking of 30 missing the boat a little, the Conan/Khonani vs. Leno/Subhas allusions could have been funnier than they were too.  It was a great idea that didn’t quite get executed.  Rather than simply mirroring the NBC screw-up, I would have hoped for some further commentary that exposed something new, insightful and funny about it, and the janitorial race just didn’t get there.  Sure, it was funny!  But it didn’t give us new insight into an old story…which is the level of sophistication of humour that I’m used to seeing with this show.

Before I seem wholly negative, though – the evening did have a number of funny moments (so many of them from Avery!).  I love that Jack has a collection of 18^th century French erotica and Liz’s line, “there ain’t no party like a Liz Lemon party coz a Liz Lemon party’s mandatory” was so perfectly delivered it had me in giggles.  But it was the first episode of the night that was really funny – with Jack’s description of an athletic Liz looking like a prison weed dealer, to Liz’s “Mrs Doubtfire shimself” and the ongoing dealing with race issues – a black burglar on a Shield security commercial and a white judge on Law and Order.  The racial humour far excelled the gendered humour last night!

Of course, Liz’s competitive jazz number was fantastic and Will Ferrel’s cameo as the “Bitch Hunter” was amazing!  I think I would watch that show!

But please NBC – stop doing this two episodes in one night after weeks with nothing crap!

xoxo,
Natalie

************

Ok, that’s two weeks in a row that 30 Rock has brought us a little trans-humour.  Last week with the reference to Mrs. Doubtfire shimself, and tonight with Will Forte’s amazing turn as Paul the drag queen/Jenna Morony impersonator/luckiest shman in the world.  My LGTBQA vocabulary is quickly expanding (another favourite gender-neutral pronoun which hasn’t yet been used but, I kid you not, I once encountered in a hymn is Zhe – please, please Tina Fey, find a way to incorporate that one too!).

Forte was pretty amazing – although I really wished that the show hadn’t given away his big secret in a commercial aired during The Office!  The sly skulking around the studio and weird finger-padding weighing of Jenna’s jewelry (that’s such a gross sounding phrase) would have been much more entertaining had I not known where this plot was going.  Nevertheless, he is the perfect guy for Jenna because, as Liz put it, now she finally gets to love herself.  Weird narcissism aside, it’s pretty sweet to see Jenna happy, and even sweeter to hope that we’ll get more of McGruber!

The plot with Jack and the peacock got a little too weird (which is saying a lot when following the Jenna story!).  But it leads me to consider anew one of my favouite things about Jack – you can be a total genius in the business world, but be totally dumb when it comes to things like romance, reality and religion…he seriously thought that Don Geiss’ soul was living in the Argus?!  Sure, it’s a fun play to reference the greek myth of Argus, the giant turned peacock, much like the potential Geiss-clone.  But for the most part, this story only offered further insight into the emotional stunting of Jack’s own inner-life; well, that and his apparent desperate need for a father figure (please bring back Alan Alda!).  But I’ll forgive this over-the-top weirdness because it gave us Jack’s amazing slo-mo progression through the 5 stages of grief.  My goodness, that Alec Baldwin is one sexy mo-fo!

I’ve always loved the strange sexual tension/past between Liz and Griz – but it left me wondering what it is about this show that wants to end its seasons on multiples of three?  Last season we had the Mama Mia with Jack’s 3 dads.  This season is seems we’re working our way to Liz having a heck of a day with 3 weddings.  I don’t know if there’s a joke here that I’m just not getting, but I did love the play Liz did with threatening to launch into the famous Corinthians wedding passage by beginning with “Love is patient” but following it up with a modern spin of love also being weird, sometimes gross and always elusive.  I for one can’t wait to see her in a dashiki giving her woman of honour speech!

Sidenote: seeing as St. Paul wrote the original Corinthians passage, I couldn’t help but wonder if there was an intentional link to the naming of Jenna’s Paul – kind of a nod towards some of St. Paul’s outdated sexual ethics, and what his writing would have been like under a modern (drag queen) ‘Paul’…just a thought!

Best lines of the episode: Geiss’ secret Canadian family (there is definitely a Canadian in 30 Rock’s writing room!) and his even more secret attic family (I don’t even want to know); Griz’s description of him and Liz as the real Sam and Diane of 30 Rock; the very idea of Oklahoma being performed with large headed, turban wrapped white children and, whuck!, Jenna soaks her tampons in vodka!  Does that even work?  Any other ladies out there tempted?

Eeoowww.  Ok Moth Chase friends, what did I miss?  What were your favourite lines?  Do you want more Will Forte?  Will Liz make it into that Vietnamese size 2?

xoxo,
Natalie

***********************

Jack’s Indulgences (When It Rains, It Pours)

So I absolutely love the idea of Jack purchasing his way into a more powerful Heaven! Especially one that will let him commune from beyond the grave through animals!!  The image made Tracy’s words of wisdom – “if you want to make God laugh, make a plan” – that much more poignant.  Not only did Jack end up unable to control this world from the realm of the next, but he can’t even record the right tapes.  As Tracy has endeavored to have a daughter this and last season (a situation it is difficult to imagine), now we have to imagine Jack doing the same.  How sweet that it’s Liz he needs to turn to for help with this.  If you’re like your mother, you’ll need no advice…otherwise, Lemon.  In a sense, that moment solidified Liz as Jack’s number 2 – not in romance, but in the order to awesome ladies.  She might have an abnormal amount of body hair, but outside of perfection, it seems she’s the best model for womanhood as far as Jack’s concerned.

Indeed, Liz filled out the category of awesome ladies last night as she drew the attention of quite a few menfolk (that’s right – I said menfolk).  Paul Giamatti was looking rough, and that’s saying something!  But he was great – creepy, gross and the perfect embodiment of Liz’s new found sexual lure.  I mean, the guy’s been to Canada.  Twice.  And somewhere he has a waterbed on layaway.  What a catch!

Perhaps it’s Liz’ ability to find love that is most intriguing of all: love in her own way, not with a Japanese companion pillow, someone who impersonates her, a high-powered newscaster, or astronaut Mike Dexter, but with a unique set-up nonetheless.  The absent boyfriend who drops by seems perfect for Liz.  I love that she’s found her own Jeffrey like the Barefoot Contessa (shout out to my sister with whom I share many Jeffrey jokes – we both *loved* our own random, twisted senses of humour projected on our favourite tv lady!).  But will it last?  The whole “touched by a priest, but it’s ok”/”adoption list” count-of-three-admission of last week will surely return.  The idea of Liz (like Jack) needing to grow into a more mature form of romance is pretty intriguing.

What I’m left wondering, though, is how does someone get voted “most”?  Brilliant, Jack…his ability to really think of everything is what makes him so lovely, and will (maybe?) make him an excellent father!

What did you guys think?  Favourite moments?  Best lines?  Best piece of advice from a father to his son?

xoxo,
Natalie