Jmunney's Blog

Season Analysis: Given 30 Rock’s nature as a well-oiled joke factory, it was a pleasant surprise that it spent its final season wrapping up all its character arcs in the most emotionally satisfying ways possible.

“Last Lunch”
If the finale of 30 Rock had a thesis statement, it was represented by the scene of Liz talking with Tracy at the same strip club they visited in the pilot.  These characters are going their separate ways, just as they are going their separate ways from viewers.  They may promise to reunite with each other, and they may really mean it, but life gets in the way, and so those promises do not always work out.  Liz Lemon does mean it when she makes that promise, despite all the grief that Tracy Jordan gave her when they were working together.  Her sincerity, gratifying though it is, may do nothing to make a reunion any more likely.  So that is why she tells him that she is going to miss him, and she tells him as hard as she possibly can.  We already miss you, 30 Rock, and it sounds like you miss us, too.

Season Analysis: 30 Rock is starting to repeat itself, but it is also making funny out of the fact that it is repeating itself, which is kind of a good thing.

“Leap Day”

“Real life is for March.”

30 Rock was particularly enamored of holidays in Season 6.  Certainly, holiday-themed episodes are nothing out of the ordinary when it comes to television, with most shows having Christmas-themed episodes and many often covering Thanksgiving and Halloween as well.  But 30 Rock did not premiere until January, so it could not cover those perennial favorites, but it was able to take on the classic Valentine’s Day as well as the not-quite classic St. Patrick’s Day, and it even managed to spruce up one episode with a fake movie trailer for Martin Luther King Day, a Valentine’s Day/New Year’s Eve-esque ensemble rom-com.  But the best holiday cheer was saved for a day that only comes around every four years: Leap Day, a magical extra day when you can do things you would not do on any other day.  Unless my childhood was just as deprived as Liz Lemon’s, I am pretty sure that February 29 is not actually celebrated by wearing blue and yellow (and poking in the eye people who don’t), dressing up as Leap Day Williams (who spends all other days besides Leap Day in the Marianas Trench), and trading candy for children’s tears.  If all those traditions were real, then that fake Jim Carrey movie would probably be a real Jim Carrey movie.  But much like Festivus emerging as a real thing thanks to Seinfeld, do not be surprised if come 2016, you suddenly feel the urge to put real life off until March and take a leap into something you otherwise never would have done.

“TGS Hates Women”

“Augh!  My period!  You’re all fired!”

Is Tina Fey the official voice of reason when it comes to women’s affairs today?  As perhaps the biggest female name in comedy today, she is certainly in a position to be a major influence on the representation of women in a field that has often been characterized as a boys’ club.  So by taking on the article from the Jezebel blog that criticized The Daily Show’s hiring of Olivia Munn with the storyline of “TGS Hates Women,” she made it clear that this sort of thing is a complicated issue.  Liz Lemon hires a female writer in an attempt to assuage criticisms of TGS as misogynistic.  But it blows up in her face in more ways than one, and all TGS is left with during Tracy’s absence are sketches about Hilary Clinton, Amelia Earhart, and Wonder Woman getting their period at inopportune times, which Liz tries to characterize as “ironic re-appropriation[s],” and they really are, whether they were meant to be or not, considering how absurdly nonsensical they are.  At least they come off as ironic to viewers, as 30 Rock consistently represents TGS as a hopelessly dumb show.  Meanwhile, Jack competes with Kaylee, Kabletown CEO Hank Hooper’s granddaughter, as he tries to position himself as the top candidate to succeed Hank as CEO.  Kaylee, as played by the prodigious Chloë Grace-Moretz, proves to be the most formidable competition Jack has ever faced in the area of corporate climbing.  Jack distracts Kaylee from succession by encouraging her love of marine biology, a love that she faked as a scheme to lead Jack back toward his love of marine biology.  Ultimately, once each figures the other one out, they lay down the law with each other, Kaylee making it clear that she is not above accusing Jack of giving alcohol to a minor and Jack making it clear that he is not above seducing Kaylee’s teachers for the sake of having them flunk her.

Next up: Fringe

“Don Geiss, America and Hope”

When Comcast bought NBC in real life, we wondered if this development would turn into a 30 Rock storyline.  In “Don Geiss, America and Hope,” we met Kabletown (with a “K”).  And we learned the secret of their absurdly successful company. (It has something to do with Fresh Ass Based on the Novel ‘Tush’ by Ass Fire.)  We also learned the big secret of Tracy Jordan, via a tell-all memoir that could only happen on a show like 30 Rock: Tracy’s former nanny revealed that Tracy has never cheated on his wife.  Life as charade has never been more gonzo.  We were also treated to the debut of the delightful Michael Sheen as Wesley Snipes.

Next up: Fringe