30something

No week-long love fest of Tina Fey is complete without a discussion (however incomplete) of her hit-ish show, 30 Rock.

I received the first season DVD boxset for Christmas a few years ago. Already a raging fan, I begged my family to watch with me. Full disclosure: some of my family members remember my request differently, saying it was “casual” and “off-hand.” In any case, only my middle sister’s husband came to the family room to sit through an episode. He chuckled appropriately. And I’ve never forgiven my parents or sisters.

30 Rock (or, as Fey titles the related Bossypants chapter, “30 Rock: An Experiment to Confuse Your Grandparents”) is a show about the making a night-time live comedy show (a la SNL) AND about the adventures and mishaps of the show’s female head writer, one Liz Lemon, an exaggerated caricature of Ms. Tina Fey. Liz Lemon is a Mary Tyler Moore for a new, more sarcastic generation. And I am her target demographic. I mean, 30 Rock is a show about a prudish middle-aged single writer who likes hip hop and attended college on a competitive jazz dancing scholarship in the 90s. Like looking in a mirror (kind of).

For all of you who have not (yet) watched the show, it may come as consolation for your seemingly unexplainable oversight that Fey WAS trying to reach you, but … missed. She confesses in Bossypants that, “Though we are grateful for the affection 30 Rock has received from critics and hipsters, we were actually trying to make a hit show. We weren’t trying to make a low-rated critical darling that snarled in the face of conventionality. We were trying to make Home Improvement and we did it wrong.”

Since I can’t analyze, interpret or evaluate five seasons of wacky brilliance and “wrong Home Improvement” in any less than an eight hundred page tome (or six hours at a Denny’s), the scattershot approach is going to have to do. (Also, you’re going to have to buy every season on DVD.)

30 reasons I heart 30 Rock and/or some stuff you should understand about what the show MEANS and does well before you embark on a weekend-long viewing marathon. No, I don’t mind if you borrow my boxsets.

1. Since it’s a show about making a TV show, there are lots of meta, self-referential jokes about television. Also, lots of jokes about eating ham. For example, Liz Lemon buys herself an expensive wedding gown and calls it “ham napkin.”
2. Liz eats ham even in the shower. (It’s not a dealbreaker!)
3. Liz just likes to eat – microwaved donuts and sandwiches with special dipping sauce that menacing Teamsters deliver once a year. Plus most everything else.
4. She churns out catchphrases!
5. Back to food. Once, Liz Lemon sang about “Meat cat” and his “cheesy blasters” pizza treats.
6. Alec Baldwin is all that as Jack Donaghy, a G.E. executive who is “head of NBC’s East Coast television and microwave oven programming.”
7. In Bossypants, Fey writes more than once that Baldwin and his fame are the reason the show even got made.
8. The show frequently pokes clever fun of G.E., NBC’s parent company. In one episode, a scoundrel exec named Banks threatens to shut down the famed conglomerate. Jack Donaghy begs Banks to reconsider, reminding him, “This is G.E. we’re talking about!”
“It’s just G now,” Banks says with a smirk. “I sold the E to Samsung. Now they’re Samesung.”
9. (One time) when Liz decides to give up on dating and relationships, she adopts a cat and names it “Emily Dickinson.”
10. 30 Rock does guest stars like nobody’s business. Sometimes they play (bizarre versions of) themselves, such as James Franco, who is in love with a Japanese body pillow, Buzz Aldrin, who yells at the moon, and G.E.’s Jack Welch, who was, uh, head of G.E.
11. Sometimes the guest stars don’t play themselves. Matt Damon’s character is a regional pilot named Carroll. Salma Hayek is a sexy nurse. Oprah Winfrey plays an eighth grade student body president!
12. Carrie Fisher plays a washed-up comedy writer, Rosemary, who Liz admires for doing all the ‘political jokes’ on The Donny & Marie Show, who now lives in a bad neighborhood nicknamed ‘Little Chechnya.’
13. The show is populated with the best roster of secondary characters I’ve ever seen … on a show about making a late-night live comedy show. Liz’s ex-boyfriends alone could be their own VH1 special. For example, Liz’s old boyfriend Dennis “the dummy” Duffy enrolls himself in a mentoring program that pairs “at risk” adults with stable children.
14. Chris Parnell, an SNL alum (and we see lots of friendly SNL faces), brings to life the malpractice-prone Dr. Spaceman (pronounced spa-chem-en), who asks, “How important is tooth retention to you?” when suggesting a crystal meth diet.
15. 30 Rock churns out wordplay and punch lines so snappy you can practically hear the drum set’s bah duh bum after line deliveries.
16. Why aren’t you off watching 30 Rock right now???
17. An example. The human resource character who does all the sexual harrassment training is named “Jeffrey Weinerslave.” Donaghy carefully refers to him as “Mr. Vinerslav,” but Jeffrey corrects him. “No, it’s pronounced wiener slave.”
18. The Jenna Maroney character stars in a motion picture entitled The Rural Juror. Say that ten times fast!
19. The show also bubbles over with clever pop culture references. Where do I start? Seriously, WHERE do I start? (Or stop?)
20. For example, the Tracy Jordan character has two sons – they are named “Tracy Jordan Jr.” and “George Foreman.”
21. 30 Rock also provides important commentary about feminism and societal issues. No joke.
22. There are spiritual moments too.
23.30 Rock has perfected character flashbacks as a narrative device.
24. It has also perfected skillful, subtle product placement.
25. Despite the accolades, Emmy awards and reef sharks in the hallway, 30 Rock and Fey do not rest on their laurels – They’ve done a live episode, an hour long ep, and even show within a show within a show, Bravo’s The Queen of Jordan.
26. Pretty much my only complaint is that 30 Rock is occasionally unrealistic. (And that it’s ending next year.) I mean, Liz’s retainer wouldn’t STILL be at the Air & Space Museum twenty years later, would it? And there’s no way a human woman could get ready for an ex-boyfriend’s wedding in 20 minutes and still look so ravishing.
27. Here’s something that isn’t a criticism: the show is absurd. It’s supposed to be! Fey said, “By episode eleven30 Rock had really found its voice, and it was the voice of a crazy person.”
28. Yes, 30 Rock can be crass, but not mostly.
29. Fey is an example of sticking with it, as 30 Rock eventually lapped the other television project about making a late-night comedy that launched in 2006. Mr. Aaron Sorkin, creator of that canceled project, even made a cameo on 30 Rock this season. Fey scores and she wins!
30. This list is both too long (I KNOW!) and woefully short (what about Kenneth, and Frank’s hats? The janitor feuds? Or Brian Williams?)

Suffice it to say, Fey is brilliant. Her work ethic is inspiring. Her show is quixotic and charming. The whole thing is sweet AND savory! To borrow a phrase from Liz Lemon, 30 Rock is a place I want to go to there.

How about you? Where would you like the NYC tour bus to stop?