A new 30 Rock thread because I can't find the old one

also awesome: Rachel Dratch's Barbra Walters.

Ha this was my favorite line

My other favorite Parnell moment...when Alec asks him to sponsor a product, he just says "sure" THEN asks what it does.

Grizz sadly saying, "WorldCom, man. WorldCom."

And later Tracy: "What is it with you and telecommunications?"

Tracy Morgan: (with mouthful of foodball) "Dr. Spaceman, is it true that bread eats away at your brain?" (POINTING TO HEAD GENIUS!)
Chris Parnell: "We have no way of knowing, because the powerful bread lobby won't let me complete my research"
(audience gasps)
TM: "Well, folks...(etc.)

Did Whoopi selling the machine in a foreign country remind anyone of Arrested Developements Corn Baller?

xpost

when i saw him do standup a couple years ago he bombed, entirely, and spent about 10 minutes talking about wiping (anal sex) blood off of his dick with the window curtains before leaving.

actually that sounds sort of funny, but it was a lot less funny at the time.

The what?

...

...

I wept when I heard that one.

"cheese and crackers!"

Baldwin on the phone: "You hang up, Maureen ... no, you hang up ... okay, on three ... one, two, three ... no, I didn't hang up either, Maureen ... wait, Maureen, you're breaking up ... I lost the call." [proceeds to have whole other conversation, then turns to assistant] "Get me Maureen Dowd back on the phone."

The joke is on Donaghy’s attitude, expectations and bubble of privilege

Luckily this was the only example of 30 Rock creating humorous bathos from the generation of audience sympathy for shitty people, and every episode for the remaining six and a half seasons just had Kenneth doing nice things for old ladies while the rest of the cast smiled gently at him

xp

Hm, OK, so there's a second level where the joke is actually on the person making the offensive comment. I'll try to watch from that pov. xp to DJP, whatever to sic

damn, the white man gets overlooked again!

really thought the joke was p straightforwardly 'that man meets two corporate diversity check marks and will definitely be the hire' but interesting to hear other perspectives

i loved 30 rock. prolly still do tho I haven't seen it in a while now. but I remember thinking 'wow they really want to have their cake and eat it too, huh' w/the blackface parts. also I remember thinking that almost every joke regarding black ppl played off white ppls inability to comprehend blackness or some other similar woke trickiness... while literally every joke about fat ppl was just 'lol, fat ppl (bad/gross)'

I also want to come back to the Lynn Swann/Black Swan joke because everyone else is processing that as "lol isn't it funny that the White woman is in blackface" and I'm processing it as "it isn't funny that these two deranged idiots are so in sync that they independently came up with this grossly inappropriate idea and are blithely following through on it as if it was normal"

Like, to me the entire thrust of the joke is that Jenna and Paul are both fucking insane, not that blackface is in and of itself funny.

totally agree w that.. but intent can excuse an awful lot in comedy, no? let's look again at Tina feys 'apology'

"As we strive to do the work and do better in regards to race in America, we believe that these episodes featuring actors in race-changing make-up are best taken out of circulation," wrote Fey.

"I understand now that 'intent' is not a free pass for white people to use these images. I apologise for pain they have caused. Going forward, no comedy-loving kid needs to stumble on these tropes and be stung by their ugliness.

what is the intent of comedy? there are a whole lot of things one can say and do with the undeniable intention of making somebody laugh, and clearly there is a line that gets set. I think of the newsworthy 'jokes'/ugly outbursts from tosh + Michael richards, etc... the intention is to use ugly shocking imagery to create laughter... if you're on stage at a comedy club there is at least some obvious establishment of your intent. those 'jokes' may have been massively unsuccessful, and/ or their context may have been stripped by encountering them from a headline rather than in the environment of a comedy club... so really, what's the difference here? we assume that someone on the writers room knows better, so it's ok?

This is wholly disingenuous.

If you legitimately can’t tell the difference between “I am using an offensive practice to showcase my character’s depravity” and “I am going to threaten to rape a heckler because they heckled me” I don’t really know what to tell you.

this has been a bizarre conversation and I don't feel compelled to give my white guy opinion apart from noting that there are plenty of black people who have brought their own experiences to bear on the topic and thought this through and have come to different conclusions than those given on this thread, and they should be respected

I think having been an extremely online person on twitter and seeing so much "Tina fey is problematic" Tina fey is the encapsulation of everything that is wrong with white liberal feminism etc." content over and over throughout the last 10 years or so it's quite odd to see virtually no-one on this thread think that having 4 blackface jokes in your sitcom in the 21st century is sus. I suppose it's a generational thing.

Netflix just needs a filter that turns actors in blackface into gun sounds

on a lighter note I rewatched some of the first couple of seasons the other day and it was v good. show holds up. best sitcom of recent times imo

I think having been an extremely online person on twitter and seeing so much "Tina fey is problematic" Tina fey is the encapsulation of everything that is wrong with white liberal feminism etc." content

lol yeah I was scrolling the thread waiting for someone to bring up Jane Krakowski playing a "Lakota" woman in Kimmy Schmidt

YES.

The synchronicity of the first season of Kimmy Schmidt with the reveal of Rachel Dolezal still amazes me

If you legitimately can’t tell the difference between “I am using an offensive practice to showcase my character’s depravity” and “I am going to threaten to rape a heckler because they heckled me” I don’t really know what to tell you.

― shout-out to his family (DJP), Monday, June 29, 2020 11:26 AM (twenty-seven minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

well no you don't know what to tell me because you elided or ignored my point about context and intent. tosh was clearly by intent not 'threatening' anyone, he was standing on stage at a comedy club performing comedy. characterizing what he said that way is more disingenuous than anything i said.

i get that in the mind of ilxors comedy clubs are places where men go to talk about how rape is sweet and lets go do some raping, but in reality they are places where people voluntarily go to hear outrageous things with the intention of being made to laugh. it's actually a very similar context to making a joke on a tv show, only there's not another character to appear on screen and recite morality to the audience - the context is more implied from the act of comeding in the first place.

so yeah, i think defending 30 rock is easy because there is constant woke messaging throughout the show, they literally say 'we are making a joke! blackface is wrong!'... where in the examples i cited they are harder to defend because that context isn't said, only implied. BUT, regardless of the success of each 'joke', it really is the same context, and i think a defense of one warrants a defense of the other.

in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors
in the mind of ilxors

esby: ilxors are woke hive-mind
nearly every ilxor on this thread: actually the blackface in 30 rock is cool
real woke people: tina fey must be killed

The context of the Tosh outburst wasn't "this statement is wrong", it was "stfu and stop interrupting my show", which is why comedians engage hecklers.

Esby is more like, "if you defend 30 rock, you must also defend my right to laugh at blackface, regardless of context."

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/peep-show-blackface-netflix-scene-removed-dance-class-a9591021.html

Was joking about this being removed and now it is.
It's a punchline as to how batshit Nancy is as she gets Jez to 'break more and more taboos' and iirc the reveal is he's in blackface going 'Are you sure this isn’t racist?' and she says 'f*** me and pretend I'm your mother'. So obviously meant to be all kinds of wrong.

People's taste for shock humor over the years seems to come in and out like the tide... it's either all the rage or causing it.

really thought the joke was p straightforwardly 'that man meets two corporate diversity check marks and will definitely be the hire' but interesting to hear other perspectives

This is what I and my partner got originally as well - it's not that we missed the lampooning of the old boys' club but it also seemed to be making this joke at the same time. I'm not sure it did critique the idea of the 'advantages' someone gains by 'ticking these boxes', esp since it is implied that Garkel might be faking his disability (whereas the irl response of the old boys' network would probably be closer to "ah, but then we'd have to install push buttons at the doors, which goes far beyond reasonable accommodations; sorry, guess my boy Floyd is the only practical choice" than "no way Floyd can compete with that"). And I'm not sure Tina Fey would have made this joke with a middle-aged white woman as the prop, in a wheelchair or otherwise.

And I mean, Garkel got the job. I don't recall any suggestion that it was because of his qualifications - if anything, the larger joke was that merit doesn't enter into it one way or the other.

https://i.chzbgr.com/original/6991674880/hB5A468F0/fake-criterion-the-rural-juror

There’s a pretty distasteful joke in season 5 episode 1, where Pete talks about having sex with his wife while she was asleep. Not only does he say it, but they show you Paula Pell, snoring and being bounced up and down as if someone is having sex with her while she’s asleep. It’s gross. I don’t remember it from the first time round at all.

Wow yeah no memory of that either :[ Just rewatched the very first episode last night and had no memory of much of it (like many I wasn't all in on the show first time round until RURJUR).

From what I've heard, this was a joke written by Paula Pell, who was on a quest to get the worst possible jokes past the standards dept.

30 Rock and Arrested Development are both rife with all sorts of "edgy" or hipster racist jokes.

From what I've heard, this was a joke written by Paula Pell, who was on a quest to get the worst possible jokes past the standards dept.

It is amazing that this was let through in 2010 and that none of us clocked it as being so awful at the time. It’s not THAT long ago. Although I suppose in terms of what we know about terrible people, it is a long time ago.

At least one of us did (sort of)

Pete having sex with his wife was disturbing/hilarious.

― (¬_¬) (Nicole), Friday, September 24, 2010 10:05 AM (fifteen years ago) bookmarkflaglink

What's the difference between your mom and a washing machine

30 Rock is hilarious but has always had a mean streak that results in multiple punching down jokes

Speaking of punching down, can you imagine writing a joke about Peter Dinklage being mistaken as a child in 2026?

Dinklage is pretty great in that episode though