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

do more people genuinely watch shows because of celeb cameos? the shows that do that alot seem to be the ones where you can see a direct link to more celebs >>> less viewers (will and grace & simpsons come to mind) as its basically just admitting you are giving up on just being funny anymore. oh, and the last couple of seasons of friends until the last when they went back to storytelling. only show i can think of that done it properly was arrested development's LOL obvious joke of needing rubbish c list guests because of no ratings.

maybe network honchos are forcing the show to trot out the guest stars to increase ratings, unaware of a hoy hoy's research findings.

chill out dude. steve martin and aniston were funny, oprah had some lols, there's nothing really wrong with gratuitous cameos as long as the writers have a good idea of what to do with them.

xpost - i dunno how much cameos have meant for 30 Rock, but I know How I Met Your Mother had a big ratings jump with the Britney stunt. like i said upthread, though, 30 Rock gets a lot of its Emmy nominations/wins from celeb guest stars, so i think that's also a big motivating factor for them.

charlize theron is a c-list celeb? bitch won an oscar, no?

ok, i was thinking of zach braff and co (pre-shitty indie movie).

zack braff was funny on AD

do more people genuinely watch shows because of celeb cameos? the shows that do that alot seem to be the ones where you can see a direct link to more celebs >>> less viewers (will and grace & simpsons come to mind) as its basically just admitting you are giving up on just being funny anymore. oh, and the last couple of seasons of friends until the last when they went back to storytelling. only show i can think of that done it properly was arrested development's LOL obvious joke of needing rubbish c list guests because of no ratings.

― a hoy hoy, Tuesday, December 2, 2008 2:05 PM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

yeah and i mean the celeb guest stars in the big guest star heavy last few episodes was like andy richter, richard belzer, gary cole - not xxactly oprah and jennifer aniston

If guest stars help keep my show afloat and they continue to be well written and fun, I have no complaints. The only two I genuinely hated were Seinfeld and Sean Hayes.

no but scott baio, henry winkler, zack braff, james lipton, etc. xxxxposts

i kind of don't mind 30 rock not using every character every week. AD felt that way sometimes, like they HAD to give everyone facetime even if they gave them a lame joke or whatever

we gotta watch arrested development tonight, james lipton is gonna be playing the warden! honey, let's get a sitter for the kids so we dont miss a single minute!!

like i said, arrested development did it right. i think season 1 30 rock (working out with whoopi + ghostface's rhyming dictionary) was great at silly cameos as well. just now every episode seems to be written around some star they have to fit into the show, it doesn't sit right.

Winkler / Baio / Lipton weren't guest stars; they were semi-regulars. It was stunt casting to be sure, though.

30 Rock/AD Poll

as long as the guest star is playing another character (like in the aniston and martin cameos), with comedic results, i think it's ok. i didn't think there was anything funny about the oprah cameo. fuck oprah worship!

i'm so tired of every show trying to get carl weathers for sweeps week... its shameless

ok, i'm just going to shut up from now on. :)

maybe you guys haven't noticed but pretty much every sitcom has guest stars almost every week, very few shows stick with just the main cast members and noone else every episode...on some shows it's just regular workaday TV actors playing "love interest X" or "hospital patient Y" but some shows regular cast recognizable celebs that they can pimp out in the promos, unless everything is a meta joke or a forced "superstar randomly shows up in Springfield" plotline, does it really matter that much?

baio was fucking bob loblaw for godsakes. AD canon.

i think pretty much any human being in the universe would've been funnier as the jennifer aniston character

i can't stand aniston and even i thought her character was pretty funny

she was pretty taut bro

Except Dratch.

taut?

i didn't think there was anything funny about the oprah cameo. fuck oprah worship!

The flashback of Oprah talking like a 15 year old girl on the plane is what did it for me.

Kept in trim shape; neat and tidy.
Marked by the efficient, sparing, or concise use of something, such as language or detail: a taut movie script.

In good order or clean condition: neat, orderly, shipshape, snug, spick-and-span, spruce, tidy, trig, trim, well-groomed. Chiefly British tight. Idioms: neat as a pin. See clean/dirty, order/disorder.

meaning i would like to blap

it's the new slang, GWI

cutty likes taut

fitness chicks

xp

The VF article on Tina Fey was horribly written. Is that why Jack's MoDo joke was funny?

guys, aniston was not funny.

i will give you hot, taut, whatever, but the acting was a;sldkgja.

thank you theresa

you're welcome, ethan.

i didn't think there was anything funny about the oprah cameo.

Liz: I’m trying to adopt a baby. But my job is making it impossible because my work self is suffocating my life me. I’m Liz Lemon and I lost my virginity at 25. I saw the show about following fear and it inspired me to wear shorts to work. It didn’t go great. Do you know Tracy Jordan? I took a pill earlier. I didn’t get September issue of O Magazine. Do you have the number for subscriptions? Why would you!? I eat emotionally and one time at summer camp I kissed a girl on a dare but then she drowned. And here comes some more stuff. I hate my feet and once I had a sex dream about Nate Burkis but halfway though he turned into Dr. Oz. Has that ever happened to you? Oh a hug! This is happening!

i wish that was not too long to make my display name.

you take "but then she drowned" i'll take "and here comes some more stuff"

we will have to time our posts so they are in tandem.

i have a feeling a lot of theresa posts will suddenly become ^^^DOLLARSTORE^^

lol.

an ilx built for two.

ilxicle

I hate to ruin the 12-hour streak of this thread just being E + T talking to each other to state the obvious, but surely the thinking behind guest stars is pretty simple: you have a show that's "successful" in every respect apart from lots of people watching it, so you run promos about Oprah and Seinfeld guest spots in an effort to convince viewers that this is not just some second-string show they don't need to pay attention to, and is actually the kind of big and important cultural sensation that can attract big talent, therefore it must be high-quality and funny and you should try watching it, etc.

(This is kinda distinct from the way Will & Grace always had to do it, because their problem was being a successful show that had gone on long enough that nobody felt particularly compelled to watch new episodes, so they had to cast around doing guest spots and "live" episodes as a form of meta shark-jumping "please still be interested in us" move.)

(What's funny is that I think more and more shows have to resort to this just for their own network promos, because the old ways of trying to hype a particular episode -- the whole "biggest episode yet!" and "dramatic secret revealed!" hyping -- got so run into the ground that nobody reacts to it anymore; you have to pull out a guest star as evidence that this episode is unmissable in some way the last one wasn't, or else everyone knows you're lying.)

yeah it's kinda sad how rarely networks promote comedy shows with a simple clip from the episode of someone saying something funny anymore.

It's like, instead of promoting a comedy as, "Hey, this is funny! We're pretty sure you'll find it funny, too!", it's all, "YOU CAN NO LONGER CONSIDER YOURSELF A MAMMAL IF YOU MISS THIS IMPORTANT EVENT."

anyway I still fail to see what the bfd is. Lorne Michaels has probably been calling Tina Fey once a week for the past 10 years saying stuff like "we got [big star X], can you write something funny for him/her to do on the show?" so it's not like her and the other ex-SNL folks at the show don't know how to handle it better than the staff of fucking Will & Grace.

xpost

How did Will & Grace become shorthand for "awful" on a network that once included Suddenly Susan and Just Shoot Me? W&G wasn't great, but it had moments.

no no no no

Megan Mullaly is a treat.

it's a good shorthand for "popular awful" whereas NBC has other examples of "cancelled awful" and "coasting along awful" in spades.

i'd forgotten the seinfeld cameo until reading this. it makes me think of kenneth singing the bass-motif in the elevator, with lip-poppin'.