30 Rock

Season 4 has been the best so far IMO, writing is unbelievable. However watching Julianne Moore try to play Boston Irish is just excruciating and I wish it would stop.

yeah that's totally more grating than funny

Love the loony tunes sound effects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oiAQeJrEHB4

Wait, this is the RONG 30 Rock thread, the one that can't be found.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v-bvHlb2Fe8

http://thenewinquiry.com/essays/the-unfuckables/

this probably needs to be at least 3x longer but it's pretty well-done. i have to think about it more

Jesus, I wasn't aware that happened to Dratch.

There is a Salon piece that was posted in the other 30 Rock that responded to this discussion pretty well. I'll try to find it.

The Tina Fey Backlash

"If a politician applied Fey’s feminist rationale to public policy, he would be one of those blinders-wearing classists to the point of fascism."

er

i started watching all of these through for the first time (i've seen episodes here and there of course), and i have to say this show has totally flipped my opinion of tina fey

from negative to positive? positive to negative?

pos to neg. show is like a damn cathy comic strip

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KbCT5fXdhhc

not so much in the first 2 seasons imo, but yeah liz lemon does basically turn into a cartoon character distressingly fast.

it's weird how jack donaghy is really the only main character who stays fairly nuanced and un-cartoony throughout the run of the series.

it seems like if she's gonna make that joke she should have the self awareness to not make the show 90% about how hilarious/pathetic it is when old ladies of 35 cant bag a man or w/e! also soooo many jokes about fat ppl being gross

It's so weird to single out Liz Lemon as a "cartoon character" on a show full of cartoon characters. I mean, c'mon. Pretty much every main character, and I would definitely include Donaghy as a cartoon, is one.

yeah theyre all cartoon characters, she's just an extremely lame cartoon character

i guess i feel like the show treats jack's relationships more seriously than it treats liz's -- hers are mainly treated for laughs, there's no liz equivalent of the episodes where jack's torn between two girlfriends who are both right for him, etc. obv he's kind of a cartoon in many ways -- quoting reagan, etc -- but the show gives him more depth than liz most of the time.

90% about how hilarious/pathetic it is when old ladies of 35 cant bag a man or w/e

I'm not really getting this at all. Maybe at the beginning? idk

I'm in the middle of a s5/s6 binge. I think I love Grizz & dotcom the best

there's a really weird dynamic on a lot of TV shows that i think 30 Rock accidentally epitomizes, where married successful people are constantly playing unmarried unsuccessful people because, unless it's a 'family show' or a satire of success or something, it's considered not sexy enough or not funny enough to show people who are settled down or w/e and so you end up with these slightly icky situations where Tina Fey, in an effort not have a show about Tina Fey being awesome and winning at life, creates this 'lol pathetic spinster alternative universe me' character that gets kicked in the shins over and over. it's especially odd because Liz Lemon seems to keep encountering this "work vs. personal life" dilemma that Fey doesn't seem to have struggled with at all.

Seinfeld to Fey: do you miss 30 rock?
Fey: No!

The workload was apparently nuts.

yeah...some SNL alumni have said that in a way sitcoms are actually a harder grind, because instead of writing and rehearsing and then performing a show in 6 days and being done with it, you've gotta go through long hours of multiple takes and editing, etc. being a star/writer/producer of a show like that must be exhausting.

also it wouldn't surprise me if Tina put more of the work and the pressure on her shoulders than Jerry ever did.

I read an interview where she admitted that she kept the show going because of all the jobs of her friends and crew that were riding on it, so maybe the show is actually an idealized version of the work/life struggle, whereas real tina fey was in a nightmare hellhole.

i could believe that. there was a lot of hamster-wheeling going on during the last few seasons, though it was still enjoyable

"greenzo" is so good, kenneth's party, david schwimmer, lol

three years pass...

...lol

there's no season 2 thread!

We went in to the sandbox about a 1/3 of the way into the 1st season. After we got out, a new thread was started and it carried us through the rest of the series.

Obvs. this was back before we really started doing devoted seasonal threads for shows.

thinking a lot lately about the scene where jack goes to work for the bush administration and he walks into a room and looks up and goes "um, the ceiling appears to be leaking" and matthew broderick cheerfully responds "no. it's not. we've looked into it, and it's not."

A pack of wild dogs took over and successfully ran a ‘Wendy’s