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

I quit watching this during S2 because I could never remember to catch it on its broadcast night, so we're just now catching up with the whole thing in a walkathon, 3 episodes a night. Tonight included the S5 live episode.

ergo affleck finally got that Oscar

"a blaffair to rememblack"

"are rizzoli and isles friends in real life"

I quit watching this during S2 because I could never remember to catch it on its broadcast night, so we're just now catching up with the whole thing in a walkathon, 3 episodes a night. Tonight included the S5 live episode.

They did an east coast and a west coast version of the live show, with slightly different gags, FYI!

'i got rid of all my colin firth movies in case they consider them erotica'

'that man can wear a sweater'

been watching this in syndication lately and god damn it's so fucking funny

when liz gets honored at lifetime's "80 under 80" ceremony and she reads the invitation

"oh it's on lifetime! ... dot com ... backslash garbage file"

i've been going back in reverse and season 7 is pure gold.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cRZa0EJ5gNA

it's an inverse bell curve of quality for sure

I always thought it was pretty consistent, never got people who complain about certain seasons being worse than others.

I feel like the quality of the show in later seasons roughly correlates with the competence of Jack's paramour du jour as a comic actress.

It felt like they lost their rhythm after the writers' strike (mid-season 3, iirc), and it took about two seasons to get it back.

writers strike was mid season 2, thus it only having like 15 episodes, fwiw.

I think the only weak season, by its own standards, was the last. All others are solid to Gold Case-level.

name gags are among my favorite aspects of this show because i missed most of them my first couple of viewings.

when i first realized Floyd's last name was "DeBarber" i stood up to applaud

it took watching the first few seasons and then the middle seasons in syndication to see that the problem just became a lack of spark among the writers as the same 4 characters interacting with each other became boring and all of jack's girlfriend escapades were also boring and all of lemon's boyfriend escapades were also boring, there was just a lot less breathing room for everything else and "everything else" is where the funny jokes were

last two seasons sorta just said "fuck it" for the most part and branched out and went nuts and they were a lot funnier

oh i said this yrs ago lol

this show is 5000% better when they leave the basic format or leave the building or include interesting one-off characters (that aren't celebrity cameos) or theme eps. basically everything but the standard liz/jenna/tracy/kenneth/jack interacting with each other all episode. i wouldn't mind if all next season is holiday eps w/dennis and theme eps with very few multi-ep arcs, cause that's what's working for them at this point.

― JIM THOMETHEUS (zachlyon), Friday, May 4, 2012 1:58 PM (2 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

parks and rec has had the same problem recently which is why i was really happy to learn the next season is a time jump and they have new opportunities to be funny

wow zachlyon you've been on ilx two+ years already where does the time go

i've literally been here for like 4 years and i'm as surprised and depressed about it as anyone

http://fp-murphy-images-production.s3.amazonaws.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/10/DeputyAndy.png

25 years later...

https://pbs.twimg.com/profile_images/1620589652/Kenneth-Greenisuni-3_400x400.jpg

Is this not in syndication anymore? I miss back when I could see it on three different channels every night.

Yes I still watch TV on TV.

It disappeared from Netflix in Australia as well.

I've never seen it in syndication, though i noticed one of my streaming services has it - crave tv in canada.

season 4 of this show...man

https://www.linkedin.com/in/jack-donaghy-812928159

https://www.theatermania.com/broadway/news/melissa-etheridge-score-for-mystic-pizza-musical_87574.html?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=22jan2019&fbclid=IwAR1luuC0mVum5ebJcRLo8NoeiTOvId8UE9ChfDyOvPEoH-RLoFWKhAqbC0s

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-D2D_xWauf_c/TyOtE4O0CWI/AAAAAAAAAIk/c8yIlp7AOCE/s1600/jenna.png

oh death

On July 18, 2019, it was reported that NBC had given a 13-episode straight-to-series order to an untitled Tina Fey and Robert Carlock comedy starring Ted Danson, who is set to play a wealthy businessman running for mayor of Los Angeles. Originally meant to be a spin-off/continuation of Fey's series 30 Rock, the series was to star Alec Baldwin reprising his 30 Rock role of Jack Donaghy, following his political career in New York City. After around a year of negotiations, Baldwin dropped out of the project and was replaced with Danson. Danson was unwilling to move from his home of Los Angeles, and the series was rewritten to take place there.

oh man, Jack Donaghy is an all-time great TV character but Danson is such a huge upgrade on Baldwin in 2019.

as long as this thread is bumped I want to recommend the NYer profile of Tracy Morgan from earlier this year

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/13/tracy-morgan-turns-the-drama-of-his-life-into-comedy

“You know how to rest your soul?” he asked. I didn’t, and I told him so. “Take a breath,” he said. “You know how to relax? Or did you forget?” I had. “Sure you did. Relax. If you’re around me, relax.” Now he looked more deeply into my eyes, despite my effort to break the stare.

“Look at me. Relax.”

Then, diagnostically, and a bit impatiently, he said, “The problem with you? You don’t know how to keep it simple.” We’d known each other for not quite half an hour. He wasn’t wrong. “You complicate your fucking life—with things.” He said the word “things” with ascetic disdain. “Stop doing that.”

The worm is aroused.

SHUT IT DOWN

https://www.vulture.com/2020/06/30-rock-blackface-episodes-removed.html

Goodbye Jon Hamm shouting, "BANJO!".

Was thinking about these eps when reading that Joni Mitchell thread about her blackface album cover in 1977... Tina Fey doing it on prime time television in 2012, 35 years later.

This "controversy" is dumb. The use of blackface in these sketches was specifically pointed AGAINST the people appearing in blackface; it was never held up as a good or funny thing in and of itself.

I'm not sure why we want to go down a road where you can't use obviously racist tropes to make fun of a racist character (see also the stupid controversy over the blackface episode of The Sarah Silverman Program)

(Basically, I have issues if you are using blackface to dress up as Lebron James or Oprah but absolutely none if you're using it to dress up as Ralph Northram)

Agree with DJP. Imo, there's a pretty significant difference between Joni Mitchell wearing blackface to dress like a pimp on an album cover or at parties, as part of some weird exotic fantasy, and an Amos & Andy parody showing Tracy Morgan reacting furiously to the clueless use of blackface in a failed show idea.

I dunno, I like 30 Rock but it still feels like a hack to keep doing the same old shit.

How is it the same old shit?

"I feel like I have the soul of a Black man so I painted myself in blackface and strutted around with a pimp walk for Halloween and to fuck with a photographer" is decidedly NOT the same thing as "this ridiculous shit used to be played absolutely straight as legit entertainment, which is a massive indictment of the times and the foundation of shitty attitudes that are still prevalent today"

I think 30 Rock often took comedy tropes that are now seen as insensitive and worked them into the show using a writing hack, namely "no, see, we are criticizing this, it's social commentary". And maybe it is, but they still get to have it both ways, don't they? Yeah, Jenna cluelessly dressing up like a black man during a fight with Tracy is funny social commentary since everyone on the show is appalled, but you still get to see Jenna in blackface. I don't know if the former balances out the latter.

"get to"?

Yep, get to. Get to make that joke. Everything that implies.

To me, that joke implies that Jenna is a racist. What does it imply to you?

The desired reaction was pretty obviously not "omg, how edgy!". It was a humorous scenario, not in that blackface is funny, but because Jenna is such a colossal, narcissistic moron, that she's too dumb to realize how racially insensitive it is to appear in Blackface. Which is why Toofer shows up moments later, horrified, to tell her exactly this.

Jenna also confused Obama with Osama Bin Laden on Fox News, so this is fairly in character with her.

In other words, DJP otm

It implies that there's a history in American entertainment of white people wearing blackface to make the audience laugh, and once you decide you're going to do that on your TV show in 2008, it might be good to interrogate your own motivations, and ask yourself "is this joke really operating solely on the social commentary about this being crass and racist, or does part of me still think a white lady in blackface remains a hilarious visual that I want to put in my show?" And then ask yourself as a writer or showrunner if you can really answer that question honestly. You can't cancel out the valence of actually showing a white person doing blackface on the screen in a sitcom by making the joke that it's wrong.