By Curt Schleier
You have no idea how upset I am with you people. And if I’m upset, can you imagine how Tina Fey feels? She goes through all the sturm und drang of creating the consistently funniest show on TV – and I can’t imagine that working with Alec Baldwin is a piece of cake – and what do you do? Does SURVIVOR CHINA sound familiar? UGLY BETTY?
I’ll bet you are the same people who passed on early episodes of SEINFELD and ROSEANNE. Clearly you wouldn’t know funny if you stepped in it. Okay, perhaps that’s a tad harsh. But surely you understand my position. I shall not be ignored.
Consider The Collection. Jack Donaghy (Alex Baldwin) knows he’s being vetted for the top job at GE so he hires private eye – to investigate himself. He wants to find the skeletons in his closet before the company does. He meets the dick (Steve Buscemi), who asks for back ground information. Yes, Donaghy says, he was arrested, during the 1976 Democratic convention in Chicago. But it’s okay – he was beating up hippies at the time.
As for the rest of his family, he has a cousin who fixes NBA games and a mother who is “an Olympic-level racist.” But fortunately the rest of his family drinks too much to do anything weird.
When Buscemi returns he suggests that Donaghy quit his all-white country club. But Jack protests; it isn’t all white. “What about Johnny Carlos?”
“He’s the King of Spain. I don’t think that counts.”
The truth is that Buscemi discovered something worse. Under an assumed name, Jack collects cookie jars. That could kill his chances at a promotion, the detective says, showing him a picture taken in the late ‘70s of Rudy Giuliani and his doll collection. Rudy of course incinerated it all before running for mayor of New York. No one with a strange hobby ever wins at anything.
While Jack figures out what to do, there are other problems on the set. Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) is so pleased by the attention she’s getting as a large woman that she’s stopped eating and is losing the weight she gained when she was insecure. That not only threatens her popularity, but her career as an endorser – Enorme, the fragrance for plus-size women (Do not use internally) – as well as her budding acting career. She’d been offered the role of Ms. Pac-Man in a live-action film. Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) assigns Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) to say mean things to her so she’ll become insecure again and eat herself fat.
Lemon has problems of her own. Angie Jordan (Sherri Shepherd), Tracy Jordan’s (Tracy Morgan) formerly estranged wife, took her husband back on the condition that he never leaves her sight. But he sneaks out to a strip club, Angie takes over the set. What to do? People suggest that there’s only one way to calm a black woman down: tell her you like her nails. But Liz goes another route, almost causing fisticuffs – until Tracy steps in.
Listen, people, first of all I want to apologize for yelling at you before. It was uncalled for. No I shouldn’t say it was uncalled for. It was ungentlemanly. But I think you must admit even from my rough descriptions that 30 ROCK is a funny show. So look at me. I’m begging you. I’m on my knees as I type. Watch this show, and I’ll never yell at you again.