Episode 5 - Greenzo
6 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Don Geiss (head of GE, the company which owns NBC Universal) pits his department heads against one another to see who can make the most money from the environmentalist “fad.” So Jack hires an out of work actor (David Schwimmer) to play Greenzo, an environmental activist who will push GE technology as the solution to global warming. Meanwhile Kenneth is inviting everyone to a party at his house but Liz knows no one will go. So Tracy decides to start rumours about it so that people will want to go.
The Good: David Schwimmer, Meredith Viera and Al Gore all in the same episode? 30 Rock is clearly appealing to people even if I don’t think it is very good. All credit to Al Gore whose final line “Quiet! A whale is in trouble. I have to go” could be straight out of Family Guy or SNL itself. It’s nice to see him mucking in on a sit com like that. Schwimmer’s performance is as professional and solid as you would expect from one of the finest sit com actors of his generation. More on that later.
Pete’s affair story is passable. It’s nice to finally get a bit of character development for him. In the pilot of 30 Rock they implied that Pete was the sane one, Liz’ old friend who she could trust and rely on. Sadly we have barely seen a whisper of that at times. Here we get to see him bonding with his wife and Liz being really kind to him. For those who like a little gross humour there is even a joke about a pop tart.
Kenneth’s party is a clever way to get the best out of Tracy. It shows he is a nice guy, as he tries to help Kenneth and that he has a brain when his lies convince everyone to attend. The humour flows nicely from him not anticipating the consequences of his actions. Liz says “People are gonna show up expecting all this great stuff and they’re gonna be disappointed and angry.” He nods along and knowingly says “Just like Colonial Williamsburg.” Of course he also falls for his own rumour mongering when he hears there will be foxy boxing at the party. “I love foxy boxing! It combines my two favourite things: boxing and referees.” In many ways that is too stupid a line but his delivery is such that you knew something silly was coming, so anything could have been funny.
Jenna gets in on the act when she hears about the party telling an office employee “Please, respect celebrity privacy.” She shows good consistency when she tries to discover what is hip from Cerie. Cerie has a fun line when she asks, after being told off by Greenzo, “did he just talk to me like I’m ugly?” And for once Frank’s hat is funny as it says “Half Centaur.” A centaur is half man, half horse, therefore to be “half centaur” is an amusingly improbable thought.
The Bad: By not showing us the party but acting like amazing things happened at it the writers shoot themselves in the foot. In television when something happens off screen the viewers immediately know that it wasn’t important. After all, it is was then we would have seen it. So the entire scene recounting the antics at the party is a waste because we know there will be no consequence to any of it for the characters.
Greenzo is not well written. He is not well defined as a character from the start and so he seems to descend instantly into self importance. Without any sense of whether he is like this normally or who he is, his jokes fall flat. He lectures everyone on the environment (“What’s in that Styrofoam cup? The Earth’s blood?”) but other than being annoying, he isn’t very funny. As you would expect from 30 Rock his jokes are too silly to be believable (“Do you even bother to compost your own faeces?”). So his entire roll in the story is a mess. The final line of the episode is clearly meant to be hilarious (“This Earth is ruined. We’ve gotta get a new one.”) but it doesn’t have the punch that it should.
This is because the whole story lacks the guts to make a real point. Jack flat out states that Geiss is trying to use environmentalism to make more money and to drain the Earth of the “remainder of its resources.” So this is hardly much of a dig at big business. And then Greenzo is so annoying and overbearing that it feels like the writers are taking a shot at green activists. The jokes just have no where to land because the writing is so muddled. It’s a waste of David Schwimmer’s considerable talent to play the ill defined Greenzo.
Comic Highlight: Jack is walking with Liz and reading from a file. Jack announces that “Look how Greenzo’s testing. They love him in every demographic: coloured people, broads, fairies, commies…gosh we’ve got to update these forms.” Jack’s blunt personality reels you in to believing he could actually be listing those off the cuff making the punch line so much funnier. See what a little plausibility can do for you?
The Bottom Line: For many who watch television, attention to details is not a big deal. In which case this episode will do fine. The environmental jokes are easy to follow and the celebrity appearances are fun enough to get a laugh out of people. In my opinion though, it is Tracy’s side plot which actually drags this above the usual mediocrity.
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