Episode 10 - The Rural Juror
25 March 2012
Synopsis: Jenna is invited onto “The View” to talk about her new movie “The Rural Juror.” She gives Liz a copy to watch and she hates it. Jenna demands the truth and when Liz tells her they begin arguing. The writers see the film and think its ok adding credence to Jenna’s theory that Liz is jealous. Jack steps in to help sort out the argument and Liz admits she was jealous because she had dreams of being famous too. Meanwhile Tracy needs money and so Jack suggests product endorsement. Tracy wants to make the “Tracy Jordan Meat Machine” but the product is defective.
The Good: Rather like the previous episode, the character intentions are fine but the stories themselves leave a lot to be desired.
The sense of Jenna and Liz having a real past is good to see. It seems to be a continuation of Tina Fey’s real life story blending into the show. Liz and Jenna refer to their time back in Chicago which is where Fey gained notoriety as part of Second City. In general the conclusion to their conflict makes sense and shows us that Liz had dreams of being more than “just” a writer.
Jack shows us a rather human side too as he drinks heavily and scoops up pills offered him by Dr Spaceman. Otherwise he is the sensible corporate CEO throughout. He is more than happy to help Tracy and therefore GE make money off product endorsement. His GE flow chart was amusing in both its mocking of conglomerates and the fact that he had it stationed above his desk. He stuck up for Liz which made sense and I was also amused when he accused her of “sandbagging” him when she admitted that Jenna had a point. Jack is developing nicely into his role. He manages to be fun to watch both as the big boss and as “just” a man with his own agenda too.
Tracy shows a sense of morality by not wanting to sell defective meat machines. Whoopi Goldberg is a good sport and creates a couple of nice gags (see Comic Highlight).
Josh continues his streak of oblivious remarks as he admits he had to let a creepy security guard watch him pee to break in to Liz’ office. When everyone looks at him he responds with what is rapidly becoming his catchphrase – “What?”
The Bad: The Jenna and Liz story is a strange one. Everything is set up for Liz to be the good guy, the friend who told the truth. But then just as Jenna starts making ridiculous sounding accusations, they turn out to be true. It really didn’t flow well as a story. The montage of clips from Jenna’s life certainly implied that she had always struggled as an actress in stupid productions. The fact that the title “Rural Juror” is so silly added to the sense that Liz must be right about the movie sucking. But instead the story suddenly turns into Liz having been jealous all along. So did she lie and actually think the movie was bad? Or did she just judge it harshly because she was in a mindset to want it to fail? The confused narrative didn’t help me understand Jenna or Liz better as characters.
The Tracy Jordan “Meat Machine” is a plot straight out of The Simpsons complete with Dr Spacemen in the Dr Nick Riviera role and Tracy being Krusty the Clown. They endorse a ridiculous, dangerous product complete with over the top exaggerations about how bread is bad for you. The reason this stuff works in The Simpsons is that the exaggerations are congruent with the exaggerated cartoon characters. With real actors pretending to be real people, the humour is just too obvious to be funny.
Rachel Dratch’s impersonation of Barbara Walters went from vaguely amusing to implausible pretty quickly.
Comic Highlight: Jack admits to Tracy that some product endorsements don’t work out too well. Cut to “Working out with Whoopi” as a grinning Whoopi Goldberg gently lifts two light weights. Her facial expressions are priceless and the surprise of seeing such a celebrity in a short gag makes it work nicely despite the obvious joke.
The Bottom Line: For the second episode in a row the story just doesn’t seem to flow. Otherwise there is some good stuff here though hardly cutting edge humour.
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