Episode 16 - The Source Awards
25 March 2012
Synopsis: Donaghy Estates produces its first wine but it is horrible. Kenneth turns rap producer Ridikolus away from Tracy’s after party, starting a feud between the two. Jack steps in to offer Donaghy Estates wine as the corporate sponsor of the Source Awards and Tracy as its host to smooth things over with Ridikolus. Meanwhile Liz dates Steven Black, a boring black man who sees her rejection of him as evidence of her racism. At the Source Awards Kenneth continues to offend Ridikolus, Tracy pretends to be Oprah and Liz accidentally shoots Steven.
The Good: 30 Rock really goes all the way with a story about race issues and the hip hop community here. Often I accuse shows of skirting around issues when the real comedy comes from attacking them head on. 30 Rock in it’s off beat manner pulls few punches, albeit strange ones.
The highlight of the episode was Liz’ confrontation with dull black man Steven. “I truly don’t like you as a person. Can’t one human being not like another human being, can’t we all just not get along.” And Steven says that maybe their grandchildren will be able to dislike one another in that way but for now it’s an issue of race. It’s a very clever way of raising the issues of white guilt and black high dudgeon. And generally exposing some of the issues around racial tension in a fun way.
Elsewhere the show veers toward offensive areas without ever quite crossing them. Steven is “a Black” according to Jack, as in that is his last name. “Remarkable people the Blacks - musical, very athletic, not very good swimmers. Again, I'm talking about the family.” Jack also claims that Condoleezza Rice used to yell at the movie screen. It all plays on black stereotypes and casts Liz Lemon in the right role, the sympathetic central character trying to do right and be kind. We even get a brief cameo from the flower guy that she flirted with so there is hope for their romance yet.
Tracy has a likeable innocence about him at this stage. He would clearly rather settle his disputes with break dancing rather than shootouts and while partying all night has to take a break to take his children to soccer practise.
Everyone spitting out Donaghy Estate’s wine is an easy cheap joke. As is Tracy dressed as Oprah or Steven taking part in Vietnam War re-enactments.
The Bad: There’s just something about this episode that doesn’t work though. In a way though the punches weren’t pulled when it came to the issue of race, the writers seemed wary of going all the way with mocking the hip hop community.
Perhaps with good reason. To attack its flamboyance, its indecipherable names and potential for violence might have exposed too much about the views of those behind 30 Rock and showed ignorance or intolerance. So instead we get a very mixed bag of jokes.
Ridikolus (played by LL Cool J) is portrayed as both vicious and gentle. He threatens to eat Tracy’s family and we hear a litany of his other violent acts. But then he has a childish feud with Kenneth where he shows a lot of restraint. Jack and Tracy run through an increasingly ridiculous list of rapper names which is passable but they make light reference to murder amongst the hip hop community in quite a flippant way. You have Ghost Face Killer heading off to find his “Rhyming Dictionary” and Ridikolus accidentally revealing that 2 Pac is still alive. It’s a bit of a mess. I don’t think the writing knew whether to defang or deride. Plus if the wine is that bad then fill the bottles with water and drink that.
Kenneth’s role in the episode underscored the confused humour. He was in some ways unnecessarily antagonistic in a way which went against the grain of the obliviousness he was meant to be demonstrating. Similarly Tracy seems innocent and likeable yet still brings a gun to the awards and his Oprah impersonation was hardly cutting edge satire. Also what kind of gun did Tracy bring with him? Liz shoots Steven in the ass but he doesn’t seem nearly wounded enough. Was it an air gun or pellet gun? She should have been in a lot more trouble for that. The confusion over that stepped on the supposed punch line that it was the white guys who caused all the trouble at the Source Awards.
Comic Highlight: You had plenty of jokes to enjoy but one silly line that I haven’t brought up yet came from Kenneth. As Jack offers Tracy to Ridikolus as the host of the Source Awards we jump to Kenneth telling another page that he has some juicy office gossip: “They are closing the C-bank elevators for maintenance.”
The Bottom Line: A confused attempt to tackle a big topic. But it was an interesting attempt nonetheless and worth a watch.
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