Episode 18 - Jackie Jormp-Jomp
6 August 2009
Synopsis: When Jenna is accidentally announced as dead, Jack leaps on the opportunity to promote her Janis Joplin movie. Liz is struggling to know what to do at home as she serves her sexual harassment suspension. A group of rich women who live for leisure take her in and she soon sees the benefits of not working.
The Good: Both stories show good continuity from previous episodes and both flow naturally from Jenna and Liz’ established traits.
Liz’ story is very predictable but often that is the mark of consistent characters. We know she will be seduced by the leisurely lifestyle, but because she is always wrong, we know that as soon as she starts to enjoy it she is doomed. The montage of her spending the day with her new friends while not actually moving was economically filmed but effectively conveyed her seduction. Her very genuine reaction to the revelation that these women were involved in a fight club was fun – “Oh this is very disappointing!” I suppose returning to the ungrateful children at work and that comforting stress is as close to a happy ending as we are likely to get.
Jenna’s story is equally predictable when the possibility of selling her movie can’t stand up to the shame of the world discovering she is forty. The inappropriateness of offering to do a nipple slip at the Kids Choice Awards was worth a smile to.
As ever Tracy steps in to provide the few attempts at humour (see Comic Highlight). In classic misspeak his sage advice to Kenneth is “heavy is the head that eats the crayons.” Tracy also refuses to rehearse, following Dr King’s advice on passive resistance in amusing fashion. In terms of consistent character behaviour I also enjoyed Kenneth saying calmly that he was sorry he forgot to bring extra mustard for Dot Com. It’s so inconceivable that Kenneth would have failed in anyway in his duties that Tracy leaps to his feet and says “Alright! Enough!”
The Bad: Jenna is consistently written and well portrayed. But I don’t think she is funny because there is nothing to like about her. She is a classic example of when comedy goes wrong. She is selfish to a fault, she is shallow in the extreme and she doesn’t care about anyone or anything else as far as we know. While that consistency is a virtue in most characters, with her it is deeply tiresome. Almost everything she says sucks the comedy out of the scene because she seems so devoid of humanity and therefore unlike a real person. We just don’t see a glimpse of a real person in her.
As a result any story about her career falls flat because we have no reason to want to see her succeed. The Janis Joplin movie becomes as implausible as she is here – not being able to reference Woodstock or Jimi Hendrix by name and bringing in vampires to the story.
Even in Liz’ story they can’t resist going too far by having Geoffrey remind her of the stress of work by talking about how each day took her closer to the grave.
Comic Highlight: Tracy is concerned by Kenneth and Dot Com’s feud so he fires the dancer that they both like. He explains his actions to them: “I had to. Friendship and trust in the entourage is the most important thing. Like that HBO show....John Adams.” It’s as predictable a joke as you could write but it’s setup in a way that almost any show he said, except for Entourage, would have been funny. So John Adams was a suitably silly choice.
The Bottom Line: Very consistent, just not very funny.
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