Episode 19 - The Ones
22 March 2012
Synopsis: Elisa returns but admits she doesn’t know if she should marry Jack because of a dark secret. It turns out she killed her first husband when he cheated on her. Jack goes out with Tracy to see if he can resist temptation but when he discovers Elisa followed him they break up. Jenna meets a cute paramedic and keeps poisoning Kenneth to try and meet him again. Tracy has to buy his wife a twentieth anniversary present.
The Good: I’m struggling with 30 Rock. They manage to defy the rules of good comedy each week. They have clearly defined characters and logical (for a sit com) stories and yet the jokes just don’t work (see The Bad).
It’s nice to see Jack and Elisa’s story reach a conclusion. Jenna’s story should be an easy laugh generator. The borderline sociopath keeps trying to poison people in order to meet a cute guy. She plays her selfish obsession with her new crush really well as ever – eager, excited, oblivious and ignorant.
Ditto Jack turning to Tracy for a night of erotic temptation. It seems like another easy comedy plot where Tracy would parade some appropriate and inappropriate temptations for Jack to knock back. But it doesn’t play out like that. Grizz and Dot Com have a nice scene with Tracy trying to get him out of getting a tattoo. Their intelligent, soft spoken analysis is an amusing contrast to Tracy’s loud unthinking behaviour. “No judgment in brainstorming” pleads Grizz after Tracy rubbishes Dot Com’s suggestion. With the revelation that Tracy hasn’t actually cheated on his wife in twenty years he has almost become 30 Rock’s Joey Tribbiani. He’s the charismatic, overgrown child who can’t master simple tasks and now he has the heart of gold to go with it. Although obviously he remains more unstable than that and his admission of being a high functioning alcoholic doesn’t help the comparison. I enjoyed him getting the women hanging around him to pay for his drinks. It seemed a suitable dig at worshippers of celebrity.
Jenna quoting movie lines (from Notting Hill) to justify herself seemed appropriate for her narcissist mind to call upon. Frank’s love of his hats remained consistent as his cap said “Fedora” while the other Pranksmen wore actual fedoras. The Brian Williams cameo was something different.
The Bad: The problem with Kenneth and Jenna is that they have no capacity to grow or change. We have seen Liz and Jack become better friends. We have seen Tracy go from outsider to become part of the furniture at 30 Rock. But despite living in the big city for a few years now, Kenneth refuses to outgrow his backward upbringing. And Jenna has apparently always been this selfish and shallow and always will be. The result is that they don’t seem like real people and their behaviour loses its emotional resonance. Jenna’s selfishness is entirely consistent and predictable. But when Kenneth is nice to her and gets screwed over for believing in her, there is no humour to be had. You don’t feel sorry for Kenneth because he should have known better by now. And the focus of the story isn’t on the emotions of the characters. And emotions are real, we all have them and seeing other peoples emotions is one of the sources of good comedy. Seeing caricatures of people can only be funny for so long.
Then you have the writers, who remain undefined. Lutz running into the wall and having a monitor fall on him is kind of funny. The same way watching monkeys can be funny. But if we knew anything about Lutz or cared about him at all it would be so much funnier. Then we have “The Pranksmen” putting on a terrible, fake prank to catch Jenna. Again, if we knew their characters better and actually cared about them then maybe their pathetic attempts to be cool and clever would be funny. And of course the target of their prank is Jenna who doesn’t seem like a real person, so again the joke can only go so far.
Elisa being a passionate murderer invokes a shrug at best. When you write a character out of a show and use a characteristic of theirs which the audience has never seen, it’s always going to feel manufactured. Liz being mocked for being unattractive just doesn’t land as usual. It’s not like she thinks she is attractive so why is picking on her funny?
As I mentioned in The Good, Jenna trying to poison different crew members or cause them harm in other ways sounded like it could be fun but she focussed on Kenneth. Tracy tempting Jack could have been funny too but the plot didn’t go that way either. 30 Rock feels like a sketch show at times so I would encourage them to go for set piece jokes like that. Having Elisa wear a Battlestar Galactica t-shirt and Kenneth making a Mad Men reference doesn’t strike me as good comedy. I know it gets that “I understand that!” reaction from a lot of people. But that isn’t going to make you laugh hard is it?
Comic Highlight: Liz: “Tracy! Did you even go home last night? And where’s your shirt?”
Tracy: “No and At Large!”
Tracy’s confident delivery of his wordplay is convincing and unexpected as ever.
The Bottom Line: Comedy comes from many different sources. But I maintain that the majority of it comes from exaggerations of real things. 30 Rock is an exaggeration of unreal things. Or at least the referencing of real things but in an unreal context. This episode is a bunch of talented actors with interesting characters in intriguing situations. But no laughs.
Feedback
Add your comments on this episode below. They may be included in the weekly podcasts.
)