Episode 4 - Rosemary's Baby
6 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Liz brings in her idol, Rosemary Howard to be a guest writer on TGS. But her controversial ideas don’t go down well with Jack and he fires both her and Liz. When Liz sees what she might become in the future she rushes back to NBC and gets her job back. Jack tells Tracy the one thing he can’t do is dog fighting and so Tracy has to do it. At the root of it all seems to be Tracy’s relationship with his father, so Jack takes him to therapy. Jenna accidentally burns Kenneth’s page jacket which leads him into conflict with the head page Donnie. The Good: Tracy is a predictable character and it works for him. You just know he will have to do dog fighting once it is forbidden and the flashbacks to his daddy issues is a straightforward explanation. The scene in the therapists office may be far too dated for many of those watching, but for those who understand it, it has its good side (see Comic Highlight). The Bad: There is a consistency one can see in Liz Lemon: everything she says during a plot is wrong. So here she defends the reason she became a writer, to expose the truth and push the envelope. Which means naturally by the end of the episode she begs Jack to take her back and announces that she wants to make money and invest it. I’m not quite sure what it says about the times we live in or just 30 Rock that the moral of the story seems to be – do what you are told to do for the sake of making money. Essentially they are casting Jack Donaghy as the voice of reason and his philosophy is that the creative television TGS makes is simply a vehicle for advertisers. I don’t sense much irony being written in this TV show which promotes this view of television as an industry. Considering the pandering the writers did to Jerry Seinfeld’s Bee-movie (see 201) perhaps that’s what 30 Rock really is – an excuse to sell advertising revenue. Certainly I don’t see much to enjoy or laugh at about Liz Lemon hanging out with her idol Rosemary Howard. Liz is too humble a character to laugh at when things go wrong. And the story is filled with unsubtle humour which doesn’t help. In order to imply Liz has become a follower, Jack simply hands her an award for “Followship.” Later Rosemary leads Liz through a bad neighbourhood and tells her it is called “Little Chechnya” and after that in order to suddenly show how out of touch with reality she is, she tells Liz “come on, it’s the 90s.” These lines are such obvious comedy that they lack any punch whatsoever. Perhaps worse than that is the sheer pointlessness of Kenneth and Jenna’s story. Oh no, Kenneth’s jacket is ruined and the evil head page is going to transfer him! Kenneth is universally loved by all the major characters so there is no threat to his job at all. And why bother introducing Donnie the evil page and the idea of a “Page-off” when the story is abandoned so quickly. It feels like an afterthought which wasn’t needed. Comic Highlight: Tracy and particularly Jack’s performances in front of the therapist doing Good Times impressions amongst other things is impressive. Purely from an acting standpoint it is very good. The Bottom Line: Another terrible episode. I don’t think the 30 Rock writers know how to be funny. Their unsubtle humour may work in a live setting when the need to get a reaction from the audience is paramount. However on the small screen subtlety and plausibility will get you a lot further. Viewers need to bond with characters and buy into stories in order to become attached to them. 30 Rock provides none of that. What it provides is poor stories from silly characters with very little to laugh at.
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