Episode 8 - Secrets and Lies
6 January 2009
Review
Synopsis: Jack and C.C struggle with keeping their relationship a secret. Liz has to coddle Jenna and Tracy’s egos. Frank and Toofer fall out.
The Good: The two main stories are straight forward enough. Liz looks after Jenna and Tracy as usual. She manages to mollify them both and a few jokes along the way are passable. Tracy delivers a typical line at one point to Jenna “I want you and Josh here for my award. And then maybe afterwards, I’ll let you hold it…then you can check out my award!” He laughs and you think it’s just that old joke. But he then exclaims “Banter!” with raised arms and walks off. It’s unexpectedly amusing. He also refers to his Asian fan base (sincerely) as “Pacific Rimmers” which was pretty funny.
Meanwhile C.C. and Jack manage to be an entertaining screen couple. They play their affection very well and their angst leads up beautifully to the final scene where Jack reveals their relationship in the executive dining room (See Comic Highlight).
The Bad: The rest of the episodes humour falls outside of a good context. It can be a fine line between a joke which works and one which doesn’t.
For example, the final scene in the executive dining room (See Comic Highlight) has enough plausibility to be funny. Because Jack is making a grand speech and trying to win over his colleagues we can more easily accept that he would say silly things because he is getting carried away. The entire room then gets swept up in the moment just about making their revelations believable. It’s much tougher to accept Jack telling C.C that “I like it when a woman has ambition. It’s like seeing a dog wearing clothes.” It is a witty line, but if he really said it in private to a Congresswoman, wouldn’t she be offended?
Similarly Tracy and Jenna being silly can be funny, but the context must be right. Jenna being arrogant about her award makes sense. But when she says she is jealous of babies because of “how much attention they get” a line of plausibility is crossed. The line itself is an intentional exaggeration but Jenna says it with such feeling that we are being asked to accept that she is both irrationally insecure and open about it. It isn’t a very believable line, it sounds more like a joke written to try and fulfil the exaggerated purpose. And yet the joke could have worked with a better context. For example if Liz implied Jenna was jealous of a specific baby. It’s much easier to accept Jenna complaining that someone’s baby was getting more attention than her. But when you apply it to “all” babies it just becomes a bad joke.
One more example for the road is Liz Lemon remembering that it was her birthday yesterday. Again the context is everything. She cheerily says that, like C.C, she has never made a compromise for a man. In order to beat us over the head with how much that makes C.C worry that she will end up like Liz, they offer up her forgetting her birthday had happened. When a joke makes an obvious plot point so directly it loses much of its humour. It is painfully apparent to the audience that that line isn’t true but inserted to make a point. The next question to ask is why did it have to be a birthday, something so memorable which people never forget. Liz could have said a hundred other things to imply her life was a mess but instead she chose one of the most prominent aspects of human existence. The result of that choice is that the joke isn’t funny. The viewer is forced to see the writers work rather than believe what the characters are saying.
Finally here is some dialogue for you:
Frank: “Lix, we have a serious crisis. We’re mad at each other.”
Liz: “What? No, I have legitimate problems to deal with right now.”
Toofer: “But the Toofer-Frank rivalry has finally exploded.”
Liz: “No one cares!”
What’s wrong with that you may ask? Well, have you ever seen two people who are arguing stand calmly next to each other and explain to their boss that they are mad at each other? No, because people don’t behave like that. Worse still is Toofer’s claim that their rivalry has exploded. It sounds like a line from The Simpsons where they might suggest that two small characters were trying to gain prominence within the show. In a cartoon that might be funny but for humans to say it sounds ridiculous. Of course it also goes to the core of the problem of 30 Rock which is the complete lack of character development. Beyond Frank being a sex obsessed slob and Toofer being black and from Harvard, what else do we know about them? Nothing. They are intentionally undeveloped characters. When Liz says no one cares about them the show is almost trying to get a laugh out of its own treatment of its characters. What’s next? Jokes about their auditions or references to other shows they’ve been on?
Comic Highlight: Jack takes C.C up to the executive dining room in order to tell all his peers at once that they are a couple. Once he has revealed it all his fellow diners get swept up in the sprit of it and begin revealing their intimate details “I gave to NPR last year” and “my children go to public school.” Then it escalates perfectly as on old white man stands up to say “I’m gay” followed by a young black man admitting “I’m black.” C.C admits that she once voted for Ronald Reagan leading to a round of applause. Followed by the coup de grace as another older man stands and admits “I murdered my wife” just as the credits hit the screen. It’s one of those rare superb endings to an episode where the last line is also the funniest. It’s also an exercise in restraint by the writers. Our imagination can provide all the humour necessary as we wander what peoples reactions might be to that news. Actually seeing the people react would not have been half as funny. The only drawback to this scene is its similarity to one in Friends (411 - The One With Phoebe's Uterus) when Joey comes to work with Ross at the museum.
The Bottom Line: Despite the essay I have written about it, this is one of the less offensive episodes of 30 Rock. The story is fine and the odd joke is funny. It’s just sad that the majority of jokes fall flat. The show even gets James Carville to make a guest appearance and can’t get a laugh out of him. Like all their other failed jokes, they give him no context to work from. They just give him silly things to say in a surreal way. It’s a microcosm of what’s wrong with the whole show.
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