Courtesy of NBC
Apparently this is the movie awards season (What? Movies? Who watches those?), and it’s in that spirit that I thought I would tackle this week’s double dose of 30 Rock. Presenting the pseudo-annual 30 Rock-Does-Things-Awards!
The winners from “Idiots are People Three!” are…
Weirdest Set-Up for a Kelsey Grammer Cameo: Kelsey Grammar, playing a fellow expert on disposing bodies himself, stages a one-man show on Abraham Lincoln’s life. That way, Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) and Jenna (Jane Krakowski) can move Pete’s (Scott Adsit) unconscious body back into his office and make him look as though he passed out after engaging in NSFW self-pleasuring. So what exactly was supposed to make this funny? I’m still not entirely sure, because the whole thing was just so random. Why Kelsey Grammer? Why Abraham Lincoln? Who is being made fun of? Although, we did get a Cheers reference at the end, so there’s that…
Courtesy of NBC
Best Excuse to Bring Back Devon Banks (Will Arnett): Have him blackmail Jack (Alec Baldwin) with new, horribly offensive Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) stand-up footage in order to help get his triplets into St. Matthew’s preschool. In all honesty, I’d take any excuse to have Devon Banks back on the show, since the sexually repressed competition between Devon and Jack is so awesome it usually causes my television to explode. This round? We get to see these corporate executives taking on the cutthroat world of preschool admissions and parenting one-upmanship. It’s a great new arena to keep the tension simmering between this bromance, and anything that results in jokes about majoring in ‘Confidence’ at Northwestern is an automatic win.
Most Appropriate Representation of NBC’s Current Identity Crisis: The network’s new slogan, “We Have a Magical Horse?” That about sums it up.
Most Moving Apology to the Idiot Movement Delivered by Liz (Tina Fey) and Written by Tracy on an Etch-A-Sketch:
Whazaaaaap? Yeah baby! I’m here today to apologize for my earlier comments. I used an offensive term to describe a group of people who made America the great… continent that it is today. These kick ass people have given the world countless bodacious things like the Birther Movement, Intelligent Design, water parks…
You see those wet spots on my keyboard? Yeah. Those are tears, my friend.
And the winners from “The Ballad of Kenneth Parcell” are…
Best Romantic Comedy Parody that a Studio Executive is Already Trying to Have Developed into an Actual Movie: Martin Luther King Day staring Emma Stone, Andy Samberg, Nick Cannon, The Inflatable Tube Man, R2D2, and Jenna Maroney. It will make oodles of money, and the eponymous hero of said day will spin in his grave.
Sanest Plotline Involving Liz and Jenna: Liz and Jenna call it quits on their best friendship of over fifteen years, only to discover that they are the only best friends they can have. Vain, self-centered Jenna is a lot more interesting and relatable than sadistic, murderous Jenna, and so her plotline was actually funny this week. Of course Jenna would befriend Charlie from “Charlie Bit My Finger” and a lesser Kardashian (if one can get any lower than Kim or Kourtney already) until they demanded more attention than they gave to her. And it’s nice to see that Liz needs Jenna just as much as Jenna needs Liz. Even though Liz usually has her head screwed on a little bit tighter than Jenna, her particularly glass-half-empty-and-filled-with-Satan’s-bile outlook on life requires the personality vacuum that is Jenna. Nothing like the stability of a friendship built on blind narcissism and hopeless despair. Awww.
Most Useless Thing that is not Kenneth: the NK, or Not Kenneth, the computer system that replaces the NBC page program. It’s sad that even a computer system gets better lines than Kenneth does, reporting a “system error” when attempting to list TGS’s memorable characters. At the end of the episode, Jack discovers that he needs Kenneth around as someone to blame when things go wrong. As a viewer, though, I’m still left wondering if having Kenneth actually contributes to this series anymore.
Most Tragic Sports Hero Story: The Phillie Phanatic not only has to massage Frank Rossitano (Judah Friedlander), but he also has to save his undersea princess daughter from marrying the Squid Lord.
So what do you think? Have I snubbed any potential 30 Rock-Does-Things Award recipients? Sound off below!
I enjoyed the Kelsey Grammer stuff, but haven’t felt that 30 Rock is at its best this year.