30 Rock: ‘Unwindulax’

In ‘Unwindulax’ we see 30 Rock get political all over the place as Liz Lemon fights for the representation of ideas and her support for Barack Obama, and Jack Donaghy tries to prove that money is power and that is why Mitt Romney will win. Seeing that this is a television review and not a political forum, I want to avoid pushing any of my own opinions here when it comes to how I feel about the two characters perspectives and ideals. However, viewing it as more of a satire of political stereotypes, I did enjoy this episode but I thought it was the weakest to date in this the show's final season.

There were two big points in the episode that stood out to me the most. The first was when Liz could no longer stand by and listen to the men at Jack’s Republican fundraiser mock her fellow democrats and she starts a rant that amusingly not very well thought out but it is her best attempt to express her feelings about the ignorance these people in her opinion choose to have. This apparently was Jack’s plan all along as he uses this outburst as evidence to raise more money to keep “people like that” out of the White House.

The second main point was Jack’s own speech about why Liz’s belief that people want to hear good ideas is nonsense: “ Americans don’t want that that. They want their Honey’s Boo Boo and their Sunday Night Feetball, which is the plural of football. Americans don’t want to think, they want men like me to pick their Presidents for them.” This was truly a shot at all of us and it was spot one. Say what you will about either candidate, but the biggest problem …. Sorry …. I don’t want to break my own rule that this is a review and not a political forum. So I’ll just say I thoroughly enjoyed Jack right there.

So this was also a part one of two episode where we find out at the end that one person may indeed make a difference in the election as Jenna is currently the biggest celebrity in the world of the Unwindulaxers that preside in the one truly undecided part of America, Northern Florida.

A few of my favorite moments:

• “You people in New York don’t know what’s going on in the rest of the country. Truck races, swamp parties, mall fires.” – Unwindulaxer man played by the great Gary Cole.
• “What do I do, press a button? No. It’s different from every other camera.” Pete being truly annoyed at the typical tourist.
• “It’s an original Leonard Ni’moy” – Liz’s justification of her semi-nude photograph.
• “Ed Begley Jr. wasn’t available because the sail on his car broke.”- Jack
• Only Pete could sprain his own neck by accidentally closing it in a window.
• TGS has never been the most cutting edge comedy show as proven by the characters of Baseball Mitt Romney and Barack O’llama.
• Florida. The penis of America.

What did everyone else think? Comments are always welcome.

30 Rock: Stride of Pride

So I know it’s stupid to make bold, extreme judgments of anything immediately after you experience it, but I think “Stride of Pride” is going to end up being one my favorite episodes of 30 Rock. So much so that I’m going to have to retreat a little from the statement I made last week about how I was glad 30 Rock was going out on a high note, because I am so not ready for it to end.

We got a very meta story in tonight’s episode about the debate of whether or not women are funny. This stupid argument got a lot of steam over the summer when Adam Corrola declared that women just aren't as funny as men, and I have no idea why. Give it rest people. Women are just as funny, and in some cases funnier, than men. I won’t even give you the satisfaction of making a list of hilarious women or Asians that drive well.

Great story-line about how Jack was “Great Escaping” a group of women and one of those women, Zarina, was doing our generations version of it called “Pokémoning.” As much as we all rightfully hate Ryan Lochte, it was really funny having him in this episode. His delayed, idiotic fear that he was the guy Zarina was using as a replacement to her father figure was spot on.

Lots of fantastic quotes and funny moments from this episode but here are a few of my favorites:

• “Bradley was only sexually gay.” – Liz Lemon on justifying her former “boyfriend.”
• “She’s actually not that hot. She’s got a gut and British legs.” –Jenna describing Helen Mirren.
• Ryan Lochte misspelled his own name for his email address.
• One of the guys Zarina had in her group email was named Ken Tremendous, which is also the Twitter handle of Mike Schur, also known as the genius who created Parks and Recreation and plays Dwight’s crazy brother Mose on The Office. Nice little shout out to him.
• “Now this is how people danced before Chubby Checkers ruined everything.” – Jack embracing being an old man.
• “There are no bad ideas, Lemon. Only great ideas that have gone horribly wrong.” -Jack. I plan on using this quote for quite some time.

Comments are certainly welcome, whether they are for agreement, disagreement, or indifference.

30 Rock: Governor Dunston

30 Rock had a great premiere episode last week and “Governor Dunston” continued the laugh riot tonight as we saw Liz Lemon’s continued pursuit of getting pregnant, Jack’s continued pursuit of tanking NBC, Tracy’s look-a-like Governor Dunston replace Paul Ryan for vice president candidacy, and we got to meet Kenneth’s Mom and her special friend Ron.

Liz getting all turned-on by organizing missed the mark for me considering how established Liz is for being a constant mess and we’ve seen this joke done so many times before on other shows, most notably by Monica Gellar on Friends. Based on the way they went about it in this episode, I’d rather see her get pregnant sooner rather than later.

 I wish we could have gotten more Bryan Cranston in the episode and have him interact with the likes of Liz, Jack and Tracy; however, he was a great edition to the episode and I’ll never complain too much if we get to see him with a weird southern accent singing about how his honeymoon.

Another great guest star, Matthew Broderick, returns as Cooter in the same episode that Bryan Cranston guest stars on. I’m pretty sure it was just coincidental they both appeared at the same time, but it’s kind of funny considering Broderick was originally considered for the part of Walter White on Breaking Bad. I really liked Cooter as the incompetent political adviser when he first showed up so it was great to see him back as an adviser to the Romney public relations team.

Some other quick thoughts and funny quotes:

• “Turns out he was born in Kenya. Not a lot we can say about that.” – Jack on the reason why Paul Ryan had to drop out of the running.
• “No political stuff. We don’t want an unexpected boost in ratings.” – Jack’s direction to Lemon after the appearance of Governor Dunston. Is Jack also giving the same advice to SNL in real life? For an election year Saturday Night Live has been soft of both the Romney and Obama campaigns so far this season.
• “It’s like I’m Don Draper and you’re Meghan. No. It’s like your Glen and I’m Sally.” – Liz to Chris on attempting to have sex in her office.
• “NBC.com had over 100 hits today!”
• “My opponent would have you believe that Mitt Romney is a merman. Now I know that Mitt Romney does not live in the sea.” –Governor Dunston

It’s really refreshing to see a great comedy like 30 Rock to both be going out on its own terms and still continuing to put out fantastic episodes this late into its run… cough… The Office… cough…. How I Met Your Mother… cough. Only 11 episodes left and here’s hoping they’re all as great as the first two have been.

Comments are certainly welcome, whether they are for agreement, disagreement, or indifference.