If I wasn't already a very happily-married man, and Liz Lemon wasn't... well, a fictional character in a television sitcom, then I'd so ask her to be my wife! (And she's just desperate enough that she might take me up on it!)I worried after Season One of 30 Rock was so amazingly fresh and hilarious that the show might suffer the dreaded sophomore jinx (that some might argue both Lost and Heroes have experienced). Two episodes into Season Two, though, I don't see any signs of that happening. It's almost impossible for me to enjoy sitcoms anymore, what with the humour in most being either predictable or so exaggerated as to bear no resemblance to reality. Because of that, I came close to not even trying 30 Rock when it debuted last year. When I did, though, and laughed out loud pretty much throughout the half hour premiere, I knew it was something special.
As we watched this week's episode over dinner tonight, Vicki and I were both commenting on how incredibly natural Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin are as a comedic pair. They complement each other perfectly in the roles of long-suffering Liz Lemon and insufferable Jack Donaghy. Fey's character has to be pathetic, yet lovable, for the show to work at all, and she pulls that off every week with a self-deprecating eagerness that most actresses would never dare to try. Similarly, Baldwin's network executive manages to occasionally awe us with who and what he knows, while at the same time being the butt of many of the jokes... or is he? Donaghy's ability to sum up Lemon's life - again and again, in increasingly accurate and depressingly succinct manner - is a running gag that just keeps getting funnier with each new incarnation.
While the rest of the characters on the show are certainly more than window dressing - Kenneth the NBC Page threatens to steal every scene he's in, and the shot of him proudly riding his bicycle off the set after losing the big poker match to Donaghy last season can still crack me up anytime I think about it - none of them can really compete with the chemistry that exists between the two leads. The Liz-and-Jack dynamic is pure comic genius, and you could really just watch the show each week for that alone, and still come away entertained. If you ask me, that's the mark of a great sitcom! Too bad it's the only one of its kind on the air these days.
Rating: ****
6 comments:
I love this show!
and I also love Liz Lemon.
Mattman, you branched out into seeing
Fey's movie Mean Girls? It is almost as good as 30 Rock.
I second the Mean Girls recommendation - even if you don't like it you'll at least understand what "fetch" means.
Also, I really enjoyed the S2 premiere. I totally forgot about the 2nd episode but am downloading it now and will try to remember to work it into my Thursday schedule.
Also *2, I swear you would like The Office if you gave it a Buffy-like chance (i.e. second season better than the first). Not that you don't have enough TV-watching on your plate.
Who needs to waste 2 hours of his life to find out what a silly urban slang means, when he has the Urban Dictionary!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=fetch
Get with the 21st century, people!
I have to say I didn't really enjoy S2E02 ... the only moment I laughed at was when Kenneth struggled to drink his water after his encounter with Mrs. Morgan. The rest I thought fell kind of flat :(
To each their own, but I laughed out loud at:
1) Jack wanting Liz to eat his steak... while he watched!
2) Liz claiming a dog had run off with the steak
3) Kenneth proudly bragging about Jack's heart attack, unwittingly giving away a valuable secret
4) Liz pulling a tooth out of her mouth and saying, "That can't be good!"
5) The exchanges between Jack and his rival over dinner, as one tried to hide his heart disorder while the other dodged entendres about his sexual preference.
6) The conversation between Jack and the grand daughter at the end of the episode, where Baldwin's perfect comic timing was on display once again.
And those are just the ones I can recall w/o watching the episode again! Seemed like a typically-hilarious ep to me.
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