30 Rock: Believe in the Stars

So 30 Rock’s starting a little slow this season, because we need to get a few headliners out of the way.  I’ll let it go for now.  I’m just glad someone has finally felt the need to address some Olympic ridiculousness.

Liz visits Jack in his office to inform him that she needs to travel to Chicago to excuse herself from Jury Duty.  He upgrades her to first class and offers her his Coma-naprocil, because who doesn’t medicate for a flight these days?  Side effects include dizziness, sexual nightmares and sleep crying.  Sexual nightmares?

When Tyler Brody, the Olympic Silver Medalist in Tetherball, calls in, Liz comments on the number of weird Olympic sports (hello curling!), prompting Jack to admit that several events were staged, such as tetherball, to boost ratings.  If only this were true (hello curling!).  Brody is threatening to go public.

On the sixth floor, Liz runs into Jenna, currently under counter-suance by Tracy for defamation.  “How can you defame someone who’s been arrested in three different Chuck E. Cheese’s?”  Liz decides it’s time to involve HR and a mediator.  At Jenna’s prodding, Liz admits that Tracy takes care of his boys, but Jenna’s a woman, so why bother?  Jenna says that men think they can get away with anything, “like when Adrian Brody kissed Halle Berry at the Oscars.”

Jack meets with Tyler Brody to negotiate a silencing deal, but Kenneth interrupts and ga-gas over Olympic Hero Brody.  But Brody reveals the truth (“Olympic fraud!”) about the ratings scam.  Kenneth dies a little inside, and though Jack buys Brody’s silence, Kenneth later tells him, “Tyler Brody was not the only hero I lost today, sir.”

At mediation, Tracy says that white folks think they can do whatever they want to black folks, “like when Adrian Brody kissed Halle Berry at the Oscars.”  The ongoing my-minority-has-it-worse debate begins and continues back at the studio, forcing Jenna to finally say, “I could totally be black.  You should try being a white woman.”  Tracy accepts the physical challenge and announces: “Freaky Friday social experiment.”  Dot com is left wondering where Liz Lemon is.

Cut to Liz as Princess Leia in a Chicago courtroom: “I don’t really think it’s fair for me to be in a jury, because I can read thoughts.”

Dismissed, Liz gets comfortable in first class and takes her Coma-naprocil, fielding phone calls from Jack, Jenna and Tracy until the meds kick in and her seatmate arrives: none other than Her Royal Highness Oprah!

Mid-flight and mid-high, Liz bombards Oprah with confessions (“One time at summer camp, I kissed a girl on a dare, but then she drowned”) and inane questions (“I didn’t get my September issue of O Magazine.  Do you have the number for subscriptions?”).

In Jack’s office, Jack tries to convince Kenneth that he is a good person, because life can be complicated.  Imagine a lifeboat that holds eight people, with nine on board.  Either the boat capsizes or one person must be sacrificed to save the others.  How do you decide who should die?  Kenneth interrupts that he doesn’t believe in hypothetical questions, “that’s like lying to your brain.”  Kenneth says there are only two things he loves in this world, “Everybody, and television.”  But in his neighborhood, Kenneth’s neighbors steal cable because no one can afford it.  Except for Kenneth, because stealing is wrong.  Jack is disgusted.  And beaten … for the moment.

On the flight, Oprah analyzes Liz’s problems.  She offers Liz salt-water taffy, and goes on to list her other favorite things this year: Sweater capes, calypso music, paisley tops, Chinese checkers, high heeled flip flops, and Liz Lemon.  So she offers to stop by 30 Rock to solve the Tracy/Jenna crisis, so Liz can take care of Liz.  Liz tells Oprah she’s the best person in the world, then falls asleep in her lap.

On the sixth floor, Tracy emerges as an ugly, beastly, white woman with a blonde wig, and giggles at Toofer and Frank.  I’m sure it’s supposed to be a caricature of Jenna, but what happens when it’s a caricature of someone I know in real life?  Even funnier!

Liz arrives, and finds Jack.  He says it’s been a crazy day, capped off by Kenneth “being a reaaaaaal stick in the mud.”  She cuts White Tracy off before he walks into Jack, but Jack finds them anyway, horrified.  Tracy tells him that he and Jenna are doing a social experiment.  Enter Jenna, in afro and blackface, causing Liz and Jack to run down the halls and stop her immediately. Toofer provides the “Blackface promotes racial stereotypes” required language, and Jack tells them that white men actually have it the hardest.  They are universally hated and yet have to clean up messes like this.

Liz interrupts that she has the solution: Oprah is coming!  Isn’t it interesting that Oprah is appearing on this very special, racially charged episode?

Kenneth enters a full elevator and down they go – until the elevator stops suddenly.  Jack steps forward, and explains they’ve tripped the emergency brake.  There’s enough oxygen for eight people before help arrives.  Unfortunately, nine people are in the elevator.  Where the emergency phone should be is a gun loaded with one bullet.  Before Jack finishes the scenario, Kenneth removes the gun and tries to shoot himself in the head.  The elevator doors open with Kenneth asking someone to choke him with his belt.  Jack walks out disgusted, and beaten … for the moment.

Later, Jack finds Kenneth and accepts defeat, shaking the young man’s hand and calling him a Hero.  Kenneth, pleased as punch, arrives home that night, whistling and Mr. Rogers-ing out of his jacket and into his sweater, to find a gift from Jack: A flat screen television the size of my NYC apartment.  Kenneth turns it on, but only receives static, and stares longingly at the jimmied cable box outside his window.

The next day, Liz emerges from her office in a sweater cape, eating taffy as Calypso music plays.  She joins Jenna and Tracy in Jack’s office when Oprah enters.  Only, it’s not Oprah, it is Pam, a middle school class vice president and certified babysitter.  Liz flashbacks to the flight as she remembers Oprah (hilariously) saying things like, “I lost my headgear at Six Flags,” and “My boyfriend’s in ninth grade!”

I want some of those drugs.  Imagine going through life like that?  I could get married to the Rock tomorrow, live blissfully the rest of my life and yet still honor the restraining order.

Kenneth meets Jack in the halls.  He tries to apologize, but instead admits he now knows the glory of cable.  Which for Kenneth isn’t after hours on Cinemax, but rather a cable channel that tells you what’s on all the other channels, and the horrifying reality that is Spongebob Squarepants.  I’m with you, man.

Pam works with Tracy and Jenna.  Jack stops in, and Liz can’t understand how she made such a horrible mistake.  Jack says it happens to the best of them.  It’s how he met M. Night Shyamalan, but it turned out to be Jonathon. (Jonathon: “Best day of my life.”) Meanwhile, Pam’s magic works and Tracy and Jenna have resolved their differences, now the best of friends.  Jack tells Liz to be a white man and take credit, as Tracy and Jenna start a chorus of Lean on Me.

Season 3, Episode 2: Believe in the Stars (originally aired November 6, 2008)

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Thursdays at 9:30/8:30C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC