30 Rock: This Is Voodoo, Ken!

Another November Thursday, another Emmy-baiting stuntcasted episode of 30 Rock.  This time around, it’s Steve Martin, playing a friend of Jack’s, a guy with self-proclaimed “severe agoraphobia” and “debilitating wealth” named “Gavin Volure.”  Sounds inherently awesome, right?

Well… here’s my thing about Steve Martin.  I know he’s considered a great icon of comedy.  I know people like Jon Stewart and presumably Tina Fey view him as a godlike creature.  But I’ve mostly seen him in stuff like Father of the Bride and Parenthood, so to me, he’s just an 80s comedian who was slightly funnier than most of the guys on the sitcoms I watched back then.  I’m sorry if this is a sacrilege, but I’ve never subscribed to the cult of Steve Martin.

Although he was, like all 30 Rock guest stars, very funny in this week’s episode.  It begins when Jack brings Liz to Gavin’s house for a dinner party, and Gavin develops a liking for Liz (understandably – Tina Fey looked great all dressed up with a refreshingly non-Palin-esque updo) and asks her out.  Thanks to Gavin’s agoraphobia and fear of human contact, Liz thinks she’s found the perfect relationship: They’ll sit around for hours in his mansion, watch MTV Canada, and never have sex.  Until she learns the truth – Gavin is in fact under house arrest for tax fraud (and arson!) and only pretends to be a reclusive eccentric to save face.  He then escapes from the federal marshals guarding his estate and shows up on the “TGS” set to beg Liz to run away with him to Canada.  She, quite sensibly, refuses and Gavin gets hauled off to jail after a surreal sequence in which Jack tries to talk him down from the set’s 15-foot balcony.

Meanwhile, Tracy’s young sons, Tracy Jr. and George Foreman, are acting weird (creating voodoo dolls, staring creepily, etc.).  After channel-surfing past a documentary on the Menendez brothers, Tracy decides his kids are out to kill him.  He goes to great lengths to prevent this from happening, including ordering a Tracy Jordan sex doll from Japan (apparently they’re all the rage there) to serve as his double.  In the end, it turns out the boys are just afraid Tracy will leave them and get a new family, and they have a nice bonding moment that includes a kid trying to beat Tracy with a lamp and Tracy threatening to send him to jail.

Other things we learned this week:

• Kenneth’s family once lived in a militia camp in the woods, and now is being menaced by angry, inbred pigs (aren’t we all).
• Jack’s list of men he’d date, were he inclined to date men: Michael Jordan, Denzel Washington, and Taye Diggs (Jack: “God, do I have a black thing?”).
• Every floor in 30 Rock must have an emergency marshal, “For fires, terrorist attacks, Cloverfield monsters.”
• The people in charge of the commercials think there’s a significant crossover audience between 30 Rock and Twilight (hey, a lot of us do have eclectic taste).

Season 3, Episode 4: Gavin Volure (originally aired November 20, 2008)

For another take on this episode, check out Good Job, Sex Doll by Jaimie Campos.

For more on 30 Rock, click here.

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

Photographs courtesy of NBC