30 Rock Review and Recap: The Pilot

I was super excited for last night’s premiere of NBC’s new comedy 30 Rock. No, not because I thought it was going be a ground breaking, laugh out loud comedy – my excitement was more for the fact that we didn’t have to see any more of the tired promos that NBC has been airing non-stop since the dawn of man. If you haven’t heard of 30 Rock, it’s clearly because you’ve been living under one.

But the premiere did indeed air last night, and we here at GiveMeMyRemote.com are lucky to add another contributor to our humble site.  Brian, a loyal GMMRer, has joined the ranks to recap and review 30 Rock.  A round of applause and comments for Brian.  Woo hoo!!

Title: The Pilot
Original Airdate: 10/11/2006
Liz Lemon probably wishes she called in sick on this particular day, because almost from the time she pokes her head inside the studios at 30 Rockefeller Center, her job as head writer at “The Girlie Show” is thrown for a few major loops.

If you think you’re seeing double, don’t adjust your televisions (Can TVs be adjusted? I don’t think there’s such a thing as vertical hold anymore). 30 Rock, NBC’s other much-hyped new show looking behind the scenes at an SNL-type variety show, debuted tonight. And it’s clear right off the bat that, if nothing else, they got the casting right, starting with a pair of ready-for-primetime players. Tina Fey is smart, pretty and well-suited to the role of creative force behind a hit comedy show. Tracey Morgan is off-the-wall and funny just oozes from his pores. Alec Baldwin, meanwhile, provides a veteran presence with surprising comic timing.

At the outset we get a glimpse of just who Liz (Fey) is. On line at a hot dog cart, she confronts a cutter. To avenge the slight, she buys ALL the hot dogs and proceeds to hand them out to “the good people” who stayed in line behind her, not to mention every hobo, businesswoman and grade-school student she passes on her way to work. Most of these charity dogs get tossed, back at her and otherwise.

The show cuts to the rehearsal of a sketch from that night’s show-within-the-show, “Pam, the Overly-Confident Morbidly Obese Woman,” portrayed by Jane Krakowski’s character Jenna DeCarlo. Liz makes her way past the stage to the back offices where she is introduced to a tour group by Kenneth, an overly enthusiastic page (Hack McBrayer). We then meet Pete (Ken Adsit), her producer and close friend.

Pete: (holding a giant box of hot dogs) What is this?
Liz: Oh, well you know how I hate it when people cheat or break rules?
Pete: Yes I do
Liz: Well I just spent a hundred and fifty bucks on wieners.
Pete: Attaboy.

Before the first break it starts to feel like all the really funny parts might have been used up in the commercial previews. In Jack Donaghy, Baldwin pours on the deadpan delivery of a mindless, market research-driven network suit extra thick, but to good effect. He effectively dresses down Liz by sizing her up perfectly, right down to her penchant for knitting. But with one line, he lays out his raison d’être on the show.

Pete: I’m surprised you’re renovating. This is such a nice office.
Jack: It’s a great office, but sometimes you have to change things that are perfectly good just to make them your own.

Jack gives a spiel about pioneering the GE Trivection Oven that seemed innocuous at first. Then, during one of the later breaks, there was a commercial for the GE Trivection Oven. Seems to me that if GE got out of the writers’ rooms, NBC might not be last in the ratings so often.

Anyway, the attention then turns to Krakowski’s Jenna (Is it a coincidence or a nod to The Office that she’s named Jenna and the first skit we saw had her playing a character named Pam?) Rachel Dratch, as an animal handler named Dretch, introduces Jenna to the cats she’ll appear with in that night’s sketch. Right off the bat it’s clear NBC erred in demoting Dratch, originally tapped to play Jenna, in mid-August and blatantly choosing looks over yuks. But Krakowski holds her own.

Greta: Would you describe yourself as cat-competent?
Jenna: Oh yes. I love cats. I used to have two cats, but then I moved to this place with hardwood floors so I had to put them down. (pause) I’m joking.

Liz and Tracey (Tracey Morgan) spend the afternoon first at a Bronx fried chicken joint and then at a strip club after Tracey balks at the ritzy bistro where Jack arranged from them to discuss Tracey joining the show. Liz thinks he’d be a horrible addition, by the way. Check out the great spin on the HBO line.

Liz: So Tracey, we should talk about the show.
Tracey: Man, I ain’t doing it unless I could get to do it my way. I want it to be raw, HBO-style content.
Liz: Well, it’s not HBO. It’s TV. And I don’t think that it’s a good fit.
Tracey: Man, I want to drop truth bombs. Remember how pissed off I was when Us Weekly said that I was on crack? That’s racist. I’m not on crack. I’m straight up mentally ill.

While Liz and Tracey are out, Jack and Jenna meet during rehearsals and enact the scene that anyone who saw 30 Rock’s summer previews would recognize. It’s the one where the page delivers Dratch here Jenna Pepto Bismol. Here it’s reworked with Krakowski, Preparation H and fewer yuks.

Liz, meanwhile, is quickly becoming convinced of Tracey’s insanity, especially after he makes a “quick stop” at a Bronx strip club. Liz storms out, only to return for her cell phone, which she uses to call the studio. Kenneth informs her that Jack fired Pete while she was out all day.

(Cue the GE Trivection Oven commercial here. Sigh.)

At showtime, Jack is wielding his manipulative influence on Jenna.

Pete: I think this is your opportunity to go out there and prove everybody wrong.
Jenna: Everybody? What do you mean? Who’s everybody?
Pete: The network that wanted to fire you. The focus groups that said you had a weird eye.
Jenna: You mean this eye? OK, this eye, it doesn’t open all the way because when I was little my sister peed in it.
Pete: Tonight is your opportunity to go out there and change all of our minds.
Jenna: What?! Where is Liz? Liz!

Steaming over Pete’s firing, Liz vows to quit in front of the whole crew. But Tracey has another pit-stop in mind, this time in front of the tenement where he spent time as a foster kid.

Tracey: I’m so lucky I got out of here.
Liz: It’s not luck. You got out of here because you’re very talented, people love you and…are you peeing?

There’s a slightly bloody scene involving a flung cat at this point, an unplanned part of the show-within-the-show that’s tough to explain. But in short, it’s Tracey’s time to save the day. Liz sends him on stage to kill time and recover the live show, which is in danger of falling to pieces. The skit seemed almost deliberately unfunny, but in fairness, Liz and Pete had planned to cut it before Jack reinstated it and personally cast the “lead cat.” So without a tough act to follow, Tracey simply kills.

And we may have fall’s new tagline: “This honkey grandma be trippin’!”

In all, 30 Rock looks promising but rough around some of the edges. For a show with an innovative – if currently duplicated – premise, it has a classic sitcom-ish feel at times. It’s a shame Dratch doesn’t get a bigger chunk of the 22 minutes to really ham it up because Morgan can’t be on screen all the time to fill that role.

I’m intrigued, though. There’s tons of talent here, so I’m looking forward to seeing the quality improve in the coming weeks.