30 Rock Recap: The C Word

Title: The C Word
Original Airdate: Feb. 15, 2007
GMMR Recapper: Brian

Jack’s in a magnanimous mood, inviting Tracy to a posh Connectict golf outing for GE big-wigs. Tracy’s a fish out of rich-guy water right off the bat, but Jack sees his star as his ticket to hob-nob with the corporate brass on the links. The scenario has all the potential for Three’s Company-esque hijinks.

In the writer’s room, things seem like business as usual. Liz (Tina Fey) gets angry at Frank for sleeping through her (spot-on) Condoleeza Rice impression and is less than impressed when he explains that a Designing Women marathon kept him up all night. When Lutz’s cell phone rings, she whips it across the room – and smacks the cleaning lady in the head. And she loses it when Lutz pitches his third hobo-themed sketch in a week.

Liz: I didn’t like it two weeks ago when it was called America’s Next Hobo, and I didn’t like it a month ago when it was called Hobo Eye for the Straight Guy.
Lutz: Deal or No Hobo?
Liz: Hey Lutz, why don’t you approach your job with the same creativity and excitement you have for all-you-can-eat buffets?

On other fronts, Kenneth balks at being paired at the golf outing with a pretty little page named Grace with whom he has a romantic history. Kenneth is this show’s soul – and its history of mental illness.

Rachel Dratch makes her weekly cameo as the animal handler. As she presents a litter of kittens, Liz overhears Lutz call her a— “Runt!” Dratch proclaims. “This kitten, he’s such a runt.” If the show title didn’t tip you off, now you know what Lutz called Liz.

Liz wants Lutz fired, but she has a hard time relaying the epithet that inspired her rage. Eventually, she gets it across, and Frank concedes Lutz has been a problem lately.

Frank: I don’t know. I think Liz is right about this. Lutz has been slacking off since his grandma died.
Liz: What? Why didn’t you guys tell me?
Frank: I thought you knew and you were just being a, you know, that word Lutz called you.

A sequence of sepia-toned scenes reveals Liz’s, shall we say, “runtiness.

At the golf club, Tracy is killing the room, unintentionally. Rich white people don’t get him, but apparently they think they do.

Jack goes in for the kill by introducing Tracy to Don Geiss, the GE exec (played by Rip Torn, who got nailed on a DWI charge in December, about a week after Tracey Morgan did too – small world, huh?). Don’s grandkids love Tracy. Tracy, though, doesn’t love that he and “Carlton,” Don’s lawyer, are the only black guys in the room. He says so and blows the foursome Jack was counting on.

Tracy: I’m supposed to be a funny black man who says funny things?
Jack: No, I wanted you to discuss your astounding medical breakthroughs.
Tracy: OK. Bartender could you bring me a mustang melon and a bag of barbecue potato chips, because apparently I’m only here to be a stereotype.

Tracy resolves to be a caricature of himself (is that even possible) and teach Jack a lesson. Jack used him, he says. “God it’s like dating Katie Couric all over again,” Jack replies. I love the Katie on slamming this show, like Kenneth cleaning the “Katie Couric Sucks” graffiti from the walls of Brian Williams’s dressing room recently.

Tracy has to stop dropping truth bombs and play the game, Jack tells him. That’s why he hasn’t had a movie in 19 years. And it’s why they’re not playing golf with Geiss but another exec who got busted using a corporate credit card at a gay strip club and who is dry-humping Kenneth at the tee.

Liz, meanwhile, is softening her approach. She baked cupcakes for the crew to prove her niceness: superballs at the staff meeting, not flipping out over an errant cell phone. It’s the new Liz. And she goes easy on them when they want to come in late, leave early or take the day off. So naturally they take advantage, and she ends up finishing up all their rewrites for them. But at least no one hates her.

A heart-to-heart from Pete gets the point across that this isn’t right. Then he hits her up for $60 so he can go meet Frank and Lutz at Scores.

Tracy steps up at the golf dinner and sets about making things right. Before a packed dining room he relates the story of his daughter Shahita who weighed 87 pounds by the time she was 5. An Easter eve spent watching bible movies and eating Fiddle Faddle led to her diagnosis with diabetes, Don Geiss’s cause celebre. Thunderous applause and record donations follow, as do an offer to Tracy to get back into movies.

Jack: Congratulations Tracy, and welcome to the grown-up world.
Tracy: Yeah. I don’t have a daughter.
Jack: Let’s have a casting session on Monday.

Staying up all night at the office, Liz turns to Designing Women for guidance. By morning, she’s enraged. Jack shows up and hangs around to see her tear into her staff for their abuses of the day before. He’s like the master watching the apprentice.

Liz enters to comments of disappointment that she didn’t bake for them. She responds with force, and a Designing Women rerun she’s going to make them watch – until the tape player eats the tape.

Liz: OK, never mind. I want to say something to all of you. I am the boss here, and sometimes that’s going to make me unpopular. But the point is, I know what you called me Lutz.
Lutz: Oh. I’m sorry that I said that. Please don’t make me move back to Alaska, Liz. I hate it there.
Liz: You can stay. But if you ever, if any of you ever call me that horrible word again. I will fire you, and you will never alter drapes in Atlanta again, because you do not cross a Sugarbaker woman. I’m so tired. I’m so tired you guys.

Brian is a new dad and a writer who used to spend his free time obsessing on The Office and the Mets and his oversized mutt Riley. Now instead of free time, he has a 9-lb. future Mets fan to watch TV with. Check out http://remote.lohudblogs.com/author/bhoward/ to catch his daily musings on 30 Rock and The Office.