I like to think that I have good taste when it comes to my fashion choices. However, one of the pieces that never lets me go without a comment from a stranger are my gold-swiss-cheese-wedge post earrings. My best friend gave them to me for my twentieth birthday a few days after I had undergone a three hour surgery to remove all four of my wisdom teeth. At first, like any person who has ever had an enjoyable experience with cheese, I was just excited to own cheese jewelry. After I put them in, she reminded me, yet again, that I have lived up to my Liz Lemon-esque persona and forgotten the major line Lemon says after surgery, “Doctor, when can I eat soft cheeses again?”
Regardless of gender, race, or socio-economic status, we all have Liz Lemon moments. Sometimes that moment is dressing up (or at least wanting to) as Princess Leia to get out of jury duty. Sometimes that moment is singing the jingle to your favorite pizza/hot-dog/nacho-cheese junk food. Sometimes that moment is having a dating history with Jon Hamm, Matt Damon, Conan O’Brien and James Marsden. Well maybe that’s not an actual moment we all have outside of Tumblr fueled daydreams but you get what I mean. Liz Lemon may lead a goofy, ridiculous life but she captures the simultaneous rollercoaster every person feels while doing what they love and hating every moment of it.
Although I firmly believe that it is best for this season of 30 Rock to be the last because another year would force the plot line into “soap opera status”, the show has definitely not gone downhill. My pet peeve is when people tell me they stopped watching it when the show jumped the shark. The queen (Tina Fey) herself has said, “Your life begins on the other side of the shark.” This season of 30 Rock lives up to that motto.
While I am giving myself a Liz-worthy eye roll as I type this, the show has become so meta (containing inside jokes or more references to the actual show, think Inception) it’s ridiculous.
NBC’s programming department has become known as a giant tease with half-ordered (or half-baked) TV shows. Either they will order six episodes of a brilliantly conceived show and fail to market it correctly (therefore dropping a promising show before it could gain traction) or they will shove a show like Whitney in the audience’s face until they gain enough revenue to put Community back on the air.
NBC has been 30 Rock’s home and the show’s punching bag since the beginning. The seventh season kicked off with Jack Donaghy (an NBC executive played by Alec Baldwin) creating a plan to drive the network into the ground so it will be sold to a more promising Easter egg dye company. Yes. An Easter egg dye company will be more valuable than the alternate universe’s NBC network which is owned by the Sheinhardt Wig company.
The season has also followed Liz arguing with Tracy Jordan (played by Tracy Morgan in a role slightly wacky-er than his real-life persona) over the debate on whether women can be funny. The episode started with a tweet from Tracy that included a “#plotpoint.”
The show understands its own silliness and fully embraces it. The most recent episode followed Jenna’s newest fan base of Jimmy Buffet-esque beach goers who live by the word “unwindulax.” This fan base is mainly from northern Florida which Liz and Jack realize will be the population to decide the Presidential election, therefore temporarily making Jenna the most powerful person in the country. 30 Rock has managed to out crazy itself and it is only the 5th episode of the season.
I’m asking for those of you that stopped watching three years ago to jump back in before you’re stuck watching this as a Netflix marathon next summer. Be a part of an awesome, iconic TV show’s ending as it is actually happening! This train wreck is perfectly choreographed and is bound to be better than all of them ending up in a jail cell. Watch 30 Rock on NBC Thursdays at 8pm.
