30 Rock season 1 episode 5 review

Andrew Mickel

Andrew is back in control of his TV, thanks to Snapple! Never let it be said that he doesn't live every week like it's Shark Week...

Published on Nov 13, 2007

TV reviewing should be exciting and glamorous. TV reviewers’ opinions should be valued as wordy drops of heaven. So I’m sure that you will be personally outraged to hear that there was no 30 Rock review last week because one of my housemates was watching X Factor.

Outrageous,yes; but Reviewing School gave me a heart of steel and testes like gala melons, so we’re back on track. (Well, that, and no-one else got to our house TV first. Score!)

This week wasn’t so much an episode, as much as a series of short, usually visual jokes that seemed to periodically resurface, which is something of a buggeration to try and review. Actually, that kind of describes an ‘episode’, but my point is it was bitty.

It followed Jack learning how to do comedy to appear as himself in a TGS sketch, tapping into the fact that Jack is loveable because of his single-minded determination (I think I may have declared he was loveable for something else a couple of weeks ago, but this week, it’s his single-minded determination), and the fact that he completely fails to understand comedy.

“Once I have set my mind to something I have to accomplish it,” says Jack. “10 years ago I was one and a half inches shorter than I am today. Pure willpower.” A video of him trying to do a corporate ad sees the funniest ‘something or someone falling over in a sitcom’ moment since that chandelier fell through the bar in Only Fools and Horses.

Elsewhere, Tracy was milking Liz’s white guilt that he may be illiterate to try and get out of doing work. (“You know I once shot a whole movie without getting out of my car?” “Yeah, I paid to see that. That was supposed to be a western.”)

Tracy’s illiteracy business did little to support my early declarations of him as ‘hilarious’. There were some funny jokes coming off it – a poster of him straplined ‘the smallest penis in showbusiness’ to try and make him confess he can read, a dig at Studio 60’s crude politicking as Liz tries to complain about how the US has lower school graduation rates than the Sudan – but I’m sure I remember there being better still to come. And hopefully not more visual funnies, otherwise I’m going to be seriously stuck.

Now, to illustrate the fact that visual jokes are NOT EASY TO WRITE UP, I’m going to have to use Paint to attempt to illustrate the jokes about product placement. (It’s lucky I majored in art at Reviewing School - see right.)

This was originally a 40-minute episode when broadcast in the US but a lot was excised for the 30-minute version which was broadcast here, so you’ve been saved me attempting to Paint Jenna’s Israeli chart-topping hit, Muffin Tops. For this week anyway.

Next week in the 30 Rock review: Andrew uses claymation to re-enact the opening titles.