Dear Tina,
Well I just spent the majority of the last 24 hours in the movie theatre. Since 10:15 last night I have seen three movies. I’m not sure my eyes have adjusted to light yet. The last movie I saw, The Messenger, was only playing at the Gene Siskel Theatre down on State Street so if I was going down there I felt obliged to invite my sister along as my plus one. That’s a lie. I called her a week ago and made her promise to go with me so I didn’t have to do so by myself. After that we went back to her apartment to have dinner and that was when she put on Oxygen’s Snapped: Love Kills marathon. I pointed out how cliché and depressing we had made this Valentine’s Day dinner and then she called me a cliché for pointing out clichés on Valentine’s Day. And then I just scratched her eyes out. Or maybe that was one of the women from Snapped, I can’t remember. Either way I see her point and agree with it. I did not agree, however, with her decision to throw on a ten dollar bottle of wine to our Thai order. Despite what the woman on the phone told her, her roommates and I reminded her that a ten dollar bottle of wine from a take out restaurant is certainly not a bargain. We have fun.
So as promised the closing ceremonies for Dear Tina’s Valentine’s Weekend extravaganza is concluding with a look at last week’s episode of 30 Rock. Looking back at the posts from Friday and Saturday, I appear to have been a bit longwinded. I realized this because even I didn’t want to read them and I am my own editor so that was a problem. In an attempt to accurately recount the events of the episodes, I pretty much typed up a summary the length of the original transcript. What can I say, I am a work in progress. So for the sake of not losing a fan base and recognizing the absurdity of telling you, Tina, what happened on 30 Rock, I will try and be more succinct.
We learn within less than a minute of the episode that Liz Lemon has an issue with Valentine’s Day. No surprise here. Words like “sham” and “gender stereotypes” are thrown out before we even hit the 30 second mark. TGS producer Pete has a daughter selling Valentine’s cookies as part of a school fundraiser. After Liz rehashes her archive of horrible Valentine’s Days memories, she agrees to buy a cookie with the understanding that she is not supporting Valentine’s Day but the February 14th birth of American suffragette Anna Howard Shaw. Now I feel I can say this because my love and support for 3o Rock knows no bounds and I understand that Liz Lemon’s behavior is in part a satire of the cultural attitudes towards single women in their late 30s. That being said, in life and on TV, but mostly in life, can we all just cool it with the fretting over Valentine’s Day? What my sister said was true. There is nothing more annoying than a single person complaining about how lonely and depressing their Valentine’s Day was. If you are going to have that attitude then you should remind yourself that your life was just as lonely the day before and will be the day after. We don’t need to throw a party for all us single gals. We don’t need to watch Sleepless in Seattle (also don’t watch it because it is a terrible movie). We don’t need to sign up for Match.com right this instant. And, Liz Lemon, we especially don’t need to manipulate the holiday so that it celebrates something that doesn’t hurt our feelings. But like I said, I can say that because I love Liz Lemon. So no one chime in and agree with me. It’s like when you’re complaining about your family and your friend says “yeah they are the worst.” What do you know!
As it turns out, Liz has some oral surgery to check off her to-do list for February 14th. So either this episode did not take place in 2010, or her oral surgeon regularly schedules root canals on Sunday afternoons. Irrelevant. Liz had intentionally scheduled the procedure on this day to avoid all of the Valentine hoo-hah and lo behold she needs someone to pick her up from surgery and she can’t find a date to do it! If that isn’t a missing line from Alanis Morissette’s Ironic I don’t know what is. She even asks the janitor and even THE JANITOR has made plans. Also, as someone who has had two root canals (and boy have I), you don’t need anesthesia for this procedure. It takes about an hour and then they give you some Motrin and you’re all set. But I’ll play along.
Liz being the independent single gal in the city she is goes ahead with the procedure despite not finding anyone to care for her post-op. Have we seen this before? Yes we have. In the third season premiere of Sex and the City Miranda can’t find anyone to pick her up from her lasik eye surgery but then her soon-to-be boyfriend picks her up. So maybe this is different. Liz calls he surgeon’s office to tell them her plan and they reiterate the importance of finding a friend to be there for her. “I don’t need anyone because I can do every single thing that a person in a relationship can…You know there are some things that are even harder to do with two people. Such as, monologues.” Have you ever performed a monologue where someone in the room is mouthing the words along with you? I have and she’s right. It really is a one person job.
Liz comes out of surgery high as a kite and hallucinates her three ex-boyfriends standing in the surgeon’s office where three Jamaican nurses are actually standing. And then we are reunited. Dennis! Floyd! Dr. Drew Baird! It crushed a small part of my soul that they were only figments of Liz’s drug-induced state but that acid wash jean jacket of Dennis’s made up for it. I don’t like to know guest stars before they appear because I like being surprised, but I do hope that they have another love interest/relationship lined up for Liz Lemon before the close of the fourth season. I like seeing her in a relationship; sometimes we need a break from the dying alone, spinster, single forever bits. I also feel confident jumping to the conclusion that Liz loved Floyd the most so…why not just bring him back? I can think of a million reasons why Floyd would leave Cleveland and return to New York City. Maybe that could be my job. And you could pay me for it and provide healthcare and I would move to New York City and Dear Tina would not have been a waste. Did I stretch that one out too far?
It turns out Liz was so delirious they had to call someone to pick her up despite the contract she signed confirming she would be alone on Valentine’s Day. Who do they call? No, not Jon Bon Jovi. Jack! Jack, who has been involved in a flirtation with a cable news personality and receiving orchestrated phone calls just so he can decline them and impress this woman by making her his number one priority, gets the call and tells Avery Jessup that he really does need to go and help his friend. Here comes the moment that we the audience can’t help but think “gosh if those two could just get together, they are so perfect for each other!” But Tina I know you have made it very clear in many interviews that this will never happen. I actually wouldn’t want them together; as loving as their chemistry is, it is much more affective as a friendship. And if they did go in that direction, 30 Rock would be as cliché as every other show on television. We can’t have that, can we?
Even though in real life I would strongly oppose renaming Valentine’s Day “Anna Howard Shaw Day,” this is one of the (many) instances where we should separate life from TV and just enjoy it. Jack, as I said, spent the episode courting Avery Jessup played by Elizabeth “oh you mean a journal?” Banks. Their first meeting during Jack’s guest stint on her program, “The Hot Box,” was golden. Watch below if you feel the need to incessantly mock cable news as much as I do.
http://www.hulu.com/watch/127893/30-rock-the-hot-box-with-avery-jessup
After Dubai what’s the next credit crisis? The Baltics or Women’s tennis.
30 Rock Quote of the Day:
Liz: Wow, Avery Jessup. She’s hot. She was on Maxim’s “I’d Rape That 100.”
Dear Tina 