Inside the Tube: "30 Rock" Edition - "Idiots Are People Three" & "The Ballad of Kenneth Parcell" (Season 6, Episodes 3 & 4)

You can imagine my giddy delight to hear that Banks attended Northwestern (my alma mater) where he majored in . . . Confidence. When I was a befuddled, bespectacled English major at NU, I don’t recall my counselor ever telling me I could major in Confidence! Oh, what could have been!

But Banks, who is trying to get his triplet “gaybies” into an exclusive preschool called St. Matthews, has very little confidence in his ability to do so. So he recruits his arch nemesis/object of his loin’s affections, Jack Donaghy, to help him. Donaghy relents because Banks has been leaking footage of Tracy Jordan’s hateful stand up in an attempt to drive away viewers from TGS (and thus NBC). Oh, and to boot, Donaghy has been trying to drive a wedge between Lemon and her new boyfriend, Chris. Sorry, I meant Criss.

Because this was a two parter, both episodes put different strengths of the show on display: Idiots Are People Three displayed the show’s joy at playing farce. It’s kind of hard not to appreciate Tracy apologizing for his rants by speaking for a group called the National Association of Zero Intolerance . . . or NAZI. Especially when he’s standing next to the bastion of human rights advocacy and intellectual authority named Denise Richards. Point, 30 Rock.

Less effective was its parody of the movie New Year’s Eve, which in the Land of Lemon is entitled MLK for Martin Luther King Day. It stars Jenna opposite Nick Cannon in a swirl of movie stars unlikely to ever appear together in any forum. Sir Ian McKellan . . . . and Matthew McConaughey? Zoinks.

As it is a showcase for Jenna based on the idea of celebrating the birth of the nation’s foremost advocate of racial equality, she naturally stars as a white supremacist who is won over by Nick Cannon. I know, it just screams Oscar. Actually, it just screams.

The second episode, entitled The Ballad of Kenneth Parcell was less funny but perhaps more clever in terms of dialogue and storyline. It was basically about the rifts between best friends: Jenna and Liz, Tracy and DotCom/Grizz, and Jack and, well, Kenneth. Jack goes so far as to abolish the NBC Paige Program. How will Kenneth respond? By offering the other cheek? Not exactly.

Liz spends her time looking for a new best friend since it turns out that Jenna is too self-absorbed and obtuse to appreciate Liz for the good friend that she is. Liz ends up searching for a new bestie, which has decidedly mixed results. Extra brownie points to Liz for crashing a Sex and the City quartet in a bar enjoying martinis. When she asks how they all ended up together, they confess it was at karaoke. As they relive the magical musical moment in which their friendship was born, Liz shuts them down by telling them how awful their singing is. Did she just Lemon herself? She did.

Two solidly funny episodes that I hope are an indication of what’s to come this season. It’s also a bonus that because the season started in January, we will get more double doses of 30 Rock on Thursdays. Even Lemon couldn’t mess that up.

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