From its first line,
30 Rock's Season 4 opener, "Season 4," sets a perfectly meta tone: "Hello, everyone, I'm so happy to see you all and to welcome you to Season 4," says Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy, staring straight into the camera. "Which, of course, is the name of this restaurant." And we pull back to see Jack, Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) attempting to get back in touch with "the real America" by dining on Cheesy Blasters—"you take a hot dog, stuff it with some Jack, fold it in a pizza..."
Consider the fourth wall broken. But that's only the beginning of the meta madness, as the sitcom proceeds to comment on itself, and its own elitist, Emmy-approved appeal. Realizing his standup routines about eating lobster in St. Bart's no longer speak to the common man, Tracy worries, "Have I lost touch with my roots? I better talk to Rabbi Shmuley about this!" (In real life, Morgan has gotten back in touch with his inner-city roots via his new score-settling tell-y'all,
I Am the New Black).
Jack's got a plan: "We'll trick those race-car-loving wide loads into watching your lefty homoerotic propaganda hour" by hiring a new cast member who'll appeal to the flyover states. (It's part of a company-wide initiative to reach out to the middle of the country, which also includes naming a new mammogram machine "the Git R Done 2000.")
Little does Jack know that due to "comrade Obama's recession," the downsized payroll department will accidentally give Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) Jack's bonus check—"so many zeroes," Kenneth marvels—right after the page has been told by the CEO there's no extra money for overtime anymore. "Naturally, you came to me because this company is only the two of us," Jack cracks, pointing out another of
30 Rock's sitcom conventions.
With "whatever religious undergarment Kenneth wears in a twist" (per Jack), the bumpkin organizes a strike—his union also includes mall Santas and bucket drummers (Tracy's former profession, it turns out, and the source of a past sexual harrassment suit). He's soon joined on the picket line by Jenna (Jane Krakowski), who's so alarmed by the prospect of a potentially competitive new cast member that she temporarily abandons her own campaign to reach the red states by "going country." Her Southern-rock anthem for NBC's "Tennis Night in America" ("Got my lawnchair and my truck/not an ocean in sight/so kiss my ass, New York/'cause it's tennis night") is one of the episode's highlights, especially as it's juxtaposed against the featured match, Slawomir Mleczko vs. Krzysztof Mlynarkiewicz.
In the end, Jack (aka "Johnny America") breaks the strike by agreeing to sign a piece of paper for Kenneth declairing "I'm a big ol' liar," and Kenneth learns how to "massage the truth" in the manner of Jack's hero, Richard Nixon. Tracy reconnects with his heritage via the bucket drummers, after fruitlessly trying to make friends with strangers by tossing out lines like, "Do you want to hold hands with a black millionaire?" No new cast member is hired, although Josh (Lonny Ross, who was invisible last season) quits when he realizes no one remembers him—yet another hysterically self-referential gag. And even Liz, who earlier declared the real America "a nonsense term," begins to come around. "Step into the light, Lemon," Jack coaxes her, again speaking directly to the audience. "There's nothing wrong with being fun and popular and giving the people what they want." Then, blowing the fourth wall into a million pieces, Jack/Alec hands it off to his own network's pathetic attempt to reach Lowest Common Denominator America: "Ladies and gentlemen, Jay Leno."
It'd be hilarious if it weren't so damn sad.
What did you think of "Season 4"?