A quick review of last night’s “30 Rock” coming up just as soon as I quote myself talking to Bruce Willis…
“Nothing Left to Lose” was an episode where I’m not sure if any of the three stories felt all that special (aside from a rare, welcome Pete subplot), but where the quantity and quality of the jokes (particularly throwaways like “Popo popped Dukie down by the vacants,” Kenneth’s line about “The Daily Show,” “Sorkinesque repartee!” and Jack’s business mumbling) was strong enough that it was all that was I needed to enjoy myself.
But there were two specific things I wanted to bring up:
1)The Tracy story was pretty much beat-for-beat from “The Simpsons” episode “HOMR,” where the removal of a crayon lodged up Homer’s nose since childhood makes him super-intelligent for a short time, until he decides that being smart in a world run by and for stupid people is more trouble than it’s worth and he asks to have the crayon re-inserted. I recognize A)that, as “South Park” once pointed out, “The Simpsons” has told so many stories that it’s hard to not copy them in some way, and B)as I noted last week, “30 Rock” has told so many stories that it’s hard for the show to not rip itself off, but this is one where it wasn’t just a similar idea, but similar structure.
2)It felt like there were a lot of weird edits and/or bits of ADR dubbing by the actors, particularly in the scenes involving Jack and Pete. If there was some kind of meta reason for it (beyond the bad looping taking place in the same episode as the Jimmy Fallon gag), I missed the line setting it up, and if there wasn’t a reason, it was unusually sloppy for what’s usually a very tight show.
What did everybody else think?