Another important theme is that Jack Always Wins because on his first day he found someone that he could convince that he was “coaching” but was in fact mining for ideas and copy.

I love the Jack/Liz relationship, and it’s obvious that they’re true friends. But Jack is only “always right” when it comes to cutthroat rules of business. When it comes to anything else, or he’s left to go solo with his ideas (turning a microwave into a car, assuming the identity of one of Liz’s classmates, 3 hour salute to fireworks—still my favorite episode) it doesn’t go that great for him.

(small spoilers for people not yet on S4) One of the things I love about the Jack/Liz friendship is that it’s a friendship. I’ve been a little wary of how the writers have been playing with the romantic undertones (making a romcom out of Liz using Jack as an agent, last week’s revelation that now Jack wants children too). It was really refreshing to have a comedy where the male lead and female lead were not only not a couple but whose chemistry was based on their friendship, not their romantic interest. But I suppose if they did get together in the end it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, but it’s a little “when harry met sally,” and it would have been nice to show a friendship that could work just as a friendship without the presupposition that they would fall into each others’ arms at the end.

This is convincing except for the affirmative action episode.  I couldn’t find any humor, not even cynical humor, in Tracy Morgan insisting that Liz can’t be equal because she needs help lifting a water bottle, and I found the show’s unwillingness to present the easy refutation to those kinds of arguments extremely frustrating.

I don’t need it to be a Murphy Brown old-style polemic, I just hated how easily assholes might have been convinced in that episode that their world-view was reasonable and right.

As a woman who has often been the one to change the water bottle at the office while the guys marveled at my super-human strength and agility, I just rolled my eyes. It was a cheap laugh.

As you mentioned, Liz Lemon is lazy, a bully, etc. One characteristic sticks out for me there: glutton. Liz is a thin woman who enjoys eating and the show constantly comments on that horrifying fact. It’s a recurrence of the idea that a woman who enjoys something physical is doing something evil.

I see “30 Rock” as our version of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” Its a situation comedy about assertive, feminist women in the workplace and how that problem can be dealt with. I think both shows take the same approach. They make the woman into a mother figure. Just like Mary, Liz has to deal her family of employees to get them to do their jobs.

I think your attribution of the numerous problems with the show to cynicism is apt. However, cynicism and progressive politics are sort of anathema to each other. That’s what I love about “Parks and Recreation.” Poehler does everything in that show that Tina Fey does in “30 Rock.” She mocks her characters just as thoroughly, but she does it with love instead of cynicism.

I think we as progressives have a problem with trying to rationalize away problems with elements of pop culture that we like. “30 Rock” is cynical and reactionary. I think we all know that, we can watch it anyway but lets be aware of the racist/sexist/classist bullshit that it reproduces (esp. that gluttony thing. *Shudder*).

I second Ben Alpers about cynicism and progressive politics.

One of the things I love about the Jack/Liz friendship is that it’s a friendship.

Spoiler.  I love how they addressed the expectation that all friendships between straight people in comedies tend to romance on the recent episode where they had a falling out, and then “got back together” in a cliched romance style, except instead of kissing, they shook hands and agreed to go into business.

But is the kind of cynicism you entirely plausibly attribute to the show really apolitical? In suggesting the futility of liberalism (without opening any space for a radical social reordering), doesn’t it actively argue against (liberal) political engagement?

I wouldn’t say that.  I’m just saying that it’s a darkly cynical take on human nature, but they do occasionally get in digs about how easy it would be to make rapid change if people just bothered.

Also, like I said in the title, not all comedy is about inspiring you or creating moral uplift.  This comedy is about laughing at people’s foibles.  Turning that into moral uplift on the grounds that people need inspiration is the sort of thing that makes me want to shoot myself in the head.  It would be sacrificing the art to the demands of ideology, something Fey is certainly and obviously against.  She wants to make a show mocking people.  And thank god for it.  The world doesn’t need to be single-mindedly earnest and uplifting.

but she’s so often mocking people for being black (Tracey), female(jenna), lower class (kenneth) etc.

I don’t know.  I think there must be a way to do effective comedy in which the evil overlords always win without necessarily endorsing the “gee, the evil overlords must be on to something” viewpoint.  Blackadder managed it, I seem to recall.  Cynicism can be and has been used to critique the social order.  30 Rock is just lazy about it.  Lazy satire is not my bag.

If cynicism and progressive politics are mutually exclusive, you would lose 50% of your Gen X liberal constituency in a heartbeat.  I love “Parks and Rec”, but not every show can or should be about mocking with love.  Especially not “30 Rock”, whose characters all live a cutthroat world, and succeed due to having ugly characters.  I fail to see why liberals should reject a searing portrayal of this world that actually exists, because doing so means you can’t portray with love.  Some shit just needs to be mocked straight up.

As for that, I’d say that’s a way oversimplification of the way the show deals with race and gender and class.  Jena is a narcissist, and mocked for it.  Women are not immune from mockery for their real, individual flaws.  No where does the show accuse all women of narcissism; in fact, one of Liz’s redeeming qualities is she’s not stuck up on her looks. 

Tracy is also a more complicated character than you’re admitting.  Sometimes it slides into unfunny stereotyping, but I’d say more often his character could be summed up as this: Tracy wants to fit a specific racist stereotype of a zany black man because that’s what makes him so much money, but he is not as macho as he fronts (and in fact, is prone to bursting into tears at the drop of a hat) and his “zaniness” is the result of an undiagnosed mental illness that no one seems to worry too much about, because they figure letting him be sick makes them more money. But with the macho thing especially, they are setting out to tweak the nose of certain stereotypes, not uphold them.

Also, Alec Baldwin may be brilliant in his role, but given what he has revealed about his opinions and personal life I find it hard to look at his smug face and find all the humor that’s supposed to be there.

Also, the Jack/Kenneth relationship is a straight up satire of how rich country club Republicans exploit working class reactionaries with shoddy educations and too much religion to get votes.  It’s an uncomfortable truth, but it’s there. 

What I realized while writing this is “30 Rock” is working on another plane from most TV comedy, and that’s why it confuses so easily.  We’re just not used to that kind of rapid fire truly dark satire.  We’re used to “South Park”, which is so scared you won’t get it that rub your faces in it.  The result of “30 Rock” assuming their audience is as smart as Tina Fey, however, is that sometimes we get confused.  I’ve often only really gotten an episode the second time I watched it, and I think I’m pretty sharp.

But I don’t mind this.  I’m ecstatic to see intelligent comedy hang in there.

I don’t think Parks & Recreation is the funniest show on TV - I would give that to Community or Modern Family - but it is more interesting than the average sitcom, and I like the characters - all of them.

I don’t know.  I think there must be a way to do effective comedy in which the evil overlords always win without necessarily endorsing the “gee, the evil overlords must be on to something” viewpoint.  Blackadder managed it, I seem to recall.

Yeah, and?  Diversity is a good thing. Not every single show has to have a calming fantasy ending, or a moral to the story.  I’d argue in fact that “30 Rock” parodies the “moral to the story” requirement, by putting evil words in Jack’s mouth, and having them broadcast like they’re god’s truth. 

Frankly, I was getting incredibly sick of sentimentality in comedy.  I don’t need a moral of the story fed to me like this was a fairy tale.  I don’t like it when characters break character to go on political rants at the behest of the writers.  I love that Tina Fey demands more of her audience.  And I think if you don’t like it, there’s plenty of other stuff out there, but those of us who do find value in dark satire also deserve our yuks.

The Tracey character crying is racism. Dave Chapelle used to talk about how directors always wanted him to dress up in drag to subvert the image of a dangerous black man. The mirror image of the stereotype is only funny because of the stereotype. Grizz and Dot-com do the same thing. The stereotype is that they’re big and scary, so they’re sensitive and intelligent (one of them is into acting) but they have no internal lives. So we’re just laughing at the inversion of stereotype.
The show does accuse all women of narcissism, Jenna, Suri (sp?). Liz is not immune, just like Tracey crying, she gets lambasted for going to the opposite extreme. She can’t comb her hair, she looks terrible on occasion. This doesn’t subvert the stereotype, it makes use of it for a cheap laugh.
Also, we continually get to laugh at Kenneth on his own for being a yokel. Jokes about Kenneth revolve around his strange country ways, his uncle who rapes him being the worst of the jokes.
I don’t mean to sound combative and I know that arguments like this tend to calcify both sides. You’ve got a nuanced position and I respect that. I Just want to argue that the racism, classism and sexism in the show are central, not peripheral.

But if you want the good guys to win, don’t watch “Parks and Recreation”.  The ongoing joke on that show is that Poehler’s character has a genuinely good idea—-to build a park over this empty lot that presents a genuine safety hazard to the neighborhood—-and she can never accomplish it.  It’s her white whale, and it symbolizes the way that Americans have completely lost an interest in creating a public good.  Poehler’s character is a major dork, and loves being a bureaucrat a little too much, but the killer part of the show is that it goes without saying that people like that make the world a slightly better place, if they’re allowed to do their damn jobs.  But a combination of factors—-right wing Republicans, mean-spirited neighbors, people who are suspicious of the very existence of public land, anti-tax nuts, and lazy public officials—-means that the lot sits undeveloped.

If laughing at an inversion of a stereotype is the same thing as laughing at the stereotype, I don’t know what to do with that.  Sorry. 

But like I said, I think the character is more complex.  Tracy is just as ruthlessly exploitative as every other character on the show.  Everything he does, including all the ways he plays up to stereotypes, is to be understood in that context.  They don’t even make this especially subtle.  I almost fell out of my chair laughing when Tracy walks into a room and says something really offensive, and when everyone pauses, he says, “Yes.  I am provocative.”

I definitely agree that the show drifts into lazy stereotyping of Tracy and especially his wife—-an unforgiveable character—-but that’s far from all they do.  They do a lot of interesting stuff with him. And I’m glad to see that he’s not drifting into obscurity after Saturday Night Live, since he’s got the best timing of any comedian on TV.  I don’t know how he does it.

Jenna, well, I don’t know what to say.  The character is based on a real life person, just as Tracy’s character is an amalgamation of real life people.  I think we’re just going to have to agree to disagree that it’s acceptable to have a woman of such poor character be a character on a show.  There aren’t any role models on “30 Rock”.

I wasn’t saying that racism or sexism are “peripheral”.  I’m saying that they are acknowledged, mostly mocked, and sometimes shamefully upheld.  But to say that the show is one note is simply off base.

Another aspect of the Jenna character you’re overlooking: The part was initially written for Rachel Dratch, but the network balked, because they don’t think she’s hawt enough.  And while Jane Krawkowski is an excellent comic actress, I get the impression that Fey wasn’t exactly stoked about being strong armed like that.  So she has used the character to examine all the various ways that the Hollywood mentality about hawtness breaks your brain.

Occasionally, Jack pays for the way that his amorality blinds him to higher concerns than status and profit—-for instance, his heart attack—-but on the whole, Jack wins a game rigged so that Jacks of the world will win.

The running joke about Jack is that, as with the neoCons he parodies, his success rests not on his self-proclaimed inate superiority (and perfect head of hair), but rather on a tenuous skein of various privileges (race, gender, the Harvard MBA, the old boy’s network, etc). Every few episodes he loses one of them temporarily, and everything goes to hell.

For example, in a recent episode he had bedbugs, a scourge which crosses all class and economic lines in NYC. Suddenly he’s shut out of face-to-face meetings with his fellow middle-aged white executives and is forced to take the freight elevator. Finally, he is “reduced” to not only taking the subway he was mocking earlier in the episode, but being put into the position of the white, clean-cut, nicely dressed “I’m not a beggar” beggar who’s a regular on the 1 and 7 trains (Jack’s spiel, and the passengers’ reactions are taken almost verbatim from real life).

Also, the Jack/Kenneth relationship is a straight up satire of how rich country club Republicans exploit working class reactionaries with shoddy educations and too much religion to get votes.  It’s an uncomfortable truth, but it’s there.

And of course, when Jack drinks his own Kool-Aid and goes to Kenneth’s home town to see the “real Americans” (translation: the Know-Nothings who make possible his lifestyle as both a conservative and as a privileged coastal elite), they end up seeing him for what he is and turning on him violently.

Of course, Jack’s ego and self-regard is such that he never learns any lessons, and keeps perpetuating the screwed-up system so beloved of neoCons and short-sighted MBAs. So no, it’s not political satire so much as societal satire.

but she’s so often mocking people for being black (Tracey), female(jenna), lower class (kenneth) etc.

Spoiler (of course) but did you see the episode where Liz assumed that Tracy was illiterate because he’s black and he went along with it even though he could read perfectly well because it got him out of having to read scripts?

So which simplistic stereotype was that episode playing with?

Also, you’re forgetting about the fourth black character, the writer who’s the token ... Harvard graduate.

Eh, it seems to me that liberals spend a lot of time worrying that they aren’t being liberal enough, or feeling alienated by people who are to the left of them and take it too far. It’s the sort of foible that liberal writers are going to milk for comedy when you make a sit-com about liberals, provided they’re i making a comedy that’s about liberals instead of a comedy where the liberals are just a vector for political point scoring.

And I have to say, I loved “30 Rock” ever since they build an episode around the genetic fragility of the Hapsburgs.  Yes, I am a history geek.

That, and, “The mailbox was Haldeman!”

And the fact that people in 30 Rock don’t bother to effect change reflects what the show presents as essential facts about human nature rather than contingent facts about these particular characters.

Has there ever been a TV show that presented people bothering to “effect change”?  Even the progressive comedies of the 1970s like “All in the Family” and “Good Times”?

Maybe you’re forgetting about a little show called “Just the Ten of Us” that brought down the Berlin Wall.

@ norbiz:  I think Urkel was responsible for Romania.

This is an interesting thread on an interesting post.  In a small way, backing into movies, I don’t really buy it.  I have just seen Up, and I enjoyed it.  However, I just find the sexual politics of the G movie to be pretty reactionary—verging on spoiling the movie.  It’s covered up quite well and you’re suppose to give some sort of artistic leeway.  As in that almost all of the characters aside main two (and really, one) exhibit very little personal agency.  That isn’t a reason for dislike right then, but there are other spots where such small voices are preferred by the creative writers.  It’s just a very intensely paternal movie.

I remember Brad Bird’s Pixar movies as having a large dollop of lectures about personal capacities and responsibilities that verge on obnoxious.  The iconoclast sentiments helps ease it down with sentimental and easily empathizable villians and lots of pot shots at petty authoritarians that we can recognize.  At the end of the day, I can remember Mr Incredible figuring out sneaky ways (by the book, with no violenc) of helping people against the insurance companies, and the segment holds a great deal of power with me now with the current health care struggle.  I can remember that Brad Bird gives *everyone* a sense of agency, even Lucius Best’s off-screen wife has one.  That just really compares well to Up‘s characatature of a dead wife being a cheerleader for her husband’s goals.  After all, no kids means no ultimate purpose in life.

So I remember Amanda‘s review of Up, and that makes me suspicious that she is watching 30 Rock with tinted lenses and forgives flaws too readily.  I don’t really like sitcoms, but I watch The Big Bang Theory, largely because it does speak to me culturally as a sciency geek and because it makes some fairly genuine potshots at some of the bad aspects of geek and academic culture, even though it’s pretty clumsy when it does that.  I also like dark comedies very much, more so in the movie sense than in the tv show sense, but the review of 30 Rock makes it sound like that it’s not very iconoclastic.  While taking potshots at authority isn’t always a key part of dark comedy, you gotta have a straight (wo)man with the knowing foil to the cyncism to make that work, or otherwise, it’s pretty nihilist, which can be funny, but there’s only so much of the funny to go around, ‘cause there’s no point.

I consider my morning entertained.  Thx

And the fact that people in 30 Rock don’t bother to effect change reflects what the show presents as essential facts about human nature rather than contingent facts about these particular characters.

Keep in mind that this is a network comedy that has to please a broad audinece, and many viewers probably admire people like Jack (just as many still think Gordon Gecko is the hero in Wall Street).

These viewers believe that the good guys win because they are amoral and cynical, which is true to an extent—the difference rests in who you think is the good guy: the shamelessly manipulative conservative conformist operator (Jack) who can win or the conflicted and hapless geeky liberal (Liz) who only wins occasionally (usually through some sort of self-humiliation).

Come to think of it, the two characters are pretty broad caricatures of the current Congressional Republicans and Democrats.

Another aspect of the Jenna character you’re overlooking: The part was initially written for Rachel Dratch, but the network balked, because they don’t think she’s hawt enough.  And while Jane Krawkowski is an excellent comic actress, I get the impression that Fey wasn’t exactly stoked about being strong armed like that.  So she has used the character to examine all the various ways that the Hollywood mentality about hawtness breaks your brain.

If I may break in with a word about Dratch, and Fey, and also Scott Adsit, who plays Pete, I spent my formative years watching the three of them multiple times when they were at Second City, they are all genius geniuses on stage, tho I think it’s pretty obvious that Tina’s the one who made the best transition to TV, maybe because of looks. It’s criminal how underused Dratch was on SNL and how they had her play up her supposed “unattractiveness” i.e. being mildly attractive by real life standards, she was only ever allowed to play “ugly characters” and she never came off nearly as brilliantly as she does live, maybe because they crippled her confidence.

Ben, I think expecting everything to be about effecting change is simply unrealistic, and could, if taken too closely to the heart, lead to a rather joyless existence.  People deserve our distractions.

Maybe you’re forgetting about a little show called “Just the Ten of Us” that brought down the Berlin Wall.

win.

In all seriousness, though, I think anytime you’re critiquing something that is essentially a sitcom for not putting the characters on some kind of praxis oriented story arc, you’re barking up the wrong tree because that would violate all the conventions of the sitcom.  It’s not like we have all these reactionary conservative sitcoms where Patricia Heaton goes around getting Roe v. Wade overturned and the 19th Amendment repealed.  The whole POINT of a sitcom is that nothing ever changes*.  I mean, Larry and Balki can’t even move in with their girlfriends because then they wouldn’t be roommates anymore and the premise of Perfect Strangers would be void.  Sitcoms that revolve around high school kids often can’t let on that the kids have graduated from high school and moved on.

*which, I suppose, is reactionary in and of itself, and part of why the Norman Lear sitcoms are such an aberration - they exist in a world that is rapidly changing, but those changes have to be crystallized in order to work as a sitcom.

You know, this whole discussion—-and the implication that a sitcom has an obligation to provide optimism and hope instead of darkness and despair—-reminds me of Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book: Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.  I think that Ehrenreich is onto something with her critique of how everyone in America, left and right, is so fixated on the power of positive thinking.  It gets completely out of control, in fact—-think of the dangers inherent to taking “The Secret” seriously, for instance, or the way that many megachurches promote the idea that you can pray your way to wealth.  But even in just our need for happy endings on shows, for the good guys to win, for moral rightness to coincide with success in our entertainment.  There’s a real danger in that, too, because too much positive thinking can create an unwillingness to cope with failure, or look realistically at the truly bad things in live.  (Ehrenreich’s example is how everyone told her to look on the bright side when she got cancer.)

However, I just find the sexual politics of the G movie to be pretty reactionary—verging on spoiling the movie.

Huh?

Are you still talking about Up in this sentence?  Did we see the same movie?

Aside from the first couple minutes of the film, I don’t remember it having anything to do with “sexual politics” at all.  The only thing I can think of that you could be talking about is the fact that it depicts a heterosexual romantic relationship that results in marriage (and, again, this takes up like 10 minutes of actual screen time).  Which is, y’know, kind of typical in human society. 

I also thought it was pretty cool, in a tame G rated sort of way, that within that couple, it was the woman who was strong and brave and assertive and wanted more than just a mundane little life darning socks, and it was the man who was shy and timid and spends the bulk of the actual movie experiencing grief at the loss of his romantic partner and domestic environment.

The only thing I thought was sort of reactionary and stereotyped was the way that the wife really really wanted a baby and had her heart broken by being infertile.  Which wasn’t really the focus of the movie, anyhow, just a derail in order to explain how there could possibly exist an old person who wasn’t somebody’s grandpa.

they exist in a world that is rapidly changing, but those changes have to be crystallized in order to work as a sitcom.

Right—there’s no “change,” but there can be instructive vignettes, after which the whole thing resets to the default mode of the premise or “situation.”  It could be that that’s an aesthetico-political problem of TV comedy, but it seems like the only TV projects that really have tried to have those long arcs are the new breed of cable dramas.  It’s a problem arising fundamentally from the “episode” as unit, IMHO.  (Really it’s a problem with all narrative, because political change is hard to dramatize, because it’s not really accomplished by heroes or finished in finite blocks of beginning-middle-end.  Everyone who’s ever tried to write history struggles with where to begin and where to end…)

If you treat a subject as so sacred or serious that you can’t joke about it on a comedy, you will make an unfunny comedy. The solution to this problem is to avoid making those subjects a part of your comedy, and it’s a perfectly respectable approach.

This, by the way, is why it grates on me so badly when Stone & Parker’s libertarianism comes through on South Park. It’s not because I think their politics are bad and wrong, but because they routinely fall into the trap of thinking that their bad and wrong politics are the one thing in the universe that are above being mocked.

People deserve our distractions.

This is why I don’t find it upsetting that many people watch Mad Men and BSG soley for the top-notch set and costume design and attractive actors, or that others watch it in the same way they would a soap opera. As long as the writers are mainly concerned with appealing to people who overthink stuff, it doesn’t matter to me that others enjoy the show for different reasons.

the implication that a sitcom has an obligation to provide optimism and hope instead of darkness and despairreminds me of Barbara Ehrenreich’s new book: Bright-sided: How the Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America.  I think that Ehrenreich is onto something with her critique of how everyone in America, left and right, is so fixated on the power of positive thinking.

In the face of that situation (which is almost an essential part of American life for decades, if not centuries), we’re lucky that the darkness and despair are highlighted at all. Real-life solutions and change are difficult, and it’s expecting a lot for a TV series to provide them wrapped up at episode’s end.

For example, let’s look at a programme that chose not to be a crowd-pleaser in any way. The Wire took strong positions on various social issues, but in the end posited that even well-meaning, smart and talented individuals—even those working in small, tightly focused groups—are as helpless in the face of society’s large institutions as the ancient Greeks were to the gods on Olympus.

If you’re going to make even an attempt at addressing seemingly intractable problems, you have to accord them proper respect, and you can do that with comedy as well as tragedy.

The only thing I thought was sort of reactionary and stereotyped was the way that the wife really really wanted a baby and had her heart broken by being infertile.  Which wasn’t really the focus of the movie, anyhow, just a derail in order to explain how there could possibly exist an old person who wasn’t somebody’s grandpa.

I agree with you, but it also makes me sad that portrayals of women’s desires are so limited in TV and movies that an honest portrayal of the heartbreak of infertility for someone who wants a baby can’t be floated out there apolitically.  It does happen; it should be addressed.  But without other portrayals of things like childlessness by choice to give it context, the heartbreak of infertility comes across as normative instead of as an individual tragedy.

That said, I felt like “Up” was trying to portray it as an individual tragedy.  I thought they did a good job of giving the marriage of these two characters some depth and complexity in a very short amount of time.

Interesting point, Cris.  I think that might be how sitcoms, at least some of them, detract from the classical comedy formula.  The conflict can’t end on a sitcom, so they don’t wrap it up in a bow. 

But they do tend to be mostly positive and think the best of people, and assume it’s all okay in the end.  There are exceptions to the rule, the big one being “Seinfeld”, but also the shows that “Seinfeld” made possible, like “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia”.  The difference between “It’s Always Sunny” and “30 Rock” in terms of relentless depravity, however, is the characters on “It’s Always Sunny” have no redeeming qualities.  On “30 Rock”, however, you can imagine liking them as people.  And thus, “30 Rock” may be braver, in that it shows that even likeable people can be amoral bastards.  But I wouldn’t go so far as to say that show posits that the whole world is like that.  Just the highly competitive world the characters live in.

And even then, there’s characters who exist to show that not everyone takes the low road.  The producer character, for instance, is by and large a decent person who will probably always be stuck on a second rate show, but is pretty much okay with that.

On the “distractions” thing, I wasn’t thinking so much about loving “30 Rock” on a shallow level, but more that I enjoy relentlessly dark comedies for what they are. I’ve got a dark sense of humor, but in my day to day life, I have to hold out for the possibility of progress in order to keep working.  Maintaining hope is a lot of work for some of us, and it’s nice to take a break to indulge your dark side and have a big laugh about it.

Has there ever been a TV show that presented people bothering to “effect change”?  Even the progressive comedies of the 1970s like “All in the Family” and “Good Times”?

Maude was unabashedly liberal, I remember an episode where she hosted a party for black separatists whose leader had written a book, “Give Us Colorado”.

There was one episode of All in the Family where the political became personal, a friend of Archie’s who was a retired football player came out as gay, this was about the time that David Kopay came out after he retired from football.

I think that Ehrenreich is onto something with her critique of how everyone in America, left and right, is so fixated on the power of positive thinking.

In the early 1900s the slogan was “Boost, don’t knock.”

That is, do rah-rah, don’t point out any shortcomings in the American way of doing things.

Did I ever mention that my conversion to cynicism came after I lived in Texas for 6 months at the age of 14, and read most of H. L. Menckens’ works during that time, thanks to the Library at North Texas State, Denton, TX?

As for “dark comedy”, did you ever see the episode of the MTM show, “Chuckles Bites the Dust”?

“And what did Chuckles ask in return? Not much. In his own words, ‘A little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants.’”

It’s also worth remembering that Tina Fey is the former head writer for SNL, and Liz Lemon is the head writer on a weekly sketch comedy show. That kind of work environment is basically a dictatorship inhabited for the most part by socially-stunted men, which is why female writers tend to do better (as in: get hired or commissioned) when working on sitcoms.

Liz is a lot like George on “Seinfeld” in that way.

And George is famously a projection of Larry David, a head writer for a comedy show, who now plays a character called “Larry David” who’s an emotionally-stunted comedy writer.

What makes 30 Rock interesting is the parallels between the ruling dynamic of the writing room and that of the boardroom, and the writing room is probably the most reactionary. Which is as it should be, given what comedy—I’ll bet good money that the writing room at The Daily Show works on similar principles— and is why 30 Rock succeeds where Studio 60 failed.

but the long-established tradition of comedy is to depict lovable losers struggling against insufferable winners.

There’s also the tradition of the insufferable but hilarious loser, perhaps more common in British “comedy of embarrassment” which takes in Basil Fawlty and extends to Alan Partridge.

Maude was unabashedly liberal, I remember an episode where she hosted a party for black separatists whose leader had written a book, “Give Us Colorado”.

But it was done in the context of a vignette, not in a context of the show being about Maude’s role in the struggle for Black liberation or anything like that.  I would assume, having seen other episodes, that Maude hosts the party, and then everyone goes home and everything resets to the normal universe of the show, and next week’s episode is about Maude’s consciousness raising group staging a sit-in for equal pay.  The next episode isn’t about how Maude joins the movement to create Colorado as a sovereign nation for African Americans.  And the next season doesn’t deal with the separatists’ victory and attempt to create their sovereign state. 

There have been plenty of sitcoms that dealt with liberal themes in a very progressive way.  There have not, to my knowledge, been ANY sitcoms that attempted to do that by getting outside the conventions of what a sitcom is.  And one of the most important conventions of a sitcom is that it’s a situational comedy - familiar characters are thrown into a hilarious new adventure for half an hour once a week, at the end of which everything reverts to normal.

I really wanted to like 30 Rock, and I gave it a fighting chance, but after viewing several seasons I now know that I’d be just fine if I never watched it again. Liz Lemon seems like the perfect feminist character at first glance, but the fact that she was swayed again and again by anti-feminist idiots like Cerie, Dennis, and Jack grew really disheartening and tiresome. And the show’s uber-self-conscious comedy style just wasn’t all that funny to me.

That just really compares well to Up‘s caricature of a dead wife being a cheerleader for her husband’s goals.  After all, no kids means no ultimate purpose in life.

Huh?  If anything, he was the one who was the cheerleader for her goals.  His decision to take the house to South America is because it’s the trip that she always wanted but they never got around to taking.

I thought that whole opening sequence was a good depiction of how people get so wrapped up in their day-to-day lives (you know, as a zookeeper and a balloon vendor) that they don’t always get to the goals they set when they were young.  But I guess YMMV.

Liz Lemon seems like the perfect feminist character at first glance, but the fact that she was swayed again and again by anti-feminist idiots like Cerie, Dennis, and Jack grew really disheartening and tiresome.

Not to belabor the point, but that’s why it’s so funny to me—Liz should be the perfect feminist character, but her own character flaws mean that she gets swayed to the dark side again and again.  And then she fails anyway but she never learns, because she’s a sitcom character.

I don’t know if it’s always been this way.  I guess it can’t be, since TV used to have Fantasy Island, Wonder Woman, and the A-Team.  But the formula these days seems to be to acknowledge that we’re all surrounded by cluelessness, pettiness, and corruption.  I think the difference between 30 Rock and Community, on the one hand, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia is the presence of one person who is kind of clued in, although even the clued in person has flaws.  But I think It’s Always Sunny is just like 30 Rock, minus the one clued-in person.

Opop:  But it was done in the context of a vignette

I got all excited to say exactly that.  Opoponax, you’ve foiled me again!  But I’ll get you next time…

Exactly, Mnem.  I’m not sure what you’d do with a feminist character who successfully lives up to her goals in life.  Where’s the struggle?

I haven’t read Ehrenreich’s book yet, though I plan to, but I have read a lot about it.  One thing that stood out was someone quoting (and I think they were quoting someone famous but I can’t recall for certain) a person with cancer saying that cancer was the best thing that ever happened to them.  And I couldn’t stop laughing.  Oh I knew the person who said it was one of those dopey positive/secret people I can’t stand being around, but all I could think was, man if cancer is the best thing that ever happened to you your life must have been something out of the middle ages.  Like you were in stockades by 6 years of age, and on the rack every week since you were 12.  WTf?  What a frigged up country we live in.  But you know, if you can’t convince the rubes that they’re going to be rolling in so much dough Neiman Marcus is going to cream their panties when they see them coming, then those rubes might start to get a bit…restless.

And we can’t have that.

I’m not sure what you’d do with a feminist character who successfully lives up to her goals in life.

Pandagon, The Animated Series?

Yeah, my life would be pretty boring.  If I was going to use it as inspiration for a comedy, I’d wildly exaggerate my flaws and struggles in order to build tension/get laughs…..it would be a lot like “30 Rock”.

Don’t get me wrong, Up had a lot going for it, and I most certainly enjoyed it.  This is not a thread about the movie, so I decided not to elaborate.

(making a romcom out of Liz using Jack as an agent, last week’s revelation that now Jack wants children too)

Frankly, given this show, I’m fully expecting Jack to attempt to “test out” having kids by borrowing one and then end up having a blowup where he calls it a selfish little pig, just like Baldwin did to his daughter on a phone message in real life.  “30 Rock” lives to do art-imitates-life shit like that.

I am so sorry to be late to this thread… I’ve been watching and pondering 30 Rock lately… the point about the darkness of it is really well taken.

Something else though, and it think it may be more of a writing tactic than a product of cynicism or any other worldview. The characters are constantly, ultimately in pursuit of their self-interests. There’s no moderation to it, there are no limits to it, and it is a constant motivator. Every character.

But around that fact, I think you can start layering complexity. Tracy Jordan may be the best example of that… there is a dizzying amount of stuff going on with the guy. But because you always have that same point of reference, the plot is intelligible. You can establish conflict basically just through character’s proximity, and you never get lost in the action. Even if you miss half the jokes.

I think it may be the only way to really make a sit com work—you just don’t have time to explain stuff, and you’re never allowed to have resolution.

mmmmm no.

Baldwin is the producer of 30 Rock and the RL episode of Baldwin yelling those things at his daughter was a serious black eye to Baldwin. He’s not going to call attention back to that episode on his own show.

I was a *little* disappointed by last week’s show, I could see it coming a mile away, but we can’t expect a television show to actually make a good case for remaining childless by choice. It would destabilize the very foundation of western civilization. But seeing as how Jack’s reason for not wanting kids was as flimsy an excuse as his reason to suddenly have kids (I’m sorry but if you suddenly change your mind that you want kids based on a 5 minute conversation with a pre-teen who is momentarily being adorable, you’ll make a shittastic parent), I’m not really expecting the episode to change anyone’s mind.

Since it’s mildly on-topic, I really liked this week’s interview on RealityCast, Amanda.

I dunno about this season, but it seems like something is evolving in the Jack/Liz relationship. I can’t imagine that it will be romantic, but something… I dunno. I am getting increasingly confused.

Does anyone else sniff a family dynamic here? Liz is the head writer, but she spends all of her time managing the personalities around her, putting out fires. They are literal about her having that role—Tracy crying that Liz isn’t around to help, Jack telling her explicitly that it is her job. Head… writer. So, wtf?

It just reminds me of the role mom’s find themselves in—supposedly passive, but everyone around her is utterly dependent on the massive amount of emotional labor she’s constantly doing. And then dad (Jack, sometimes Pete) shows up once in a while and puts out a fire through decisive “cut the bullshit” antics.

Baldwin is the producer of “30 Rock” and the RL episode of Baldwin yelling those things at his daughter was a serious black eye to Baldwin. He’s not going to call attention back to that episode on his own show.

They wrote Tracy Morgan’s drunk driving conviction into an episode.  They wouldn’t do it without Baldwin’s permission (as they didn’t do it until Morgan gave his permission) but I really think they would do it.  And, frankly, Baldwin would probably be happy to try and make light of something that was so embarrassing to him.  If he was, you know, a normal non-abusive person, he might be too embarrassed to put it on national TV, but I think he might be happy to put it on and thus be able to downplay it.

It would probably piss me off if they did it because they would be downplaying seriousness of the incident, but I could totally see Baldwin doing it for the reasons above.

I agree with all this—but I also think that there are two other phenomena which add noise to the signal you’re describing. 1) I think they sometimes spot a joke and go for it because they can. 2) I think there’s some conscious balance being added sometimes when they feel they’ve made a lot of liberal sallies for a given period of time.

At the risk of being beaten up… I didn’t see the big deal with Alec Baldwin yelling at his kid.

I’m just speaking from experience, when my parents got divorced, I was on the receiving end of a LOT of abuse. People get upset and they hurt each other. And then they apologize and everyone grows a little bit.

In my mind, drunk driving is a much bigger deal.

“Also, the Jack/Kenneth relationship is a straight up satire of how rich country club Republicans exploit working class reactionaries with shoddy educations and too much religion to get votes.  It’s an uncomfortable truth, but it’s there. “

Speaking of Kenneth and Jack, the Page Strike episode is a great example of your thesis. Kenneth is constantly shown as the most decent, innocent person on the show, but he is ultimately forced to resort Jack’s “Massage the Truth” position because, deep down, Kenneth is just using the other pages in his own personal battle with Jack. It’s the fact that everyone else lacks a clear moral center that allows Jack to thrive, as he’s the most self-aware of his amorality.

“the Page Strike episode is a great example of your thesis. “

It’s also an example of what I think of as being a very normal part of writing, sitcom or no. You’ve set up a very funny farcical situation based on the clashes between Jack and Kenneth—that was the easy part. You mocked both, you subverted audience expectations. Now, you have to get out of it AND getting out of it has to be funny, therefore you have to mock both and subvert expectations again.

It’s very difficult to do part B in comparison to how easy it is to do part A. That’s why endings rarely land as funny as beginnings. 30 rock has a few episodes where they’ve done it absolutely gorgeously—for instance, the Conan episode, and the episode where Grizz and Dot Com come to fetch Morgan out of the midst of the protestors who are mad over Jenna’s anti-war statements. But most of the time 30 rock (like everything else) doesn’t do as well at untangling the funny tangles they created.

It seems to me that it’s the same thing that happened with another episode that’s been mentioned by several people earlier—where Jack and Morgan go in for vasectomies and then opt out. Except that this episode as a whole was rather weak and seems to have been written around the concept “we want Tracy to imitate the Cosby show.” Their attempts to build up to, and to get back out of, the situation where they had the Cosby show hallucination were much weaker than the hallucination itself.

Writing is a deliberate process, but a lot of times things that happen within that process are accidental or a product of craft not quite being an equal to the task. Fey and her team are great writers, but they’re writing at a rapid pace and they’re entering a point where a lot of stories have already been done with the characters.

No explanation for the water cooler one, though. That was just a clusterfuck.

Perhaps that wasn’t the best example, what about this?

<bloockquote>Maude had an abortion in November 1972, two months before the Roe v. Wade decision made abortion legal nationwide, and the episodes which dealt with the situation are probably the series’ most famous and most controversial. Maude, at age 47, was crushed when she found herself pregnant, and everyone agreed with her that having a baby at her age was very risky and not a wise thing to happen. Her daughter, Carol, brought to her attention that abortion was now legal in New York state. After some soul-searching (and discussions with Walter, who agreed that raising a baby at their ages was not very wise), Maude tearfully decided at the end of the two-parter that abortion was probably the best choice. Noticing the wide controversy around the episode, CBS decided to rerun the episodes in August 1973, and members of the country’s clergy reacted strongly to the decision. At least 30 stations dropped the show.[citation needed] Future Golden Girls creator Susan Harris was a writer on the episode.</blockquote>

From the Wiki on Maude

Also, the Jack/Kenneth relationship is a straight up satire of how rich country club Republicans exploit working class reactionaries with shoddy educations and too much religion to get votes.  It’s an uncomfortable truth, but it’s there.

Favorite bit on Pandagon.  Ever.

Dark Avenger, the liberalness of sitcoms in the 1970s is a bit overrated.  Don’t forget, Archie Bunker became a beloved character, which was pretty disconcerting to Norman Lear and Carroll O’Connor, good liberals both.

Dark Avenger, you’re not getting what I’m talking about here.  I’m not saying Maude wasn’t liberal, or any of the other Norman Lear sitcoms weren’t.  I’m also not saying that Murphy Brown wasn’t liberal, or Fresh Prince of Bel Air wasn’t liberal, or any of the other oft-cited “liberal” sitcoms. 

I’m saying that all of those sitcoms, while politically liberal, were sitcoms.  They work according to the typical story arc conventions of a sitcom.  At the end of the half hour, everything has to be back to normal as per the premise*.  Which makes it extremely difficult, if not impossible, to show the characters actively creating change in the world around them. 

The abortion episodes of Maude (a two-parter, remember, not a six episode arc or a season or a spinoff series about the clinic) are a great example, because the primary reason the writers HAVE to let Maude have the abortion is that the premise of the show would preclude her carrying the pregnancy to term and having a baby.  Everything has to revert to normal at the end of the episode, and agonizing over the choice to abort or not and then deciding to radically change your life by going through with the pregnancy violates that rule quite nicely. 

*One of the only significant violations of this I can think of is the last season of Roseanne, where the family wins the lottery, violating every aspect of the show’s premise as a sitcom about middle-American working class people.  Though Roseanne was generally better about actually allowing the characters to grow and change over time than most other sitcoms have ever been.

Married With Children did that as well.  Not that it was at all liberal-minded.

Oh, not the winning the lottery, but in radical rearraignment of characters outside of the core.

Oh, and also the abortion episodes of Maude aren’t a great example of a sitcom character “creating change”, anyway, because they’re not about Maude as an activist organizing for abortion to be legalized, they’re for Maude deciding whether to have an abortion, herself, on a personal level.  This “makes the personal political” (or really vice versa), but it doesn’t depict a sitcom character actively changing the world around her in a progressive political sort of way.  In that sense, the Black Liberation fundraiser you mentioned upthread is actually a much better example.  Though I’d argue that the show itself doesn’t systematically depict the outcomes of those kinds of political action - it’s just a thing she did once.  Which is probably about as far as a sitcom can go in that direction.

I hereby endorse The Opoponax’s statements on sitcoms and political-social change.

A little off topic, but I was flummoxed when I found out that ventriloquist guy is a real comedian.  I assumed the presence of a ventriloquist at a comedy club was in itself supposed to be a send up of “Real” America.

TO, I’m sorry that I can’t find a ‘70s sitcom showing progressives that meets your exacting standard, but to show an actual character worrying about abortion at a time right before Roe V Wade was determined by the SCOTUS was very controversial for the time.

Don’t forget, Archie Bunker became a beloved character, which was pretty disconcerting to Norman Lear and Carroll O’Connor, good liberals both.

That’s because he was portrayed as a human being with prejudices, not a liberal version of a conservative.  It still allowed for humor at ABs expense, as when Sammy David, Jr., gave him a kiss on the cheek for a photo.

Again, my most humble apologies for not posting up to your high and exacting standards, TO.

A little off topic, but I was flummoxed when I found out that ventriloquist guy is a real comedian.  I assumed the presence of a ventriloquist at a comedy club was in itself supposed to be a send up of “Real” America.
Comment #74: keshmeshi on 11/24 at 05:37 PM

Jeff Dunham is, technically speaking, a good ventriloquist, but his act makes my stomach turn.

Most ventriloquists win an audience over by portraying themselves as “second banana” or schlemiel to their characters, at least part of the time.  Dunham makes his dead terrorist character (who’s Arab of course), a black shiny-suited talent manager, a purple idiot, and a mexican pepper on a stick all play the dummy.  The only character his audience identifies with is a cranky old white guy who farts a lot.

His audiences are all-white and you can see on their faces that they just can’t believe their luck in finally getting to see a professional comedian who is also so “honest” and “politically incorrect.” They’re all pink-faced, flushed with excitement over seeing something they know they shouldn’t.

@ Dark Avenger:

TO, I’m sorry that I can’t find a ‘70s sitcom showing progressives that meets your exacting standard

Not to speak for Opoponax, but I was reacting in similar ways to Ben Alpers’s suggestion at #21 that “the fact that people in 30 Rock don’t bother to effect change reflects what the show presents as essential facts about human nature.”  From there the discussion became, do any sitcoms ever show people “effecting change”?  I don’t think they do, because actually effecting change means _working to fix_ things, not just individually but systemically and socially, and TV comedies NEVER do that, not even the most lefty ones there ever have been.  I think what Opop and I were both saying is that Ben Alpers is setting up an evaluative criterion for 30 Rock that no TV comedy could possibly pass. 

That’s because there’s a difference between a sitcom using characters to _raise awareness_ of an issue (which happens a fair amount, especially in the ‘70s, as you rightly point out) and a sitcom showing characters _effecting change_ around that issue.  Not because raising awareness isn’t worthwhile (it is) but because if sitcoms need to show “effecting change” in order to be properly construed as politically engaged, the medium is probably incapable of that.  And that’s the “exacting standard.”

oldfeminist:  Jeff Dunham is, technically speaking, a good ventriloquist, but his act makes my stomach turn.

Is he even a good ventriloquist?  I’m not a connoisseur of ventriloquism, but I wasn’t impressed at all by his clips.

There are obvious example of sitcom characters changing (Archie Bunker was one character who did soften over time), but the point holds that they can’t change that much over a few seasons.  If the show lasts a long time then the audience can accept the change because it’s slow and gradual, or if the show is more of a miniseries with a definite character arc.

But even with dramas you can’t have that much change very quickly because the audience expects character continuity.  This was even more pronounced with series back in the day because continuity between shows was typically limited: if you tuned into a third season episode of Star Trek, Kirk, Spock and McCoy weren’t acting much differently than they were in the first season.  After 11 seasons or so, Steve McGarrett was the same person busting criminals as he was in the pilot of Hawaii Five-0.

Soap operas were really the only significant exception.

Amanda at #16:  “And I think if you don’t like it, there’s plenty of other stuff out there, but those of us who do find value in dark satire also deserve our yuks.”

Who are you talking to?  Because that is in no way an appropriate response to what I said.  “Those of us who find value in dark satire”?  Really?  And that’s you, as opposed to what I said?

OK, enjoy that.  Those of us who enjoy intellectually consistent dark satire won’t hold it against you.

Also, Alec Baldwin may be brilliant in his role, but given what he has revealed about his opinions and personal life I find it hard to look at his smug face and find all the humor that’s supposed to be there.

The annoying part is, he’s one of the prototypical examples of the liberal d00d (see also: Bill Maher) who’s politically liberal but also virulently sexist.  I mean, Baldwin wrote a whole MRA book whining about his mean ex-wife, for chrissakes.

I do think he’s funny, and he’s far from the only comedian to be an abusive asshole in real life, unfortunately.

I suppose the new Brian Fuller project Sellevision based on this novel is something that many people commenting here will be wanting to see next year.

*sigh* no more girls with boynames for Fuller, I suppose.

They wrote Tracy Morgan’s drunk driving conviction into an episode.  They wouldn’t do it without Baldwin’s permission (as they didn’t do it until Morgan gave his permission) but I really think they would do it. 
Comment #61: Mnemosyne on 11/24 at 03:04 PM

There’s a Fresh Air interview with Tracy Morgan where he says that Tina Fey waited about a year after his drunk driving incident to write about it, and he praises her sensitivity and indicates he trusts her b because of this.  I don’t think he said she came to him and asked, I think he just said when he saw it, enough time had passed for him to be okay doing it.

Not sure what that bodes for Baldwin/Jack yelling into a phone at a child, since his incident is farther in the past, right?

The show isn’t liberal or conservative so much as it’s cynical.

It’s none of the above. It is slimy corporate swill with no purpose other than force-feeding twenty minutes per hour of garbage shit commercials to credulous teevee-watching morons. Grow the fuck up.

I’m pretty sure that it’s just a TV show and like ALL TV shows it exists for one reason only, to sell soap flakes.

It’s none of the above. It is slimy corporate swill with no purpose other than force-feeding twenty minutes per hour of garbage shit commercials to credulous teevee-watching morons. Grow the fuck up.

Yes yes yes.  Talking about popular culture is soooo childish.

Go listen to some opera or whatever kind of art is sufficiently elevated for your superior intellect and let the rest of us talk about what’s interesting to us, ‘kay?

Well, that vampire show on HBO does a darn fine job of selling apples, pepsi, and wiis…

But yeah, too much tv is pretty bad for you, given that tv’s purpose in life is, after all, to shape your motivations—and that has bad implications no matter the arguments that people should watch whatever they want, and as much as they want to watch it.  What goes for children does go for adults, as Machiavelli puts it.

That being said, what an assmunching stepdidoo, PhysioProf.

Is that really the same PhysioProf that’s a regular, or is someone taking the piss?

I think a really good parallel here is actually Arrested Development.  Viewers want to like Michael, because he’s the main character, and he’s kind of nice, but he’s an awful person.  A really awful person, like Liz is an awful person.  And the show had nothing positive to say about human nature, corporate culture, or love.

Shows don’t have to.  Literature doesn’t have to.  And I don’t think the desire to have them be uplifting and politically orthodox is unique to liberals, for what it’s worth (I will point to NRO’s list of the top however many “conservative rock songs”).  We want to claim good things for our “side,” when good art generally isn’t on anyone’s side.  It can be, but it usually isn’t because if politics was what really grabbed artists, they probably wouldn’t have become artists first and foremost.

Yeah, it’s me. I just ran out of MFJ, so I’m being a douchebag.

I meant to add that I think that those upthread who suggest that the sitcom as a genre tends not to suggest the possibility of real social change are on to something.

Absolutely! All douchebaggery aside, the sole purpose of all of teevee and hollywood is to keep Americans addled on their fucking couches, incapable and unwilling to do anything to fill the emptiness of their lives besides giving all of their hard-earned money to the corporations that own our nation.

@ Ben Alpers:  What would suggesting a real space for effecting change look like?  What narrative work in any medium manages to do that?  It seems to me that social change is a fitfully moving collective enterprise, and by its very nature it is almost impossible to dramatize.  It’s like the difference in historical writing between the Annales approach and heroic Great Men.  Narratives in general (IMHO) gravitate towards defining heroes whose deeds have wide-reaching effects but are fundamentally instances of individual initiative rather than collective action.  I think The Wire shows some of the formal aspects you’d have to have in a story about “real social change”—emphasis on “social”—especially the panoramic nature.  But of course part of the point of The Wire is that real social change doesn’t happen.

PP

the sole purpose of all of teevee and hollywood is to keep Americans addled

But you don’t have to use it for its intended purpose.  The purpose of the internet was to make it easier for scientists to communicate.  And now look what a mess we’ve made of it!

X-RAY SPEX KICK ASS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

What would suggesting a real space for effecting change look like?  What narrative work in any medium manages to do that?

When I was in film school, there was a lot of talk about breaking down the narrative structure of film to open up space for political change, but I don’t think those ideas got very far out of film schools.  The whole point of film and television is that they’re mass media that can be shown to multiple people in multiple locations at the same time, so if you make something that’s inaccessible to the masses, you’ve kind of defeated your purpose. (Unless you’re going to go all Stan Brakhage or something and turn film stock into a canvas.)

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Go listen to some opera or whatever kind of art is sufficiently elevated for your superior intellect

But Mnemosyne, didn’t you know that opera really only exists to shill Tiffany diamonds and Land Rovers?  I mean, have you ever read one of those Playbills?! 

In all seriousness, it’s impossible for me to take any of the “but X media is crass consumerist nonsense and I do not approve of it” bullshit seriously.  It’s pretty much impossible to be free of any of that in modern society.  If you listen to NPR or read the New York Times, you’re being marketed to.