Friday 6 May 2011

30 Rock - S5 E23 - Respawn

With the season at an end, Liz goes on holiday but finds her peace interrupted by Tracy. Jack feels lonely without his wife but finds an able substitute in Kenneth. Jenna becomes a spokesperson for wool.


Spoilers after the jump.

Another one in the can, but it didn't really feel like a season finale, at least not as much as last weeks episode. It was almost more like a premiere;  With things left in flux last time, everything is set right just in time for everything to proceed. Liz will continue to have as pathetic a personal life as ever. Happy to deprive herself of a holiday to escape unwanted distractions, she notes that her only close female friend is Jenna - not an entirely desirable situation. At least she can speak Spanish now, as taught to her by the chain gang so her vocabulary likely includes a lot of colorful language.

In a similar vein, Tracy will be as spoilt and crazy as ever. I wonder, did he take the wife and children with him to the holiday house? Or Grizz and Dotcom; in any case, it seems as though he travelled back to New York alone. Jenna meanwhile apparently starred at the Wool Bowl. First of all, I had to check to make sure that wasn't a real bowl game, because it sounds like it totally could be. The organizers probably aren't taking people to strip clubs like they do at the Fiesta Bowl sadly. There is actually a Wool Bowl stadium in Roswell, New Mexico of all places. Wool itself, apparently a giant national corporation is the focus here. I really don't have anything else to add besides about thirty more Fiesta Bowl jokes because Rural Juror aside, Jenna has rarely interested me and this is just another showcase of her whackjob attention seeking ways.

Looks like Avery is gone for good - by the end of the episode after a lot of homoerotic moping around, Jack is back to normal. Apart from the both being blonde and supposedly having similarly shaped buttocks, it's unclear what about Kenneth and Avery is supposed to be similar but in this case I suppose it must be a case of anything to help him cope. Jack's obsession even leads to poor Jonathan getting caught in the crossfire, even his family gets sucked in (and away from a wedding apparently) to help him do all of Kenneth's chores while Kenneth gets groped by a lovesick Jack. A good blast of him channeling Coleen, Jack's mother is finally able to snap him out of it and bring back a more confident Jack. Contrived conclusion aside, this was easily the best thread of the episode.

When all is said and done, not much has moved (much like the writers playing... Call of Duty? Is it? all summer long) plot-wise since the beginning of the season. Well, maybe we'll see what Kenneth's true mission alluded to at the end is. He mentioned Jacob... I immediately thought Lost. I did find it interesting though that a random writer got to speak (and lampshaded it) but Cerie was compeltely missing. Being voted Esquire's Sexiest Woman of 2011 is all well and good but when your next project is "Piranha 3DD" it doesn't speak (Hah) volumes about your other talents...


"30 Rock" airs Thursdays on NBC at 8:30 pm EST.

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