30 Rock: “Secrets and Lies”

The writers’ strike will soon be more than just a Hollywood-rooted labor movement; soon it will be a blight on our land. We are dangerously close to the breaking point where the scripts will have dried up and episodes already in the can are exhausted. When this fateful day comes children will be without joy, women will fret, grown men will cry and I will be found curled up and mumbling incoherently inside my closet. This will be the reaction when 30 Rock ceases airing new episodes.

With this crushing realization of the limited nature of new 30 Rock, I began watching “Secrets and Lies” with equal amounts of bitter and sweet. This week’s episode, while weak on plot, was certainly strong in the one-liner department. 30 Rock’s latest offering finds Jack continuing his forbidden tryst with CC the Democratic congresswoman, Liz trying to manage the egos of Tracy and Jenna and Toofer and Frank engaging in a feud where they ape each other’s respective personas.

Jenna wins an award for best actress in a movie adapted from a musical adapted from a movie, which makes Tracy jealous and sends him into full diva meltdown. Lemon speaks with Tracy to find out that he’s upset because he never wins awards himself; he was especially miffed when Shaq won a Kid’s Choice Award for the animated feature they did together. This admission leads to one of the greatest 5-second drop-ins 30 Rock has ever done where an octopus-looking Tracy and a green-whale Shaq are floating through the solar system and have the following exchange:

Tracy: “Boy I hope we rescue the Starfish king on this adventure”
Shaq: “It’ll be a slam dunk”
Tracy: “Would you call what we did last night sex?”

In a night filled with extremely funny moments that may have been the best. Tracy continues the discussion of his awards losing streak and contemplates giving up so he can “try this crystal meth everyone’s been talking about.” To avert disaster, on the spot Liz makes up an award for Jordan to win and the resulting hullaballoo causes Jenna to feel like not enough is being done to pamper her. So she starts to go all diva herself, even bringing in an entourage of a couple catty gays and a shaman-like masseuse/personal sketch-writer for her. After getting so fed up with Jenna’s behavior, Liz snaps and informs her that she already is coddled as much as Tracy Jordan, informing her that the award she had received earlier was something Liz had made up to paper over Jenna’s insecurity and the award was, in fact, a cookie.

The reprise of Jack and CC’s red state-blue state romance found them still trying to conceal their relationship as to not garner disfavor from their respective colleagues. CC decides to compromise on the lawsuit she was heading up against Jack’s boss and NBC parent company, the Sheinhardt Wig Company. Jack scoffs at the “NBA sexual harassment suit money” being offered to the plaintiffs and let’s Celeste know that it’s too soon for him to be seen with her because his colleagues despise her. Due to his unwillingness to compromise, CC breaks up with him and Donaghy complains to Lemon that no one understands what he’s going through.

Enter James Carville. The wiley, former Clinton strategist and one of the top Democratic political operatives of the past 20 years just happens to be married to Mary Matalin, one of the top Republican strategists. This makes the ragin’ Cajun especially well-suited to understand Jack’s plight of attempting to date across the political divide. Carville advises Donaghy to get out in front of the story and settle the whole problem, “Cajun style.”

On his way out of the office Carville solves the dispute between the hipster weirdo Frank and the Harvard square Toofer. The two of them aped each other’s personas in order to piss each other off after Toofer takes umbrage with Frank wearing a Harvard sweatshirt. However, they both realized their feud was going too far but didn’t know how to end it with both of them saving face. Carville advises them to change the narrative, just like Karl Rove did in 2004. Take care of the problem “Cajun Style.” Then Carville proceeds to show a young staffer how to steal candy from a vending machine, “Cajun Style.”

With Carville’s advice to tackle his problem “Cajun Style,” Jack convinces CC to go to lunch with him and amongst all of his corporate peers he announces he’s dating a Democrat and that he’s proud of it. Sure, he admits she’s someone who’d love to “tax us all to death and make it legal for a man to marry his own dog,” but he loves her none the less. His admission leads to some of his fellow colleagues to stand up and admit secrets that run counter to their right-wing corporate interests.

“I gave to NPR last year.”

“My children go to public school.”

“I’m gay.”

“I’m black.”

It wraps up heartwarmingly with CC disclosing, “In 1984 I voted for Ronald Reagan.”

Amidst the round of applause for her confession, the old man who admitted to giving to NPR stands up again to deliver the last line of the episode, “I murdered my wife.”

This was once again a solid episode of my favorite show. Although far from the best of the season, in absolute terms this was still far better than anything else on television today. 30 Rock has set the bar so high for witty, incisive comedy that each week you eagerly tune-in to revel in the smartest, funniest comedy going right now. What has been so great about this season is that although you go into the episode with the expectation of greatness, 30 Rock has delivered on, and many times exceeded those expectations. Sadly, we’ve only got one more new episode to go before 30 Rock goes away for the foreseeable future, and I curl up in the fetal position in my closet.