30 Rock S6E9: Leap Day
This review was commissioned by @Aris Katsaris. It was supposed to go up on leap day, almost exactly a week ago, but I've spent the last couple of weeks traveling a lot and having only intermittent internet access, so this was the best I could do.
...which is kind of funny in retrospect, because this episode itself only exists because the 30 Rock writers missed their chance to do a Christmas or New Years episode, and had to settle for doing a leap day special of all things instead. So, in that way maybe I'm just doing justice to the spirit of the episode. And of 30 Rock as a whole, really.
I've caught bits and pieces of 30 Rock over the years, but never made a habit of watching it (to rub it in: I literally forgot that the dopey office sitcom I had seen a few episodes of here and there was 30 Rock until I started this review). It's always struck me as a decent, but unexceptional, screwball comedy show. I may have just been unlucky, though. Tina Fey's previous work on Saturday Night Live was usually at least decent, and while her movie career has produced some forgettables, it's also produced quality. For those unacquainted, 30 Rock is a comedy-drama TV show about a group of creators trying to keep a fictional sketch comedy show of their own (an obvious satire of Saturday Night Live) on the air, obviously based on Fey's own experiences as showrunner. So, maybe this one will grab me more than other 30 Rock episodes have, we'll see.
The episode opens with main character and head-writer-played-by-head-writer Liz being approached on the street by "Sad Thad," a man she vaguely remembers as the effects guy from her college theater career. He apparently remembers her much more vividly, fondly recalling her "starring" role in the free unlicensed version of The Sound of Music as...Rolfe. Who the director apparently decided should be wearing his uniform in every single appearance, even before the nazi takeover.
Thad invites her to a daytime leapday party, which she tries to politely decline, but he gets pushy about it. Fortunately, Liz is rescued by her oblivious, stuck-up colleague Jenna, whose inconsideration for weirdos is actually a boon in this one instance. Liz thanks her profusely as they walk away, while Thad stares after her.
Liz complains about Thad all the way back to the office, until Jenna looks at the invitation he handed her and recognizes Thad's full name from a golddigger forum she frequents. Apparently, "Sad" Thad Warmald has made twenty billion dollars by doing an internet since Liz last knew him, and being unmarried remains a prime target for, well, golddiggers. Jenna begs for Liz to accept the invitation and bring her along. Liz is uninterested. And, then it turns out that everyone in the world except Liz apparently cares a lot about leapday, because this is 30 Rock.
Also, leapday has its own Santa Clause or Easter Bunny equivalent in Leap Day William, an impish, well-dressed man who emerges from the Marianas Trench every leapday to hand out candy and feast on the tears of children. Because this is 30 Rock.
Roll intro. It's not really much to talk about. Just close up shots of everyone's faces over a frenetic cartoon background while derpy wind instruments play. It's short though, so whatever.
Later that morning, Liz's network producer boss offers her some rhubarb, and stomps on her foot and kicks her in the shin for not wearing blue and yellow, as one does for leapday. Oh, everyone in the background in the intro scene was wearing blue and yellow, that's cute and weird foreshadowing. There are leapday parades and celebratory ice mazes being put on all over the country, as per tradition, and their TV station is running a seasonal counterpart to "The Santa Clause" that features a man developing the Innsmouth Look as he mutates into Leap Day William. New intern Kenneth (the guy dressed up as William out in the breakroom) then comes in. Kenneth is a Mormon, and well, we all know how over-the-top they get about leapday. In addition to dressing up as William, the Mormon version of leapday celebration also includes poking you in the eye if you're not wearing blue and yellow, rather than the comparatively benign toe-stomping and shin-kicking practiced by the general American Protestant millieu. Liz is forced to show her coincidentally appropriate choice of panties to defend herself.
She understandably leaves, and bossman and Kenneth begin a conversation of their own. Unlike most people, who see leapday as an extra chance to do all the crazy and adventurous things they wouldn't get to do over the course of a typical year, bossman sees it as an opportunity to squeeze an extra day's worth of profits out of the calender. He has a competition going with another TV bigshot over who can put themselves ahead the furthest each leapday. For instance, this year he just bought an entire new internet company (uh oh...). So, while he appreciates Kenneth's dedication to the holiday spirit and respects religious diversity among his employees, he's going to have to ask him to tone it down. And put on a wig, because Kenneth actually shaved himself bald as part of his William costume.
Cut ahead to Liz grudgingly bringing Jenna to Thad's party, seemingly more to get away from her suddenly very alienating work environment than anything else. Thad is definitely living up that internet multibillionaire life, with a palatial living room, multiple servants to welcome in the guests, and that caged Ewok that he'd been wishing for ever since Liz knew him in college.
There's a little mean spirited dialogue between Liz and Jenna where the joke is just how stupid and callous Jenna is, and then we cut to Jenna's male costar Tracy, who is worrying about the new and gigantic aquarium that he's having his "aquarium guy" put in. He gets a memo from bossman, saying that there will be no leapday bonuses this year, and that it's President Obama's fault rather than his own. That joke might have landed better with me if I was watching this when it came out in 2012. Anyway, while moving the couch to make room for the new oversized fish tank, he finds a pile of fan mail he never read. In a leapday miracle, this includes a fifty thousand dollar gift card for a Japanese restaurant that expires on March 1st. Cue planning session on how to eat fifty thousand dollars worth of sushi within the next twelve hours.
Cut back to bossman John Donaghy, whose new internet company purchase went badly due to an unintentionally racist presentation about it he made for the investors. Sadness.
Cut back back to Thad's palace, where Liz has gone off on her own (for some reason?) and wandered into Thad's tabletop gaming room. Okay, Thad, you've come across as pretty unlikable thus far, but mad props on the automatic D&D table that rises out of the floor. That's some serious taste and refinement, and I'm here for it. He finds her while she's alone, and reveals that his entire business career - including selling his internet company to her executive - was part of a Great Gatsby scheme to get him close to her again. When she's creeped out rather than impressed, he drops the mask and offers her twenty million USD to take his virginity, which she still refuses.
For some reason, we cut from there to a scene from bizarro "The Santa Clause" where the man turning into William is struggling to get through the workday while a gigantic moustache creeps across his face, a blue and yellow fedora returns to his head with a comical sound effect no matter how many times he discards it, and a grotesque set of fishlike gills pulsate and bleed on either side of his neck. At least I'm not the only one who thought that movie was super fucked up. Then we see Tracy and his friends starting to chip away at their fifty thousand dollar's worth of cheap Japanese food and even cheaper drinks. Then, back to what I guess is the A-plot with Liz telling Jenna about what just happened with Thad.
Jenna is about as sympathetic as you'd expect (ie, she's envious), and also challenges the genuineness of Liz's claim to be offended. If she's that creeped out by Thad's offer, then why is she even still in his house? She glances at the wall-sized TV, and sees the unfortunate fish mutant finally taking the plunge and throwing himself off a seaside cliff at the coast of Japan. She calls her own boyfriend to ask if he's okay with her doing this, and he doesn't even let her say what she's planning to do before enthusiastically assuring her that what you do on leapday doesn't count, so whatever it is he's fine with it.
Back to the Japanese restaurant, where bad writing and unfunny jokes happen for a minute before we return to Liz and Jenna at the party. Jenna is almost literally throwing herself at Thad to get the prize instead of Liz (wait...why did she just encourage Liz to stay at the party and go for it herself if that's her new goal?), pretending that his cringey sexist comments and emotional immaturity are all endearing and attractive. He starts to show some superficial interest, but the instant Liz gets up and goose steps for him Sound of Music style he forgets all about Jenna. Jenna pulls her aside for a moment, and tells her that if she's going to do this, she'd better do it fast, because word is about to get out about the thirsty billionaire (how? is she going straight to social media with it or something?) and then there's going to be crowds of competition in the blink of an eye.
Then we go back to Donoghy in his office, who's passing out from rhubarb poisoning while ranting about how he can't let himself lose money on leapday. Kenneth dotes on him, begging him not to die, he's had to dig too many graves already. I guess either Kenneth is ex-military, or his mission was rough. Then back to Tracy leaving the restaurant and abandoning his friends in the process. Their inability to enjoy fifty grand worth of cheap sushi and wine in one afternoon has challenged his belief in the spirit of Leapday William, and left him in a state of mild depression. Then, some tacky Christmas music starts playing, and a gnomic old man dressed as William appears out of nowhere, addresses Tracy by name, and tries to cheer him up with some typical Christmas movie feelgood nonsense.
He doesn't have gills though, so this may or may not actually be the real William.
Back to Liz. She's gotten Thad alone, and he's having some severe and very weird performance anxiety, and projecting it onto her. He also apparently thinks that sex works like it does in Avatar (racist cat people, not animesque elementalism), and mostly hinges on wrapping your hair braids around each other. Uh. Huh. That kind of flies in the face of his flavor of creepiness displayed up until now, but I guess the gag is still supposed to work because he's a nerd so let's make a nerd joke. Unfortunately, before she can use this to scam(?) him out of the twenty million, an army of rivals who have just heard about Thad's wealth and thirst march in.
Thad looks intrigued, to Liz's chagrin. Because apparently an army of hookers is something a man worth twenty billion dollars and the inclination to do so wouldn't have trivially arranged for himself up until now.
Donaghy has a rhubarb-induced vision in which he has a leapday version of A Christmas Carol inflicted on him, with the result of a (most likely temporary) change of heart. It's funny seeing Kenneth stand in as the "ghosts" and Tina Fey double as Donaghy's put-upon stripper mother, but otherwise kinda meh. Then Tracy muses on William's words, talks himself passed the obvious intended conclusion that he should devote the rest of his fifty thousand dollar fast food sushi feast to the poor, but then doubles back and catches it. The episode ends with him treating the homeless community to sushi, Liz losing to some random Czech girl who Thad is apparently interested in now for reasons, and a bunch of unfunny-to-semifunny jokes.
Yeah, this is why I never got into 30 Rock. And, I think, why SNL sort of got outcompeted by Mad TV, at least temporarily. Tina Fey is a lot like the Monty Python writers. When someone mentions her, you remember the handful of brilliantly hilarious sketches she's done, without realizing you've forgotten about the much more numerous mediocre ones until you sit down and watch her again.
True to that pattern, "Leap Day" had a few gags that had me rolling, and a few bits of social commentary that really hit home for me. The "Sound of Music" and "The Santa Clause" jokes were top notch, and a reminder that Fey's run on SNL was usually at its best when poking fun at specific media or current events rather than "freeform" comedy (though the "made twenty billion dollars doing an internet" also got a laugh out of me, to be fair). The whole bizarre nega-christmas (with some St. Patrick's Day influence) that the writers invented for the 30 Rock verse's leapday was something I really enjoyed, and Liz's alienation was very relatable for me. Being raised Jewish in a backwater American red state town, the day of gaudy commercialized nonsense of mishmash origins that everyone besides you is super excited about and judges you for not sharing with them was pretty real to me. But, that was kind of it as far as real high points go, and even those repeated themselves a bit too often and overstayed their welcome by the end.
Aside from most of the jokes just not being nearly as clever or well written as the above, some things felt really backward and structurally flawed. The schizophrenic handling of Thad was probably the biggest issue there (he's had eyes only for Liz for years despite being a super rich bachelor with tons of other options...until he suddenly stops? Whatever joke the show was trying to tell here, it doesn't add up well enough to work). On a related note, while mocking stereotypical "nerds" is a good fifteen percent of my own shtick, I found this episode's approach to it in bad taste. For one thing, it seemed to treat the really benign elements of nerd culture (having a dedicated gaming room if you can afford one, writing silly lyrics for part of the Star Wars soundtrack, etc) as equally repellent to the actually harmful ones (the gatekeeping, entitlement, and misogyny). The show pretty clearly expects us to be repelled by Thad not just because of his actually unpleasant behavior, but also just because he's a nerd. Secondly, it's pretty tone-deaf for an episode that came out in 2012, when superheroes, tabletop gaming, and the like were already well into the process of becoming mainstream. Kinda missed the sweet spot for nerd baiting there. There was also the feelgood Christmas movie ending, which just sort of came out of nowhere in the last ten minutes or so of the episode. If the ep had been building up to some sort of (ironic or otherwise) message about charity and greed from the beginning, that ending might have been more satisfying. But those themes only emerged well after the halfway point, so it fell flat for me.
The excessive jumping around and lolrandom aspect, and the "isn't it funny how awful this character is" aspect with Jenna, is another thing that dates this show in the bad way. American TV comedy in the late aughts and early tens was all about disjointedness, randomness, and edginess, with Family Guy and the like ruling the field. I think overexposure might have numbed me to this sort of humor, and I doubt I'm the only one. That's less of a flaw of this particular work, of course; just another factor that effected my enjoyment.
So, overall meh. It had some great bits, but mostly it's just forgettable.
