30 Rock "Cutbacks"
It has only been a week without 30 Rock and I am already suffering withdrawal symptoms. Itchy skin, repetitive questions, the shakeswhen am I gonna get me some Tina Fey?
It is certainly nice to see the show back on air. "Cutbacks" is this week's episode and in it, TGS needs to cut back 20 percent, meaning Liz will be under the gun to pick some people to fire. In fact, the entire company is going to have to downsize; Jack starts with his assistant Jonathan.
To replace Jonathan, Jack asks Kenneth the Page to hold both page and secretarial duties, causing Kenneth to have to split into two personalities. This also leaves him no time to feed his bird, so he charges Tracy to go to his apartment with the warning not to enter his bedroom.
When Tracy arrives, his curiosity overcomes him and as he is approaching the door to Kenneth's bedroom, the bird tells Tracy not to go into the room. Tracy runs out of the apartment in terror. From this experience, he and Jenna concoct a scenario in which Kenneth is a rampant serial killer who is storing his dead victims in his room. When they confront Kenneth, he does not help matters by acting creepy.
Meanwhile, Liz is meeting with a representative from an outside firm to talk about the budget cuts. When he offers her to either do the cuts or he will arbitrarily choose what TGS will lose, Liz takes one for the team and goes out on a date with him, giving up her body for the sake of TGS.
Back at Kenneth's apartment, Tracy and Jenna enter his bedroom to find a bug bomb, which immediately goes off. As they run out, they forget to close the bedroom door, allowing the gas to cloud up the apartment and killing the bird. Now, the pair has to confront Kenneth yet again, this time with the terrible news that his bird is dead. Kenneth is extremely disappointed, causing Tracy and Jenna to try to find a way to make it up to Kenneth.
The next day, Liz arrives to find that the cuts were performed anyway. In fact, the writers' room is now the main studio for a Spanish news broadcast. Confronting the firm's representative, Liz discovers that while she thought she was sacrificing for TGS, he was sacrificing his celibacy since his wife died, making Liz look awful, yet again.
Things turn for the best, though, when Liz discovers that Jack is taking over due to the conflict of interest created by Liz's date, leading to a great laugh which Jack refers to Liz doing something terrible leading to something great happening.
When Kenneth arrives home, he finds that Tracy and Jenna have filled his apartment with birds, giving way to a pretty lame joke where he names two of the birds Lorne and Michael, referring to executive producer Lorne Michaels, who I'm sure got a kick out of this. The audience not so much.
While, since it's 30 Rock, of course this was another great show, but watching Liz end up being the bad guy over and over is getting a bit tiresome. I'm starting to get bored with seeing Liz constantly being made fun of and stepped on by everyone, especially considering she is among the top three funniest characters on the show. While how pitiful we find Liz is part of her charm, it seems like the show at times goes out of its way to make her suffer. This was certainly seen in "Apollo Apollo" when they embarrass her with the phone sex commercial she made.
While this is a small gripe in the great vastness of 30 Rock's awesomeness, I hope to see the writers of the show make some progress into making Liz a more appealing character than she already is.