'30 Rock' Recap: Reaganing

This week’s 30 Rock opens on Jack’s office, where he is pitching a no-hitter in problem solving. Jonathan tries to get Liz to leave before she ruins Jack’s perfect game with all of her problems, but Jack tells her to stay. When you’re pitching a no-hitter “you don’t walk Albert Pujoles,” Jack tells Liz. “And you are the Albert Pujoles of having problems.” Jack explains that his day of perfect problem solving is called Reaganing, and it’s only been achieved by three people, including, “no judgment,” Saddam Hussein.

Liz tells Jack that she is having trouble getting a cab so she can go to Newark airport to see Carol. Jack promises to give her a ride on his way to tell Rachel Maddow that only one of them can have his haircut. The credits roll.

In Studio 6-H, Tracey explains that he has to do a commercial for the Boys and Girls Club as community service. Not to be outdone, Jenna uses her newly received coupon for a lifetime of free ice cream to buy the crew an ice cream cake.

In the car with Jack, Liz lets it slip that she is planning on breaking up with Carol. Because of how uncomfortable Liz is, Jack knows that the reason has something to do with sex. Carol and Liz are having intimacy issues that stem from Liz’s performance problems. “My junk is closed for business. It’s like Fort Knox down there!” she tells Jack.

On the street, Tracey’s inability to nail his lines is causing a traffic jam that has Jack and Liz stuck in their car. Jack confronts Liz about her inability to talk about sex, calling her a prude. A montage of old scenes proves that Jack is right. He asks her if anything like this has ever happened before. It has, once with her college boyfriend, once with Dennis, and now with Carol. Jack is convinced that there is some root cause to her problems, but when he probes further, Liz yells, ”Stop asking about the roller skates!”

Liz explains that when she was 9 years old, she was rollerblading inside the house. A flashback with Tina Fey playing Liz’s 9-year-old self shows that Liz was rollerblading, when she suddenly needed to go to the bathroom. However, the bathroom was occupied by Liz’s aunt, who had recently moved in with them. In an attempt to be prepared, Liz pulled down her underwear but could not get it over her skates. As she tripped, she pulled down her Aunt’s poster of Tom Jones. Her mom found her, underwear around her ankles, squirming under the Tom Jones poster, and subsequently took away all of Liz’s posters. “Sex makes the people go away!” grown-up Liz exclaims in the car. Afraid Liz’s problems are too big for him to handle, Jack leaves the car to investigate the cause of the traffic jam.

In the street, Jack finds Tracey and the commercial production crew. He is worried that his day of Reaganing has been ruined. But when the director needs help getting Tracey to say his lines, Jack once again saves the day. He gives Tracey a mouth full of jelly beans, Reagan’s favorite candy, and performs Tracey’s lines in a voice over.

Meanwhile, Jenna and Kenneth have been pulling an “Arizona Double Back” on their local Carvel store. They realized that they could get cash back if they return the ice cream cakes they purchase with Jenna’s coupon. They order “Happy Birthday Blenna,” and “Bappy Hirthday Gremlin” cakes so that they can later return them for cash. But when the Carvel employees figure out their scam, they are forced to get another celebrity to help them pull off one more scam. Kenneth and Jenna recruit Kelsey Grammer, another cardholder of Carvel’s lifetime of free ice cream coupon, to be part of their con-pulling “Best Friends’s Gang.”

The gang writes a fake skit for TGS that requires 21 ice cream cakes. Even though Pete gives them the show’s money to pay for the cakes, they keep the money and purchase the cakes with their free cards. Grammer tells the cashier to make 21 “Happy Birthday Frajer” cakes. They empty the cake boxes and fill them with newspaper before returning them to the store for cash. The Best Friends Gang manages to make $800 off of the scam, but when Kenneth finds out that it caused an employee to be fired, he wants out. Grammer and Jenna agree, but first they have to beat Kenneth out of the gang.

At 4:00, Jack concedes that Liz’s problem has not been solved, and therefore ruined his no-hitter. Liz apologizes as they continue to Newark airport. When they get there, Jack has a break through. Tom Jones billboards were hanging outside of Liz and Carol’s hotel room in Las Vegas, “What’s New Pussycat” was playing when Liz slept with her college boyfriend, and the problem with Dennis had started when he had gotten a perm. Tom Jones is Liz Lemon’s trigger!

Liz thanks Jack for solving her problem and she runs off to meet Carol, before realizing that she wrote the information down wrong. They head to JFK.