25 Days of Christmas #10b: "Christmas Attack Zone"

It's the final Christmas 30 Rock: "Christmas Attack Zone."

Tracy's gotten an award nomination for his seriously depressing (and depressingly serious) drama, Hard To Watch, and trying to be serious all the time is hard for him. He's presenting the film at a special Christmastime charity screening, in a women's shelter.  Kenneth points out that making people laugh is really important, too. Why, Kenneth wonders, wouldn't Tracy let the studio release his sequel to The Chunks?

Meanwhile, Jack's mother is visiting for Christmas, and she's sure to disapprove of his impending (unmarried) fatherhood, and his fiancee to boot. He goes on the offensive and invites his father, Colleen's shameful sex secret, to come too; maybe this year he can come out on top. Liz points out what a bad idea this all is, as she's only attending the dinner to avoid her own family's drama.

Of course, in the long run, all he gets is everyone mad at him. And, for the first time in his 50 years, both his mother and father are yelling at him. He loves it; who knew?!

As soon as Tracy gets to the shelter, he realizes Kenneth was right: these women and children don't need more depressing stories. They just want to laugh at Tracy, in various and assorted fat suits, falling down stairs and hose-vomiting in his suppressed movie The Chunks 2.(Embarrassing admission here: I've never seen Sullivan's Travels, but even I know this is the reference here.)

Meanwhile, Jenna's not coping well with her breakup from Paul, the Jenna Maroney impersonator she's been dating recently. Nobody else really understood Jenna like Paul (their sweetly twisted relationship was always hilarious and touching). It hits Jenna especially hard at Christmas, because there's a celebrity New Year's Eve party, and they could have had the best couple costume ever. They visit briefly, and it turns out they had the same idea, so they go ahead and put the plan into action:

"You dress as Natalie Portman from the movie Black Swan and I dress as former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and Pennsylvania gubernatorial nominee Lynn Swann! We're two black swans!"

Jenna and Paul sing our final Christmas 30 Rock duet over a montage of Liz riding a bus home to suffer with her own family for a change, of Jack's parents berating him, of underprivileged women and children laughing and laughing and laughing at Tracy's movie. Christmas episodes usually have a sentimental ending; this is the weirdest, creepiest ending for a touching show I've ever seen.

As an episode of 30 Rock, I rate this 7/10: the main players and guest stars get almost all the screentime, but I'd love to see the writer's room and show staff too. They don't even put on a show this week.
As a Christmas episode, I rate this 6/10. The sentimental theory of the ending is stronger than the actual sentiment achieved, in my book.

Christmas Attack Zone  30 Rock: Season 5

25 Days of Christmas #10a: "Secret Santa"

Hey, it's my favorite 30 Rock Christmas episode. It's "Secret Santa"!

Kenneth is once again doing his Secret Santa gift-exchanging game (I love the scene where he explains the rules, calling back to last Christmas's game of "murder"), and Frank, Toofer, and Lutz are about to be roped in. Thinking on their feet, they invent their own new religion, Verdukianism, which precludes their involvement in Kenneth's game. They make up ridiculous rules and demands, and Tracy calls them on it. (Since when is Tracy Jordan the moral center of any story?) Kenneth is so upset at the idea that men can just invent religion that he loses, for the first time ever, his Christmas spirit.

Meanwhile, Jack's high school crush, Nancy Donovan, is in town, and they reconnect quickly, considering she's still still sorta married. And, at the same time, Liz is desperately trying to find Jack an appropriate Christmas gift. After she makes an expensive goof, Jack suggests they should instead give each other no-cost gifts. Liz makes a living being creative, so that should be right up her alley, right? Well...

Oh, and Pete has a story in this Christmas episode too. Jenna never chips in for the janitorial staff's gift, and he's upset about it. When he hears Danny, the new cast member, sing ("New dude is as good at singing as Tracy Jordan is at everything!"), he immediately drafts him to take over Jenna's traditional Christmas solo. Jenna... doesn't take it well.

In the end, Danny botches the song to mend Jenna's feelings, and Jack gives Liz a memento of her ridiculous school play, and also a date with Larry Wilcox, from CHIPS. Liz's gift to Jack is a terrorist threat which:
A) Strands Nancy in New York an extra day, so she and Jack can share a kiss, and
B) Gets the Verdukian writers arrested and/or tazed in front of Kenneth, restoring his faith in his angry, vengeful God.

The Simpsons is a show wherein God takes part in human affairs a LOT -- usually to punish someone, and that someone's usually Homer. 30 Rock isn't often a show where events show the hand of God, but in this episode, good intentions lead to good rewards, and bad intentions lead to punishment. Even though Liz does a terrible thing for Jack's gift, her intentions were pure, and her punishment goes to the selfish writers. Pete's insistence on Christmas vengeance not only backfires, but (if he still cares) it makes his decision to let Danny sing on-air look foolish.

As an episode of 30 Rock, I rate this 9/10. Every cast member has something to do in this episode, all the stories are well-connected, and the jokes are spot-on. Plus, they produce a show that week!
As a Christmas show, I rate this 10/10. Generosity is rewarded, selfishness is punished, and Kenneth gets to keep his faith. There's a loving duet sung, and music is important in Christmas episodes.

Secret Santa  30 Rock: Season 4

25 Days of Christmas #9b: "Christmas Special"

This is the second Christmas episode of 30 Rock: "Christmas Special."

Everybody has Christmas plans, and they all go wrong: Liz's family cancels on the 22nd, and Jack's attempt to ditch his mother for nude-tanning and monkey-wrestling goes awry when he backs into her with his car. She's holed up in his apartment, and he can't take the closeness, so he orders the TGS staff to write and produce a big Christmas special in 48 hours. In an attempt to feel some familial love, Liz donates much too much to a Christmas charity, only to suspect she's been scammed (or, as Tracy would have it, "scrumped"). Her attempts to shut down the entire charity program don't go well.

"Dr. Williams said 'boundaries.'"

The staff are struggling with Jack's unreasonable demands, and Liz's grouchy complaints. Why, only Kenneth still feels the spirit of Christmas, and Liz takes him to see just how badly she was scrumped. It turns out that Kenneth was right -- children DID get the gifts from Liz, though she ends up stealing their faith in Santa in the vain hope of a hug.

Jenna, after expressing regret over not seeing the New Kids on the Block with her entourage, really gets into the spirit of singing her Christmas solo, along with her accompanist, Alonzo (seen here, played by Jeff Richmond, the show's composer and Tina Fey's husband, who's in three of the four 30 Rock Christmas episodes).

Jack continues to complain about Colleen's unreasonable behavior at Christmas, always inviting over her gentleman friend, Mr. Schwartz, and putting the moves on him with Jack in the room. Liz helps Jack to realize that the Donaghy family was very poor, and Mr. Schwartz's initials were FAO, and Colleen was just ensuring the kids had toys for Christmas.

So Jack's anger at his mother evaporates, and Jenna's solo turns into a fantasy singalong between Jack and Colleen, bringing the two of them together once again at Christmas.

As an episode of 30 Rock, I rate this 8.5/10 -- the one-liners are fast and thick here, and the twisty emotions of the characters are fun to follow. Bonus: they work on producing a show in this episode!
As a Christmas show, I rate this 9/10 -- charity, faith, love, family, and a heartwarming singalong are all I ask.

Christmas Special  30 Rock: Season 3

25 Days of Christmas #9a: "Ludachristmas"

Here is the first Christmas episode of 30 Rock: "Ludachristmas."

Liz's family is coming to New York for a holiday visit, complete with skating at 30 Rockefeller Plaza and a festive dinner, and they end up nearly adopting her boss. Jack originally doubts their goodheartedness, but is completely won over just in time for his mom's visit. Colleen Donaghy, of course, doesn't have much Christmas spirit, or milk of human kindness for that matter, and declares she'll rip off the Lemon family's loving veneer. Liz's brother Mitch, due to a freak skiing accident, believes it's still 1985, so Andy Richter gets to play an awkward teenager in a 40-year-old body, which seems to be a role he was born for.

"That's a filthy Christmas miracle."

In the meantime, the TGS staff has roundly rejected their awful gift from the GE Corporation (the world's worst designed photoscanner/papershredder -- the toggle switch reads "PS -- PS"). Kenneth feels they have misunderstood the spirit of Christmas, so with his creepy pastor he kidnaps them and forces them to learn the "true meaning of Christmas."

Tracy Jordan, meanwhile, is wearing an ankle bracelet which monitors his blood-alcohol level, after a DUI incident. In 2007, this was a sneaky nod to Tracy Morgan's own bad-driving past, but this year is a horrible reminder that, walking or no, reckless driving is dangerous and not very funny. (This shot is a freeze-frame joke I noticed for the first time this week: note the other devices being tracked, including the patented 30 Rock Star Wars reference.)

In the long run, after Pastor Gary's seemingly endless religious messages ("It was sung to the tune of American Pie, but it was so much longer!"), Tracy inspires the staff, in the nonmaterialistic spirit of the holiday, to chop down the giant tree outside. And then his ankle bracelet goes off -- he's been drinking -- and he points out he should probably never, ever be listened to or followed.

And Colleen has been poking and prodding all the obvious chinks in the Lemon family armor, until she finally hits on a non-obvious one: Mitch hasn't grown out of sibling rivalry yet. So it's revealed that, on the day Liz was proudly breaking gender barriers in high-school football, her parents took Mitch out for a movie instead of attending, and in her anger Liz lets slip that, hey, it's been three decades, and the four Lemons are squabbling and fussing. Colleen is satisfied. Jack, while temporarily sad, finally shares a Christmas moment with her.

As a 30 Rock episode, I rate this 8/10: it's tightly written, full of music and heart and family togetherness (of one kind or another).
As a Christmas show, I rate this 8/10, if only because I know there are better Christmas 30 Rocks to come.

Ludachristmas  30 Rock: Season 2