Download 30 Rock Episodes

Well, I didn’t mean to get your hopes up. Actually, crossing the streams of the two best sitcoms on TV these days would be the kind of stunt that neither show would have any interest in pulling. Hopefully. Though 30 Rock would probably get a much needed kick in the ratings caboose if Dwight or Michael ever wandered over from Dunder Mifflin Corporate Headquarters. However, the show is already busy enough just trying to accommodate the endless supply of really big names (Seinfeld, Gore, Killah) that are keen on yucking things up with Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, and Tracy “Mind Grapes” Morgan. The crafters of 30 Rock somehow make this heavy heap of cameos work. It typically stinks when show goes that route (Will & Grace, The Two Coreys), but the show’s writing is just too damn inventive and spectacular to let that happen, I guess.

Can you tell I like the show? The Office ain’t bad either!

Anyway, Shawn Levy, the TV turned movie director of Cheaper by the Dozen, Steve Martin’s Pink Panther reboot, and (give me a moment to let my stomach settle before I press on) the Night at the Museum series….

(:::If you’ll please excuse him, the author of this article has just politely upchucked into a bucket and strategically placed it under Levy’s upcoming quote.)

Levy has had a chocolate in peanut butter moment! He’s pairing Tina Fey and Steve Carell in a movie called Date Night. According to Daily Variety, the sometimes destroyer of worlds had this to say about the project:

“I wanted to do a relatable, grounded character comedy about marriage and the lengths we go to preserve the spark. Tina and Steve are smart and relatable, and the tone of their comedy perfectly fits this film.”

Levy then proceeded to accidentally step in a throw up-filled bucket, skid down a flight of stairs, and plop into a large, just-delivered wedding cake. The calamity, of course, was set to the tune of OK Go’s Here it Goes Again.

This really seems like a no-brainer pairing. Carell, obviously, is a movie star - he’s just coming off of the money-raking Get Smart. And Fey has just begun sowing her oats in theaters. Her flick Baby Mama was a modest hit earlier this year, and she is co-starring with Ricky Gervais (from the original Office!) in 2009’s hotly.  This Side of the Truth. Both Fey and Carell have unique comedic perspectives, and it’ll be fun watching them play off of each other. I just wish is was in one of those non-Levy sandboxes.

Download 30 Rock Episodes

TINA Fey may not be known in the UK, but in America, she’s recognised as the woman who has everything.

The Golden Globe-winning comedienne is happily married to composer Jeff Richmond, has a two-year-old daughter Alice Zenobia, and her highly-successful career seems to be going only up. On top of that, she’s got the looks to boot.

Multi-talented Tina – she writes scripts, acts and produces – made history as the first female head writer on famed comedy sketch show Saturday Night Live, but left after 10 years to develop her own award-winning show, 30 Rock – loosely based on her experiences on the famous variety series.

The 38-year-old is also expanding into the big screen. She wrote and co-starred in Mean Girls, featuring Lindsay Lohan, and takes a break from writing in this summer’s Baby Mama, in which she stars alongside her ex-Saturday Night Live sidekick Amy Poehler.

In the film Tina plays Kate, an ambitious single businesswoman who finds an unlikely surrogate mother (Amy) to bear her a child.

She explains: “There’s a difference between wanting to prove that you could get pregnant and wanting to be a mother. Kate starts off as this achievement-oriented yuppie who wants to prove that she can get pregnant and then realises what she really wants is to be a mother which is a much more significant thing to want.

“The whole topic is fraught with so much. Then there’s the area of adoption, surrogacy, fertility clinics and the ways of the future to making babies, bringing questions about the ethics and repercussions.”

Following the success of pregnancy-focused comedies like Knocked Up and Juno, Tina says Baby Mama has arrived at the right time.

“I think this is such a loaded topic and an emotional topic. Hopefully, if people have been through something like this in any way, the film might be a relief for them and a way to find humour in the situation,” she says.

“I think the idea of wanting a family and wanting a baby in your life is a universal one, no matter how you arrive at it. But there’s something about big life milestone moments. Moments that are rites of passage always seem to lend themselves to comedy, whether it’s going to your prom, losing your virginity, getting married or having a baby.”

She quips: “We need more dying comedies, comedies about dying.”

Tina’s preparation for the role included remembering her own pre-motherhood feelings.

“It would be hard to imagine,” she readily admits about putting herself in Kate’s shoes.

“I personally got very lucky. I got a baby under the wire – that’s how I like to say it. I was 35 and I know I’m very, very lucky.

“I was able to remember the feelings of mid-30s baby lust that kind of overtakes you and surprises you, and then the fear that it’s not going to work out.”

However, she loves being a mum. “The baby is the only good part. The diapers are not great, the hours are dreadful, they really are. Babies are very cute.”

And Tina was able to give “tips” to co-star Amy, who coincidentally is currently expecting her first child.

“My tips for her were your butt is not big enough. Your butt gets so much bigger when you have a baby,” she says, laughing.

The comic duo met as drama improvisation students in Chicago in 1993, before they teamed up on Saturday Night Live.

“It’s great to work with Amy, because we’ve known each other and worked together so long and we’re very comfortable with improvising together.”

The movie also features Sigourney Weaver and Steve Martin, but Tina’s experience on Saturday Night Live helped her to be relaxed around them.

“It’s crazy!” she says. “We’re really lucky to have Steve and Sigourney.

“But, thankfully, working at Saturday Night Live you do get a little more accustomed to standing next to a giant movie star and find a way to just forget who they are and do the scene with them. It’s a great way to get used to it, otherwise the whole time you’d be freaked out that you’re looking at Ripley from Alien.”

Tina, a rarity in the male-dominated industry, was exposed to comedy at an early age when her parents took her to see Monty Python or Marx Brothers films.

“Then, seeing Saturday Night Live and a show called SCTV (Canadian sketch show, Second City Television), I just wanted to do that. Now it’s a different time, there are more and more female comics.”

She denies that comedians have to have a dark side or be depressed in order to be funny.

“I don’t think it’s the only way. I think sometimes you’re tapping into things that make you angry, or things that embarrass you,” says Tina. “I do think you have to be willing to be ugly or embarrassing at moments, but I think there are also people who are very normal in their lives who are great comedians. I think Jerry Seinfeld is normal, not a tortured soul at all from what I’ve observed. Even Steve Martin is very business-like and hard-working as a comic and isn’t putting his fist through a hotel mirror every night that I know of.”

Next up for the funnywoman is the next season of 30 Rock, as well as a small guest role in Ricky Gervais’ This Side Of The Truth, premiering in September at the Toronto International Film Festival. With her life all in order, Tina is very thankful with how things have worked out.

“A lot of things have gone in my favour,” admits the New Yorker. “30 Rock was shot in New York so I could go home every night, and I could bring my daughter to the set. And because I didn’t write the movie, I would have the weekends off and I would really be off, not writing.

“I work very hard but it’s a dream job. A lot of working parents have to work as many hours as I do at a terrible job, just to function financially. At least I love my job. It’s a luxury.”

Baby Mama is out now, but is it any good? Read the review on Page Four.

Let’s Download 30 Rock Episodes for free now.

Let’s Download 30 Rock Episodes for free now.

Back in January, when it looked like the writers’ strike was ending 30 Rock’s season early, the show ended on a goofy, out-of-left-field musical number. So I guess I shouldn’t be too surprised that the real season finale ended with Kenneth staring at the barrel of a gun in Beijing.

(There’s no leak, but there are spoilers.)

My heart sank a little last week when Jack took the job in Washington, because I’ve always believed the show is at its best when Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey can play off each other. And Liz really is feeling his absence — she thinks she’s pregnant, and worse, the baby is Dennis Duffy’s (”It was before he tried to throw me under the subway train,” she explains to Jenna).

We saw most of Liz’s situation play out: the pregnancy tests, the flashback to how she and Dennis hooked up (involving margaritas and burned-out light bulbs), the message from the doctor’s office that tipped him to her condition — “I know that message, I know that tone. Every one of my sisters got that message their junior year in high school.” And it was all good stuff.

What really killed for me, though, were her voicemail messages to Jack. We’d already seen most of what she was telling him, and we’d even seen her on the phone calling him (i.e., the initial “Things are happenin’!” message). But the messages filled in some things that weren’t on screen, giving greater insight into Liz’s mindset and, equally important, being really funny: “I spent the last hour looking at cribs online. … Even with all the Dennis stuff, I’m thinking about baby hair and converting my laundry-and-newspaper pile into a nursery. … Oh, yes — and I’m eating Sabor de Soledad, ’cause I can eat whatever I want now.”

Ah, Sabor de Soledad, the off-brand cheez curls that, as it turns out, caused all those false-positive pregnancy tests. “Apparently [they] get their special tangy flavor from evaporated bull semen,” Liz tells Jack, who’s come back to New York to check on her. “Well,” he replies, “that explains your hair’s thickness and shine.”

The little Jack-Liz reunion was kind of touching in its way, with Liz confessing that she’s really ready to have a kid and Jack offering to help. What? “With the adoption — oh good lord, Lemon, with the adoption.”

First, though, there’s the little manner of Jack getting himself fired from his Washington job — something made more difficult by his desperately needy new boss, Cooter Burger (Matthew Broderick, essentially playing a male version of Liz). That’s not his real name, mind you — it’s the double-nickname the president gave him (”Cooter because I look like a turtle, and Burger because he saw me eat a hamburger once. … It wasn’t even a hamburger. It was a sandwich”).

Jack is appalled at the conditions in the waning days of the administration — the lack of pens, the pile of resignation letters written in ketchup, the roof that officially doesn’t leak (”I’ll show you the study,” Cooter says). Eventually, the two discover a long-buried Pentagon “gay bomb” program and get Jack’s old flame C.C. (Edie Falco, who must’ve enjoyed her previous time on the show enough to come back for a single scene) to push it through Congress. If the whole thing, right down to Broderick playing a nebbishy guy who concocts a ludicrous scheme to get out of a bad situation, reminds you a little bit of The Producers, I’m sure the show wouldn’t mind.

Also like The Producers, things don’t quite go as planned. In the “three months later” tag at the end of the show, Jack and Cooter tell the Pentagon brass that the bomb wouldn’t work unless it was detonated in a small, unventilated space. Cue the chemical spill and Jack telling Cooter, “Let’s do this.” Frankly, the end to that story was a bit of a clunker, but I’m guessing that once the smoke clears, Jack will find his way back to GE.

While Liz’s not-pregnancy and Jack’s adventures in D.C. took up most of the episode, the packed half-hour also found time for the completion of Tracy’s video game and Kenneth’s quest to be an NBC page at the Olympics. The former mostly seemed like an excuse to put Judah Friedlander in a huge fake beard and wig, but Kenneth’s story had some very good stuff.

Even if the two cutaways to Pete’s past as an Olympic-level archer were all we got out of Kenneth’s storyline, it might still have been worth it. But the subplot also gave us the return of evil head page Donny, Jenna’s explanation of “back-door bragging” (”It’s hard for me to watch American Idol, because I have perfect pitch”) and her massively self-indulgent video boosting Kenneth’s campaign. And the Olympic-fanfare montage of Kenneth doing lots of athletic-type things to beat the deadline? Fantastic.

More tidbits from the season finale:

• I’d just like to say a few words of praise for Marceline Hugot, who plays Kathy Geiss. I’m not sure she’s said more than five words in all of her appearances on 30 Rock, but her perpetually frightened expression and affinity for physical comedy crack me up just about every time she’s on screen.
  
• Jenna and Griz recording voices for Tracy’s porn video game, especially Jenna’s string of “Touch my butt … touch my knees … touch my knee’s butt … touch my feet with your knee!”
  
• The subtitled Chinese conversation between Donny, Kenneth and Jenna. Donny: “You should just give up.” Kenneth: “I will not fail, Chief Errand Boy Donny Lawson!” Jenna: “I was told there would be no nudity.” [in English] “That’s the only thing I know how to say in Chinese.”
  
• Dennis’ choice of baby names — Morpheus (”after that guy in The Matrix”) for a boy, and if it’s a girl, “I used to boff this chick named Judy and I’d really like to honor her.”
  
• Liz: “I guess I’m getting to that age where I don’t care what anybody thinks of me.” Jack: “You’re going to want to get a very short haircut — resist that urge.”
  

And then there was that cliffhanger. Just what did Kenneth get himself mixed up in during the Olympics? And will he survive? Oh, the tension.

What did you think of the 30 Rock finale? Will Jack reclaim his rightful spot atop GE, will Kenneth make it back to the States in one piece, and will Liz ever stop eating Sabor de Soledad?