Jordan's Review: 30 Rock, Season 5, Episode 10: Mrs. Donaghy

This episode was coming at some point. It was clear that the show would probably pull a "Jack and Liz Accidentally Get Married" plotline at some point. So obvious in fact that I kind of thought 30 Rock would avoid it just to be original. If they were going to do it though, I kind of wish they would have dragged it out a little bit more. Having Jack and Liz humorously married could have paid dividends, but in the 22 minutes that it was given (with two kind of dead end subplots alongside it) it pretty much just hit the notes it had to and headed out.

Because Jack is trying to make NBC look profitable to Kabletown, he is cutting TGS' budget and renting out the studio for Bar Mitzvahs, Liz needs some leverage. And that comes in the form of an accidental marriage resulting from a foreign officiant and Liz wearing a tennis pro's shirt and a government mosquito helmet that looks like a veil. This is all generally silly, which is not bad, but the plot doesn't go far from there. The show gets more mileage from the idea its presenting than from the actual execution of said idea.

The two subplots are also mostly duds. Jenna and Danny acting like a married couple was such a stupid joke when it first emerged that I was moderately annoyed. To drag it out to episode length, with Kenneth acting as the "buffer" by pretending to be a kid was just a dumb, waste of a plotline. Tracy discovering he is extraordinarily unhealthy was a funnier one-off joke, but also didn't do much stretched to episode length. The idea of Tracy's wife getting her own reality show is a pretty solid idea, but unfortunately it felt underdone.

Basically every good plotline in this episode was executed poorly, and every dumb plotline was stretched way beyond its ability to succeed. This wasn't a bad 30 Rock, mostly because it was still funny throughout, but it certainly wasn't at the peak of this season.

Grade: B-

Notes:

-"Yes to love, yes to life, yes to staying in more!"

-"Hitler and Martha Stewart would've hated that wedding."

-"Tracy, you are going to die...when I tell you who I'm dating."

-"I can't lose my dental plan. There's a hygienist there and her boob sometimes touches my ear!"

-"The yellow part, our number two priority, is make it 1997 again through science or magic."

-"Do you and your wife ever fight?" "Not all the time. After her hysterectomy she was in a come briefly."

-"Did you draw that? You may need help. That's awful for an adult."

-"That is when TGS or wrestling is on."

-"And don't thank for one second this means that we love you less. Know that it means that."

-"Do you ever drink together at work while sharing what you learned that day or week?"