If the last few years have been a golden age of TV, 2013 might mark the end of that era, as many of the shows that have been the highlights of the last few years are wrapping up this year. We’ve already seen the underrated “Fringe” finish, “The Office” and “Breaking Bad” are wrapping up this summer, and question marks hang over the survival chances of “Community” and “Parks and Recreation.” And tonight sees another great show go to syndication heaven — Tina Fey‘s “30 Rock.”
A vehicle created, written by and starring the SNL veteran, and responsible for bringing Alec Baldwin to the small screen (winning him a fistful of awards for it), the show saw Fey play Liz Lemon, the head writer of a thinly-veiled SNL surrogate called “The Girlie Show,” starring Liz’s divaish best friend Jenna (Jane Krakowski). But everything is turned upside down when, at the behest of GE executive Jack Donaghy (Baldwin), unpredictable movie star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) is added to the cast, and the show’s name is changed to “TGS With Tracy Jordan.”
“30 Rock” has never been ashamed of its main purpose as a joke factory, but few sitcoms can match its gag-per-minute rate (and so successfully), and it’s also managed to do more, proving smartly satirical, surprisingly affecting and densely plotted along the way. Whether tonight’s double-length finale manages to stick the landing remains to be seen, but the show’s place in TV history has already been assured. So, to mark the passing of Fey’s series, we’ve put together ten of our all-time favorite “30 Rock” jokes. Narrowing it down was difficult, so there’s plenty of room for you to add your own favorites in the comments section, but we think our picks below are pretty well representative of the series’ genius. Read on for more.
Jack on tuxedos
Like many shows, “30 Rock” was a little slow out of the gate. Indeed, with a slightly patchy pilot (which had already been reshot once when the network recast original Jenna, ex-SNLer Rachel Dratch), most thought it would be crushed by its similarly-premised competition, Aaron Sorkin‘s “Studio 60 On The Sunset Strip.” But that show tanked quickly, while “30 Rock” quickly found its feet, with episode six of season one, “Tracy Does Conan.” And there’s one line that in particular has gone down as legend, which Fey acknowledges was the moment that they started to find the voice of Alec Baldwin‘s character, telling the Daily Beast: “It was a nice turning point. I felt like we were really on TV. It was sort of a defining moment for the Jack character in terms of just his elegance and his priorities.”
Werewolf Bar Mitzvah
Brief cutaway gags can be lazy ways to chuck jokes around (look at “Family Guy,” for instance), but “30 Rock” managed to pull them off with aplomb most of the time. Perhaps the classic example is the reference to Tracy Jordan’s gold-selling novelty song “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah,” a five-second gag in episode two of season two, “Jack Gets In The Game,” that eventually spawned a full track, featuring then “30 Rock” writer, and future “Community” star, Donald Glover. Watch both below.
Jack & Tracy go to therapy
An endlessly great combination over the show’s seven-year history has been Baldwin and Morgan, undoubtedly fostered through the latter’s eight seasons on “Saturday Night Live,” a show which Baldwin has hosted more than almost anyone. And they never had a better scene together than in second season highlight “Rosemary’s Baby,” in which Jack impersonates multiple members of Tracy Jordan’s family in order to force him into a therapy breakthrough.