30 Rock: Season 2

Set around the fictional series 'The Girlie Show' made by NBC and written by Liz Lemon, 30 Rock takes its name from the abbreviation for the building in which it's filmed: 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Liz is played by Tina Fey, award-winning writer and probably now more famous for her impressions of Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live (on which she cut her teeth) during the 2008 US Presidential election.
 
The first season began with NBC being acquired by General Electric and with The Girlie Show being constantly interfered with by GE executive Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), the Vice President of East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming - which Lemon jokes makes him sound like he's in charge of programming microwave ovens. Donaghy wants to change the audience demographic so brings in the unconventional and almost uncontrollable star Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan), renaming the show TGS With Tracy Jordan. The series was filled with battles between Lemon and Donaghy when she has enough on her plate dealing with her team of writers, egotistical and narcissistic star Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) and assistants including clueless page Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer).
 

 
Onto season 2 and not much has changed, Liz still can't hold down a steady relationship or get her own apartment, Jack continues to interfere in NBC whilst holding ambitions for the top job and Tracy and Jenna are as unpredictable as ever.  Her off-season has seen her in a stage production of Mystic Pizza, eating so much dough, pepperoni and cheese that she is now overweight.  There are, however, a mass of guest stars including David Schwimmer, Carrie Fisher, Matthew Broderick and Edie Falco, who plays a Democratic Congresswoman with whom Jack begins a relationship.  This forms one of the narrative arcs that tenuously holds the series together, the other being MILF Island, a reality show that Jack has commissioned where a group of bikini-clad women are surrounded by teenage boys and are gradually voted off until one is crowned the winner.
 
Along the way, there is the usual array of misbehaviour and disaster including Kenneth becoming addicted to coffee, drinking competitions, Tracy being fitted with a 'Hollywood sock', an ankle bracelet that detects alcohol in his system, Liz's binge eating and drinking and Jack's ongoing competition with Devon Banks (Will Arnett) to succeed Don Geiss (Rip Torn) as CEO of GE.  Oh, and there's the small matter of Tracy trying to do the impossible and develop a working interactive pornographic videogame.
 

 
Episode List:
1. Seinfeldvision
2. Jack Gets in the Game
3. The Collection
4. Rosemary's Baby
5. Greenzo
6. Somebody to Love
7. Cougars
8. Secrets and Lies
9. Ludachristmas
10. Episode 210
11. MILF Island
12. Subway Hero
13. Succession
14. Sandwich Day
15. Cooter
 

The Disc 

Video
This is where I'd usually out something about it being 'broadcast quality' and 'looking as good as it did on television' but, since the first I saw of it was on DVD, none of that really applies!  The picture is excellent with vibrant colours and decent clarity.
 
One of the show's main features is the use of cutaways, either to something dreadful on the show or something that the speaker did or does, either validating or contradicting what they were saying.  For example, when Liz is challenged about never using her treadmill, she replies that she uses it every day and there is a cut to her walking very slowly on said treadmill whilst eating a sundae.  This is a very clever and sharp addition to the already funny material.
 

Audio
With a choice of DD 5.1 Surround or 2.0 Stereo, I went for the former and, whilst the additional channels help to balance the track and ensure clear dialogue from the centre speaker, the stereo is perfectly serviceable and you won't really miss out if you watch this on a system without full surround.
 
The show is beautifully scored, an oddity for a TV sitcom where the music normally doesn't play a great part.
 

 
Extra Features
There are commentaries on ten of the fifteen episodes and, of course, this is where you want the speaker to sit and watch the show, enjoying it just as you did and barely speaking, right?  Of course not, but that is just what you get here with a variety of cast and crew members struggling to find anything to say for just over twenty minutes - why didn't they watch the episode and then watch it again with a microphone in front of them?  The best of the bunch is Tina Fey's solo effort on 'Episode 210', so called because of the impact of the writers' strike, so they didn't even have enough time to come up with a title.  She talks about the strike and how difficult it was sticking rigidly to the script.  Of the others, I found Judah Friedlander's to be the best, where he does talk a little about his caps, explaining what two of them mean as they are really an inside joke to him and fans of an obscure cult movie.
 
Table Read-Through of 'Cooter' is funnier than it sounds, with most of the cast sat round a horseshoe-shaped table , going through the script which scrolls at the bottom of the screen.  They enjoy the jokes as much as I did, and there are frequent (and long) laughter breaks.  It's interesting to see that the script has Helen Mirren as doing a voice for Tracy's porn video game, as they don't name her in the commentary - I guess she said 'no'!
 
30 Rock Live at the UCB Theater in NYC is a live performance of episode eight 'Secrets and Lies' which, at the time, was three weeks away from broadcast and untitled.  There are stand-ins for various roles and the act out commercial breaks, in which Tina Fey gives out raffle prizes.  This is very funny and, as she says in the introduction, helps if you've already seen the episode as the sound quality isn't great.
 
Tina Hosts Saturday Night Live isn't an entire episode of SNL, just a look at Tina Fey on the set and talking to various people.
 
The Academy of Television Arts & Sciences Presents: An Evening with 30 Rock doesn't want to be Inside the Actor's Studio and isn't, with the participants, Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Jane Krakowski, Jack McBrayer and Lorne Michaels talking about various aspects of the show, their characters and previous careers.
 
There are several deleted scenes and outtakes which are reasonably amusing.
 

 
Final Thoughts
30 Rock is one of the smartest and most cleverly written comedies around and it obviously helps that the cast and crew know each other as there are a host of SNL alumni involved.  Basically mocking sketch shows and corporate TV would normally be called 'biting the hand that feeds' and, to an extent, it is.  In the extra features, Alec Baldwin reveals that industry insiders watch the show and people from GE and NBC don't mind the ribbing they get.
 
The cast is superb, headed by Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin, who have tremendous rapport and sense of comic timing and some of the lines they deliver with a straight face must have taken some doing because I would have cracked up so many times in the exchanges.  Tracy Morgan is one of the great scene stealers with his alter ego, Tracy Jordan, apparently based loosely on him.  The character is such a loose cannon, doing exactly what he's told he shouldn't; he only decides he wants to start a dog fighting scheme after he's told this is the one thing he absolutely must not do.
 
I only came across 30 Rock by accident as my brother showed me a few episodes and I immediately bought the first season and watched it in a couple of days.  I did the same with this season and barely took a break whilst watching the episodes - it's one of those TV series where it's hard to say 'when' as you keep going 'oh, just one more and then I'll take a break'.  Before you know it, you've finished and are disappointed that the next season isn't available yet.
 
This is a fantastic show and a decent set, even with the poor commentaries - buy it, give them a miss and watch the episodes and the extras on the third disc.  You won't be disappointed.