Unfunny Things
A collection of pretentious things from the web and elsewhere that are much less funny than they think they are.
Feb 19th, 2010 @ 3:16 pm
30 Rock
30 Rock is pretty bad. It epitomises the slick, hip, self-referential type of television designed very consciously to appeal to those who roll their eyes at your average braindead sitcom. And in some ways it succeeds—while gratingly proud of it, the premise is original and it feels to me like there’s a layer of Manhattan-television-producer-actor industry references that are quite clever.
That’s part of the charm, and part of the reason why this is a pretentious show that tries to mask its unfunniness. I don’t get those references, and they might not even be there, but their apparent existence sets you up to regard the show as a little bit above you. If some part just seems absurd or unfunny, you probably just haven’t worked at NBC long enough and you assume there’s something in it.
But there’s not. (Well, probably not.) The writing and pacing are all wrong, and jokes that would be passable in an unspecified sitcom are muddled up terribly here. For example, in an episode I saw, two bumbling assistants to Liz Lemon say this as part of an attempt to overcome a miniature flu epidemic in the building: “I want to go get something for the crew—to thank them, for being sick”. Oh but they didn’t mean that! How awkward! Ha.. ha?
Such a line is usually pulled off well in The Office, but like most of 30 Rock it can’t get it quite right. You can see that they’re reaching for the “Haha, I’ve made that embarrassing verbal mistake before!” moment that I’ve seen in Office-like awkward comedies but it’s just a little bit too unbelievable. If you laugh at the joke, it’s because it’s kind of a good joke and it is presented in a polished package, but when it comes down to it they fucked it up by going a little too far.
Think I’m being petty? Later in the episode, Liz is running away from sick people as she is urgently trying to cover up the flu shot mark on her arm, which she declared earlier she would not take on moral grounds. She bumps into a ghostly-looking “Kenneth the Page”, who notices the mark on her arm, and in order to get rid of him Liz says “You’re in a delirious state, you are dreaming and in this dream I am your mother and we are speaking French”. 10 minutes elapse and when her hypocritical flu shot mark is revealed to the crew, Kenneth yells out from the crowd insults her in French. That’s the punch line. I guess he’s still partly delirious.
Ha ha.. ha.. ha? You see what they did there, but it just wasn’t very good. 30 Rock pretends that it is funny, but you shouldn’t trust it.
Via NBC
