"The Manatee Has Become the Mento."
Good news for people who love television: despite its anemic Arrested Development-esque ratings, 30 Rock has been picked up for a second season. While both shows share comedic sensibilities (and large chunks of my heart), I have a feeling 30 Rock will be spared the continual stays of execution that plagued Arrested Development every season.
Arrested Development always seemed to bristle under the weight of its corporate tie-ins (ie. Tobias and Carl Weathers at Burger King) or celebrity cameos (ie. every episode in the back-half of the second season). The meta-contextual jokes at the end of the third season about HBO and the desperate measure to salvage ratings painted the show as the recalcitrant martyr slain by network indifference.
In contast, 30 Rock from its very inception has been a reflexive critique of its own corporate parent network (ie. from the Trivection Oven to the more recent GOB sponsored webisodes) that simultaneously mocks yet reaffirms its synergistic means of production. And its this central ambivalence that allows slobs on their couch (ie. Me) to share in the insular comedic jabs at the innocuous flagship figures of NBC (ie. Brian Williams) with the employees working within the network itself.
30 Rock is a structural subversion -- like the jester the king keeps around court to demonstrate a sense of humor and diffuse tension.
To renew 30 Rock is to delay mediated revolution.
Although I am sure Alec Baldwin has something to do with it too.
Arrested Development always seemed to bristle under the weight of its corporate tie-ins (ie. Tobias and Carl Weathers at Burger King) or celebrity cameos (ie. every episode in the back-half of the second season). The meta-contextual jokes at the end of the third season about HBO and the desperate measure to salvage ratings painted the show as the recalcitrant martyr slain by network indifference.
In contast, 30 Rock from its very inception has been a reflexive critique of its own corporate parent network (ie. from the Trivection Oven to the more recent GOB sponsored webisodes) that simultaneously mocks yet reaffirms its synergistic means of production. And its this central ambivalence that allows slobs on their couch (ie. Me) to share in the insular comedic jabs at the innocuous flagship figures of NBC (ie. Brian Williams) with the employees working within the network itself.
30 Rock is a structural subversion -- like the jester the king keeps around court to demonstrate a sense of humor and diffuse tension.
To renew 30 Rock is to delay mediated revolution.
Although I am sure Alec Baldwin has something to do with it too.
posted by d l wright at 4/12/2007 11:08:00 AM
3 Comments:
I love the sly, subtle jabs that are all over the show. Like last week's easily missed Anderson Cooper joke.
Now I need to go make a phone call. (Boop boop boop boop, boo boop boo.)
You dial like that too?!?!
It is kind of amazing how many issues of race, gender, sexuality, and hot dogs 30 Rock manages to cram into every half-hour.
And science.
"Absolutely. Science is whatever we want it to be."
Dr. Spaceman/Parnell needs to be on this show all the time.
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