Well, now I am able to declare proper fan status as I have officially seen how the characters I have enjoyed for the past few couple came to be. Liz Lemon's introduction is classic, and very Lemon-like looking back over the past 64 episodes. She stops at a hot-dog stand in downtown Manhattan that has quite a cue and there happens to be a gentleman who cuts in front of all the patiently waiting patrons. He cockily tells her as he is talking on his Blackberry that there are are two lines. As she argues about the two lines, other patrons join his lines, so in anger Lemon buys every single remaining hot-dog from the vendor just to irritate the man who cut the line. She gives them to everyone that stayed in her line and as she walks through downtown New York City, she hands out hot-dogs to everybody she passes. Some people like the gesture and others think it is crazy, if everybody seemed happy about receiving a hot-dog it wouldn't have been Lemon-ish enough. There then starts a song called "Thats Her" while Liz is walking which is pretty fun and as the intro song winds down it also introduces Jenna.
She is wearing a fat suit for her character Pam, "the overly-confident-morbidly obese woman" and performing the song that was playing while Lemon was walking through the city. Her first words in the show are, "This fat suit smells like corn chips". We still don't know what Lemon does yet on the show. As that scene ends the camera instantly picks up Kenneth. He is guiding a tour around the NBC studio, an on the set of "The Girlie Show". Viewers now know that the show will be based around a show.Just as the Kenneth is talking about "The Girlie Show", Liz walks in and he introduces the tour to the "head writer", meaning in only about 3 minutes viewers learn quite a bit.
The next character on screen is Pete, a balding middle aged man who is the Producer of the show. He mentions to Lemon that they have to take Michael Jackson's vagina out of one of their skits. It is now clear that "The Girlie Show" is a sketch comedy, hmmmm..sounding more like SNL every moment. As all this is going on, Pete and Liz walk into the writers room to a complaining, nicely dressed black man, Keith. He is asking Lemon if there is anyway they can get a coffee samovar. To this response a trashy trucker hat wearing man named Frank ask Lemon if they can get a big coffee dispenser, to which Keith angrily replies, "That is what a samovar is". Frank answers back, "Are you and Urkel the only black nerds?". This chemistry is still prevalent even in the new episodes.
As all this is going on Liz looks over to a cute blonde assistant named Cerie Xerox. The short-skit wearing twenty something seems useless as she is asked if she wants to get the cast coffee and she instantly answers "No". As she is being lazy Josh comes into the writer's room and is asked to change his Michael Jackson skit and instead do a Jay Leno impersonation. As he does it, nobody thinks it is any good, much to the irritation of Josh.
As this is all going on Cerie tells Lemon and Pete they are needed by the head of the studio. They As they walk into the office it is being completely remodeled. It is here that we have the pleasure of meeting Mr. Jack Donaghy, of course played by Alec Baldwin. When they ask where Gary, the other exec went, Jack says without sadness that he is dead. Jack's character comes off as a massively confident GE C.E.O. who can describe Lemon's personality to a tee without ever meeting her, to this Pete is overly impressed. It is here that we see Jack's number one characteristic, market and demographic research. He says his best quality is that he knows what people want more than anything else in life. Strangely, his answer to this is the GE Trivection oven, which much to the delight of Jack, can fix a turkey in 22 minutes.
Jack tells Lemon that the one thing her show is missing is a male demographic. His answer to this problem is Tracy Jordan, "The black guy", as Pete calls him. No, "The black movie star", replies Jack. Lemon mentions that she thinks he is crazy, then the camera cuts to Tracy wearing only underwear running through the highway yelling, "I am a Jedi". It is really funny actually because I listened to the TIME Magazine 10 Question Podcast the other day and it was with Tracy Morgan who plays Tracy Jordan, he said that his crazy uncle actually did this in downtown NY one day and that is how he got inspiration for that introduction.
Tracy is then introduced in person on the show at a restaurant and it is one of my favorite Tracy quotes of all time. He says, "May I have an apple juice, when the waiter says that we don't have that, he says, okay, I'll take a vodka tonic". It is classic Tracy to go from apple juice to vodka tonic.
I think after watching three seasons of 30 Rock is it great to go back and watch how each character was introduced. It is interesting to see how each character has developed, changed or stayed the same for since the 2006 debut of the show. After doing this I want to go back and watch the pilot episode of my other favorite sitcoms including How I Met Your Mother, Californication and The Big Bang Theory.
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