So this episode opens with Liz getting a $10,000 check for the "Follow-ship Of The Year" award, presumably for displaying outstanding qualities in how she takes her cues from other leaders. Jack comments on how proud he is of Liz's professional growth in this area, but Liz denies it; after all, she works in comedy, and we all know what happens to followers in that field. (Yes -- they get CBS sitcoms. Your point?) So Liz, still smarting over the implication that she's not so much the irreverent outside observer that good comics happen to be, is at a bookstore signing for her idol, 1970s-era comedy writer Rosemary Howard. (Rosemary's played by Carrie Fisher, which is a stroke of casting genius on many, many levels.) Liz offers Rosemary a spot as a guest writer on TGS. This does not go swimmingly. Rosemary's sensibility became frozen in Lucite back in 1978, and Jack wants her fired. Liz protests that if Rosemary goes, she goes, so Jack fires the two of them. Rosemary proposes a writing partnership, and as Liz follows Rosemary back to her apartment in crime-ridden "Little Chechnya," she realizes in horror that she'll end up like Rosemary if she doesn't balance her funny side with actual adult things like learning how to please the boss or putting money in a 401(k).
Liz isn't the only wayward kid on TGS this week. After Jack tells Tracy that all he has to do is avoid dogfighting, Tracy's overcome with the irresistible compulsion to engage in that barbarism. Grizz and Dotcom attempt to neuter the activity by bringing him combat Pomeranians. However, Jack disrupts the whole thing and engineers a way to get Tracy into therapy to find out why he's compelled to go out and do whatever someone doesn't want him to do. The therapy session goes horribly until Jack stands in for both Tracy's father and his mother in a scene that mere words can not describe. It includes Alec Baldwin imitating nearly everyone in Good Times while Tracy blubbers emotionally, it is hilarious, and if you didn't see it live, just go to iTunes already and download the episode while you still can. Anyway, Tracy declares Jack the only family he needs. Those of us who are prone to overthinking sitcoms can reflect on how Jack's biological family is marvelously screwed up, but he's become a really effective father figure to two people at work.
Meanwhile, in the C-plot: Jenna burns a huge hole in Kenneth's page jacket, and the head page is thrilled to use this as a way to get Kenneth transferred to CNBC in Paramus, NJ. The only way out? Something called a page-off, which requires a mano-a-mano bout of wrestling and NBC trivia. All the pages are salivating at the prospect, but then most of NBC's operations grind to a halt. Pete stops the madness by sending everyone back to work and getting a new jacket for Kenneth. The side effect: a newly-thin Jenna now has a new nemesis in head page Donnie.
Now, on with the quotes:
Follower, yes -- but businesswoman? Still not possible:
Pete: How could Liz win a fellowship award? She deosn't even like people.
Jack: No -- followship. Presented annually to the woman -- sorry, person who best exemplifies a follower.
Speaking of words that ought not exist...
Jack: When I think of the free-spirited Liz Lemon I met just one year ago, so resistant to product integration, cross-promotion and adverlingus, it pleases me to see how well she's learned to follow.
This is why we never see sketches about the black magic of compound interest.:
Jack: Where do you invest your money, Liz?
Liz: I have, like, twelve grand in checking.
Jack: Are you...an immigrant?
Love's like a burning flame:
Kenneth: [while watching his jacket burn] Aaaaaugh! Oh, God! It hurts!
It's not often you hear a Squeaky Fromme joke in the Aughties:
Liz: You're honestly telling me you don't know who Rosemary Howard is?
Pete: Is she one of the ladies who tried to shoot Gerald Ford?
It's funny 'cause it's true:
Rosemary: I grew up wanting to be Samantha Stevens on Bewitched. Closest I got was being married to a gay guy for two years.
Lady sings the blues...awkwardly:
Liz: You are my heroine. And by heroine, I mean "lady hero." I don't mean I want to inject you and listen to jazz.
Coming soon, the Def Patriot Jam:
Tracy: If you desecrate something, is that bad?
Jack: Tracy, what happened now?
Tracy: I doubt anybody noticed.
[Cut to Tracy standing in front of a microphone on a baseball diamond.]
Tracy: Whose stripes and broad stars/ to the party last night/ for the rascals we fought ...
[Back in Jack's office ....]
Tracy: Who'd have ever known there were so many words? It was like a Mos Def CD!
I love Dot-com. That is all.
Dot-com: What's on your mind, Tre? You've been curiously quiet for twenty minutes.
Tracy: We got to start doing dog fighting.
Grizz: Dog fighting?
Tracy: I know it's repulsive and hideous. But it's the only thing Jack Donaghy told me I can not do. I got to do it! Understand?
Grizz: No, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Dot-com: Dog fighting is the most vile and disgusting thing a human being can do. You can not do it!
Tracy: Dog fighting it is. Make it happen.
[Tracy leaves his dressing room.]
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Dotcom: It's Phil Spector's entourage all over again.
By the time this show is done, half the country will be able to draw her tits from memory:
Jenna: Oh, boy. Here's what we're going to do. You've probably never seen breasts before.So I'm going to lean over this desk, and you've going to give me a new page jacket.
Donnie: Please. I breastfed until I was eleven. So I've forgotten more about a woman's chest than you'll ever know.
Jenna: But...I'm on TV!
Donnie: I said "good day!"
Jenna: No, you didn't.
I bet that's a movie Frank will see -- if not write himself:
Jack: Tre, what's the one thing I asked you not to do?
Tracy: That 227movie, New Jackee City?
The many faces of Jack Donaghy:
Jack: What a pleasure. What fun catching up with you. You take care now!
[Rosemary's gone. Jack closes his office door and turns to Liz.]
Jack: Fire her. And don't ever make me talk to a woman that old again.
Wait for the triangle graphs in GE's 10-Q filing:
Jack: Oh, God, "push the envelope." You know who uses that phrase? People who don't have the guts or brains to work inside the system -- letter-writers, radicals, Howard Dean.
Liz: You just don't get her. You're like the talking mailbox.
Jack: I'm going to assume that's a Haldeman reference. In which case, I thank you.
Liz: I got into this business to be like Rosemary. To make people think.
Jack: no. No, no, no, no, Lemon. You got into this business because you're funny, and you're weird, and you're socially retarded. And you also got into it because it pays well, which means you are not like Rosemary; you are like me.
Liz: No, I am not. You are a suit. You take the hard work and creativity of other people and turn it into commercials and pie charts and triangle graphs!
Jack: What's a triangle graph?
Liz: I don't know! It sounded real.
So it's true -- out there in the spotlight, you're a million miles away:
Jack: Hey, Tre. What you doing?
Tracy: Just some heavy thinking. This spotlight is the only place I could go to get away from it all.
So stay off the afflicted area until it heals:
Jack: Tracy, we're going to do this together. You've got to get into therapy.
Tracy: I don't need therapy! I'm just mentally ill.
The answer depends on whether saying "hello" multiple times can be considered a symptom:
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Jack: Hey, Tracy, this is Suzanne Hawker, the NBC therapist.
[Turns to Dr. Hawker]
Tracy: Who's crazier? Me or Ann Curry?
The mental pictures have just given ME the need for therapy:
Dr. Hawker: If you don't mind, I'd like to start with some role play.
Tracy: Like my wife and I do? Cool. [begins taking off shirt.] You be the maid. I want you to scream. Donaghy, you play the matador.
Alderaan was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away ...
Rosemary: You can't abandon me, Liz. You are me.
Liz: No, I'm not you.
Rosemary: You pick up guys that are smart and funny, and they leave you for someone less complicated. You're never going to get married, Liz. You're married to your job.
Liz: [gasps] My God, I lost my job.
Rosemary: You're just like me. You get up in the morning and smoke weed --
Liz: No! I don't.
Rosemary: You fantasize about the Jamaican man across the hall.
Liz: [moans] Oh my God, I lost my job.
Rosemary: You wouldn't have a job if it wasn't for me! I broke barriers for you!
Liz: I really have to go.
Rosemary: I sat around while my junk went bad -- all for you. I didn't have any kids! You're my kid! You're my kid that never calls!
Liz: Yikes! [Runs away.]
Rosemary: Help me, Liz Lemon! You're my only hope!
Donaghy knows best:
Jack: Never go with a hippie to a second location.
Liz: I can't end up like that. I have to make money, and save it. I have to do that thing where they turn money into more money. Can you teach me how to do that?
Jack: With my eyes closed.
Liz: Oh, good. Because I want to send Rosemary $400 a month for...forever.
Jack: You should. That woman is unemployable.
Liz: Rosemary says that women become obsolete in this business when there's no one left who wants to see them naked.
Jack: You make enough money, you can pay people to look at you naked. To the future, Lemon!
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