What a week. Two days in a row this week I reached blindly for a shirt to wear for work and two days in a row I wore a shirt to work that had old coffee or mustard stains. How impressive is it wearing clothing for the poor to someplace someone pays you to be? Anyway, I blame my sloppy appearance on my bad back, and my bad back can be blamed on my new television; in short, television has to create some kind of makeover show, or even an extreme one, to level the imbalance, and also it should remind me to do my dry cleaning once a week like my mother does. But my mother isn't a Cylon so it would make it that much better if television did it. Speaking of...
We open to an exterior shot of the Rainbow Room, a place where rich people eat rainbows in honor of the stock market (Wikipedia). Frank and Lutz are headed for a night out impersonating white foreigners. Liz counts out, saying she has a cousin in town. Jenna is getting drinks with a recently divorced camera guy. "You in?" Liz doesn't feel well. "Liz Lemon?" It's Tracy. He's going to an animals-only strip club. "Interested?" She's not. I very much am. Lemon tells Tracy she has a date but afterwards picks up the phone to order a meatball sub, extra bread. Jack enters, perfectly holding a coffee mug Glengarry-style, and runs down Lemon's night sight unseen: meatball sub, Nyquil, TiVo'd Top Chef, a little of Mrs. Bonnie Raitt... Liz denies it, but Jack spills the beans that Casey is getting voted off tonight (not really, she just came in third). Liz: "You monster. Why are you like this?" Jack raises his mug. He's got a watch that costs more than your car.
Some guy who almost got on Supernatural is handing out coffee in the writer's room. Jenna refers to him as veal. I Google "young meat" out of curiosity and about 3 entries down from the IMDB page for Fresh Young Meat 8 I stumble upon this web site in New Zealand that awards a "Young Butcher of the Year" trophy to whom I imagine would be the hottest male porn performer in New Zealand. No wait, it really goes to a butcher -- Scott Reid this year. He even gets a trophy like at the Masters, which, as seen on the site, he looks at like it's a piece of meat or his mother's approval. "What kind of emotions is this young man feeling right now?" whispers Jim Nantz. Good question, Jim. Sausage?
Speaking of sauce-age: Frank is hot for the tender meat 'n' coffee messenger in this scene. The boy bait has just clumsily flirted with Lemon and after he exits Frank calls him adorable, to which Lutz responds, "Gay." Frank, wearing a hat that says 'Right Boot' does not back down. "Maybe I am gay...for that little peach." Lutz keeps on, asking if Frank wants to hold him. Yes. Lutz calls him gay again. Check, says the shrug of Frank's shoulders. Lutz looks for some support in the room, but people are quite disinterested. This isn't Chuck and Larry, Lutz. Evidently "gay" is not automatically pejorative. "Why isn't this any fun?" he asks rhetorically.
Aside: There's an interesting shot in this scene of Lemon and Frank standing side-by-side that makes me wish I had HD. It looks like a pedophile sidled up to a woman who married a prisoner.
Tender Meat 'N' Coffee walks into Lemon's office and asks her out on a date. Lemon declines, instead asking him how old he thinks she is. "I don't know, 29?" Lemon rolls with that. Anyway, he's 25 so it looks like it's a date. Frank walks in and gives him a new French cut sweater as a gift. He can't help himself. He's so gay right now you don't even believe it.
Jenna convinces Lemon to follow through with her planned date with Tender Meat 'N' Coffee, who looks like Zac Efron according to Lemon. Who is Zac Efron? It's true. I may not be Black enough to not ownSideways on DVD, but I'm still not miscegenated enough to know who the hell that guy is. Anyway, Jenna introduces Lemon to the idea that they're both Cougars, hot older ladies on the prowl for young men. Frank interrupts their conversation in wardrobe while wearing a hat the reads 'Handy Man' and a reverse-engineered gondola t-shirt designed for clubbing in places that ejaculate soap onto the dance floor.
On her date with Jamie, Lemon name drops Gnarls Barkley like it accidentally fell off of a really fast moving pickup truck. After the party, Tender Meat 'N' Coffee wants to go to Marquis and then possibly an after-after party, but Lemon, already yawning, blurts out that she's 37. Tender Meat blurts out he's 20. Then Jack walks in. "When will death come?' she asks existentially.
Then that Zune commercial with The Shins song comes on and changes my life.
Jack chats up the new couple. "Where did you two meet, Amber alert?" he needles Lemon after Tender Meat 'N' Coffee goes to the bar in hopes of being served. Jack congratulates her on achieving the status that dating a younger person brings. He wants her to have fun. "I have fun. I went up on my roof the other day," Lemon retorts. Jack sets the ground rules of a May-December: buy them a few gifts, never give out a home phone number, and set a curfew.
The day Cerie bumps into Lemon in the hall, questioning whether or not she had actually seen her at Marquis last night. The answer: yes. Cerie wonders if Lemon slipped out of bed and wandered mistakenly into what twentysomethings do -- the answer: no. , Jenna struts in on the arm of a kid who looks like Superbad. "Guess you aren't the only Cougar in town, huh Liz?" then she and her pre-teen bicker about whether or not he can have a soda. Later, when Tender Meat comes by with coffee, Lemon plays by Jack's rules by declining his invitation for an impromptu lunch and then giving him a video game. In walks Frank with a painting called "One-Armed Mermaid."
Lemon picks up Tender Meat at his place and is going to spring for a cab to his delight. As they stand in front the mirror, he observes, "We look awesome together...alright mom, I'm taking off." Liz Lemon's brain alarm sounds off in much the same way it did when she was dating her cousin. Then mom walks in. She's got auburn hair and black-rimmed glasses. Sound familiar? Her son puts her arm around her. Lemon: "Yep. That's what we look like. Shut it down."
The other plot thread begins with Tracy, who barges into Jack's office with his minority little league baseball team from Knuckle Beach, the toughest neighborhood in New York. Jack recollects fondly his own High School baseball team winning the Boston City championship against all odds because they were all-white and they had to play an all...anyway, they won, and Jack was then taught how to dream. He asks the kids their dreams and we get a neat Annie Hall homage where they speak to camera: "I'm going to do vending machine maintenance"; "I'm going to get shot by a cop and sue the city"; "I'm going to be a talkative doorman with a drinking problem." Tracy encourages it wholeheartedly, a la mentoring transvestite prostitutes, but Jack wants more. The winless kids require his inspiration.
Tracy and the kids from Knuckle Beach are out practicing in a run-down baseball field with a tagged statue of Jefferson Davis out front when Jack rides up in his limo smoking a fat cigar. He's brought new uniforms, compliments of the Sheinhardt Wig Company. Jack wants them dressed for success, not unlike his charity that gives tuxedos to homeless people. Flash to a clearly homeless guy, in an ill-fitted tux, scooping about 30 shrimp into his hand while congratulating the bride. Tracy warns Jack that he doesn't understand these kids and what they want out of life, which is sunlight.
Jacks calls Tracy in for an impromptu meeting. He wants to motivate the players by giving each one a book, but he can't decide which Churchill biography to give Rasheed in order to improve his bunting. Tracy ain't having it. He insists Jack is too out of his element. Knuckle Beach is a totally different world. "A world where orange soda is an acceptable substitute for breast milk." That's sort of a riff on a Chappelle joke by the way: Sunny D vs. purple stuff. Look it up. Jack disagrees by making a grand comparison between his relationship with the kids of Knuckle Beach and Bush's relationship with the war in Iraq. "Bush?" protests Tracy. "Now I don't want to go off on a rant here..." Then silence.
Back on the field in Knuckle Beach, the kids tear down the Jefferson Davis statue and cheer. I do the robot and pour myself another Jameson's in my night robe. Kenneth and Jack arrive -- Kenneth wearing a uniform for baseball and Jack wearing one from McHale's Navy. Actually, I feel like he's going for a very specific look here -- half-burnt cigar, admiral's cap, binoculars -- but I can't think of the reference. Anyone have an idea? A banner hung above the batting cage reads 'Fun Times Accomplished' and then the scrappy kids knuckle down to an 11-0 defeat against their opponent. Jack berates their execution and its lack of anything Churchillian. He fires Tracy on the spot for not believing in the cause.
With Tracy gone, Kenneth can't handle the kids in practice. He warns Jack of the impending rebellion, but Jack will have none of that coward's babble. "Stay the course," he intones. But at an actual practice, the kids only practice fighting each other and hitting Kenneth with his own shoes. They chase Jack and him away with baseball bats.
Jack returns, groveling, to Tracy by having Kenneth grovel for him. Then he offers him two options: cut and run or form a coalition. This has something to do with Iraq right? They agree finally to join forces in the name of the kids, and in the following game Tracy hatches an ingenious plan to use Grizz and DotCom as players in the game by giving them Dominican birth certificates. Knuckle Beach wins its first game of the season.
As for the best lines of the night:
The "He's Got a Better Agent" award goes to the kid who had these gems:
"Some day I will have an office like this...to clean."
Jack: "All you need is a role model."
Kid: "Like R. Kelly and Michael Vick."
(Upon Jack arriving in his limo) "Hey you guys, it's that King we met."
The nervous skill of romance
Jaime: Now I'm getting attitude from the sexy librarian over here?
Lemon: What? Sexy? You are. Shut up!
Inside the box
Jaime: Are you doing anything Saturday night?
Lemon: Just gellin' like Magellan.
Frank's Ziggy phase
(On being gay for Jaime) "I've got some real thinking to do. It's scary and also exciting."
Could I interest you in an Ionic Breeze today?
Jenna: These things happen, Liz. I had my no sex with Asians rule but then one day you walk into Sharper Image and there's Kwan.
I'm too old for you and your borough
Liz: I'm 37. Please don't make me go to Brooklyn.
Ruth Gordon reservations for two
Lemon: That's right. I have a boy-toy and we look awesome together.
Lutz: That's great, Maude. How's Harold?
Kenneth, mid-sentence
"... and they all seem to really hate my Grandpa cause they keep yelling 'kill whitey' and I'm like, 'What do you think you are, alcohol?'
The obligatory Tracy Jordan joke
Jack: One word: Surge
Tracy: That's two words!