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Lemon suddenly slithers her way into popularity when she wins a $1,000 TGS lottery and hands the money over to the crew to have a night out at the bar on her. When a crew member accuses her of leaving out the recovering alcoholics, she has to one-up herself. Lemon insists she's up to the challenge, but Jenna and Tracy argue that she's not meant to be the popular girl she's pretending to be (a.k.a. The Liz-ard, The BLiz-zard, The BLizbian, etc.) and is instead like the R.A. in college -- all rules, no fun. After her ice cream sundae bar goes doubly awry for a lactose-intolerant recovering alcoholic, Lemon gives him a watch that's been passed down in her family for generations. Due to the inscription on the back, the crew guys recognize Lemon's desperate stabs for acceptance and call her out. She finally resigns herself to her R.A. role and lays down some discipline on those fools.
Jack finds himself useful in ways he didn't anticipate and extraneous in ways he thought he'd be essential. In the case of the latter, he receives a copy of the quarterly report for GE's microwave division, and they've done better than usual, apparently without his help. Distressed, he travels up to Stamford to ensure that he is needed but is only met by derision from the new engineers, who deem his spearheading of the trivection oven totally 2009. He confiscates their prototype microwave and elicits Kenneth's help to prove he is useful. After shocking Kenneth, making him simulate using the microwave in a freezing rain storm, and inching our favorite Page one step closer to "the light," Jack marches back to the microwave engineers with a speech prepared. As he delivers it, the microwave's talking feature (using his voice, more on that below) keeps interrupting him in such a way to make him realize that his glory days are over. He concedes defeat, congratulates the engineers on their success, and passes the torch.
Meanwhile, the writers discover that Jack's voice is being used for an online pronunciation dictionary. Jack explains that he worked on a linguistic project during his undergraduate days at Princeton, pronouncing literally every word in the dictionary to preserve the standard American accent, and the recordings were later sold. But no amount of explanation can stall the shenanigans the writers inevitably get up to when they realize they can make Jack "say" anything they want. They proceed to prank-call Pete and, as Jack, promise to make his dreams come true -- as long he brings his guitar for a jam and wears a Mexican poncho for a private rendezvous. Happily for Pete, Jack's experience with GE's microwave engineers (read below) puts him in such a frame of mind to view Pete's prank-inspired foolishness as a reminder of the college he could have had if he weren't reading that damn dictionary all day to pay his way through school. They sit, drink brews, and jam... until Lemon disrupts them and forces them to watch her shotgun a pizza.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!30 Rock. Lemon makes a typically frazzled start to the day as she wonders where Tracy and Jenna are. They finally show up, Tracy in a paper doctor's robe and Jenna in a ripped, disheveled private school uniform. Tracy apologizes that they haven't been able to get into their costumes yet. Lemon looks at her watch and mentions how behind schedule they are. Jenna tells her that men's watches are out for women. This year it's all about the Adam's apple. Lemon explains that her grandfather received this watch after working for years at Union Station in D.C. -- as a pickpocket.
One of the crew guys (the delicious Daniel Sunjata) comes in and makes the last call for the TGS lottery. Everyone buys in to pick one card from the deck. If their card is selected from an independent deck, they win a thousand dollars. Lemon buys one just to get everyone back to work. Jenna and Tracy warn Lemon that the crew members hate it when people in creative win. Lemon is sure she won't win because she only has a one in 52 chance. Tracy is amazed at her ability to determine the odds of winning, and suggests she take her Rain Man-like probability skills to Vegas.
Writers' room. Lemon finds Toofer in the "Punishment Corner" for adopting a Madonna-esque faux Brit accent... or just being the persnickety intellectual we all knew him to be. Toofer insists they look up the pronunciation for "shed-you-al" on the Internet, and it comes back as the American pronunciation "sked-you-al." After Frank tells Toofer to stay in the corner, Lutz points out that the voice on the pronunciation voice sounds eerily similar to Jack's. They test out some more words (America, whiskey, liberal), but it's irrefutably proven once Frank types in the magic phrase: "Lemon, Lesbian Frankenstein wants her shoes back." Credits.
Upstairs, Lemon finds Jack reminiscing over old GE quarterly reports. He shows her one from 1985 with a photo not unlike this one on the cover. Lemon asks why he's looking back, and he explains that GE's Microwave Division is releasing its quarterly report today. He tells her it might be his last quarter with the company now that he's transitioning to Kabletown. He gazes out a window and waxes nostalgic, "I've been a GE man for 25 years... and a GE woman for one week of corporate espionage at Revlon."
Lemon awkwardly changes the subject to ask if Jack could possibly be the voice of Pronouncify.com. He types in a phrase to check. As luck would it, the phrase is "Those bastards." Indeed, his voice has been co-opted from back when he was in college at Princeton and had to make ends meet by reading every word out of the dictionary for a linguistics project: "They wanted to preserve the perfect American accent in case of the Cold War." Once the Iron Curtain fell, the researchers sold the recordings, and Jack rues the things his voice has been dragged into -- Thomas the Tank Engine, Wu-Tang Clan songs, etc.
He tells Lemon his back story: He's been working since he was 12 (as a Boston Bay stevedore, a linguistics drone and a monkey lab custodian), which put him through college but also kept him from having the typical college experience. Lemon tells him that college wasn't all that great and launches into her own colorful memories of flirting with popularity for the first two weeks of college. She finishes, staring longingly out a window. Jack interrupts her to say she's at his thoughtful staring place and to direct her to the pining window for visitors. She moves to the correct location, he takes his spot, and they stare out the windows together.
Down in the studio, the sexy crew guy kicks off the lottery. Pete thinks his Four of Clubs will win because it's his wife's nickname for his penis. Alas, it's Lemon's Queen of Spades that is picked. Everyone groans and boos. Lemon tells them she's not keeping the money but is going to open up a tab for them all at Hurley's. The sexy crewman asks if she's for real. She takes quick glance at the name on his coveralls and says, "You know it, Arriflex!" Unfortunately, she read the wrong side of the coveralls, and his name is actually Chris. Whatevs, drinks on Lemon!
Lemon walks into her room and starts to pick out a wedgie when Jack interrupts and asks her to make sense of the Microwave Division's quarterly report. It appears they've had their best quarter in five years -- and without Jack. Lemon plumbs out the positive, arguing that Jack hired everyone in the division, so its success is all due to him. He tells her that's the smartest thing she's ever said. She counters, "Really? What about three years ago, when I said there should be more TV shows about cake?" Jack decides to drive out to R&D in Stamford and congratulate his team, by which he really wants to remind them who is boss and to whom they should give all the credit. He expects they'll give him some sort of recognition, perhaps a crystal plaque, and then he may even "reward one of them with a... name remembrance." He's momentarily distracted when he looks at Lemon's monitor to the studio and sees that the entire crew is acting drunk. She tells him about the money, the bar tab, the boozy lunch, and how now everyone likes her. He responds, "Oh, Lemon, please. Money can't buy happiness. It is happiness."
Jack leaves Lemon's office. As he walks through the writers room, Frank types "I love unicorns" into Pronouncify.com. Jack doubles back as Lutz tattles that he told him not to do it. He tries to be all buddy-buddy and is all, "Let's go, Jack," but Jack waves him off and tells the writers to get the yuk-yuks out of their systems right here and now. It goes too far when Toofer types in, "Obama is very presidential." He tells them, "You should be ashamed of yourselves, a bunch of 30-year-olds sitting around acting like college freshmen when some of us had to spend their freshmen year making those recordings... and leading a disastrous monkey escape." He tells them to grow up and leaves.
Over in the studio, Lemon gets her first chance to pound it out with one of the crew guys. She walks into Tracy's room and bubbles over telling Tracy and Jenna about her new popularity. She hearkens back to the two weeks she was popular in college and wonders what went wrong. Jenna consoles her that she didn't do anything wrong. "You were just you," she says. "The popular people figured that out and treated you accordingly." Lemon is bound and determined to make sure her moment of approval isn't so transient this time. Jenna warns Lemon she doesn't have what it takes for popularity. As in college, everyone at TGS has a role to fulfill. She classifies herself the hot blonde, and Tracy says he's the nerd who takes off his glasses and everyone realizes he's handsome. Lemon, unfortunately, is the R.A. "Only if R.A. stands for 'Really Awesome,'" Lemon retorts.
Over in the writers' room, Frank mans the computer while Toofer puts on the speaker phone and calls Pete. After Pete jumps to defend himself from the sexual harassment claims of Suzanne from Ad Sales, the writer launch into an elaborate prank conversation between Pete and "Jack." He asks Pete to be his friend and to bust out a freestyle rap for him. MC Hornberger has this to offer: "Rollin' with my homey, me and Jackie D. Bitches get ready for a sex par-ty!"
Studio. Lemon walks in, and someone tells her to "think fast." Naturally she does not catch the football flying at her, so it careens into a light stand. She tells them "This is why we don't play football in the studio," then corrects herself, "because it's too fun!" She christens herself "The Liz-ard" and goes for a high-five with a crew guy, but Chris stops him. He blames her for leaving out the recovering alcoholics in her crew-wide gift. "The BLiz-zard" proves that she can think fast with the words by claiming she got them a gift, too, but it hasn't come yet and only "The BLizbian" knows. Chris lets her back into his good graces with a high-five, and she breathes a sigh of relief. She walks over to Jenna and Tracy, who hold their ground that she can't keep this ruse up. Lemon insists people can change their perceptions. Tracy, who is wearing horn-rimmed glasses, insists he's just Ogbert the nerd. Lemon leaves in frustration. Tracy removes his glasses to "clean them," and Jenna is suddenly smitten with his handsome mien.
GE Microwave Lab. Jack enters victoriously, but he doesn't recognize any of the engineers. In the place of his hires Dinesh, Kumar and Sunaba have come Ajay, Raj and Ramesh. They tell him he's not allowed to enter. He explains his 25-year tenure at the company, but they tell "John Donovan" that all their names and faces seem the same. He tells them he spearheaded the trivection oven, and one of them jokes, "What is this, 2009?" They point to a new model they consider the perfect microwave. It has five vections and a voice feature (conveniently Jack's voice from the linguistics lab days). "Oh my God," gasps Jack. "Which one?" asks the engineer. Jack reminds them he's still the head of his division and bars them from shipping any microwaves until he okays it. He further insists that they could not have built the perfect microwave without his guidance. He vows to find the flaws in their design and make them wish they'd never been born. The engineer wonders, "Which time?"
Back at 30 Rock, Kenneth comes upon Jack fiddling with the insides of the microwave. He tells Jack, "You know, my uncle was a tinkerer... until the FBI shot him." Jack explains his mission, but Kenneth immediately zeroes in that Jack may not be concerned for the company as much as for himself. "Sometimes a place can be so special to you that it feels like it couldn't possibly continue after you're gone," he tells him wisely, adding, "but after I left Kentucky Mountain Bible College, it still kept going... until it was shut down... 'cause of the wolves." Kenneth tells Jack he needs to let go. Jack questions Kenneth's educational focus (Television Studies with a minor in Bible Sexuality) and dismisses them as "not Psychiatry." He tells Kenneth he can help him by sticking his hand in the microwave. Unfortunately, it shocks the bejesus out of Kenneth, which was exactly what it was supposed to do.
Downstairs, Lemon has organized an ice cream social. She claims to be cool with the 73-minute break the crew has taken to eat their ice cream and further claims to be cool that someone brought a dog to work -- "and it definitely doesn't have any of its own waste on its feet!" Chris is smiling until he looks over at a crew guy named Tony who is at once a former alcoholic and lactose intolerant. In a desperate bid to keep her status, Lemon hands over her grandfather's watch, then starts a round of chanting, "Liz-ard! Liz-ard! Liz-ard!" The crew hesitantly joins in, then grows in passion until Lemon is doing that ridiculous dance where you grab your foot and jerk your knee back spastically. Ahhh, college!
Over in the writers' room, Operation: Prank Pete continues. "Jack" and Pete swap secrets about Pete's blankie and "Jack's" loneliness. "Jack" invites Pete to his office that night to jam on the guitar and drink beer. Pete hopefully says maybe they can discuss opportunities at Kabletown, and "Jack" says he'll make Pete's dreams come true if Pete wears a Mexican poncho. Pete does a happy dance as the writers high-five, save for an anxious-looking Lutz.
Upstairs, Jack has Kenneth out on his windy balcony in the freezing cold and orders him to simulate a rain storm by pouring a bucket of water on the microwave. Jack revels when the display malfunctions, reading, "Time Left: Pizza." Kenneth, who has now lapsed into hypothermia, wonders why anyone would use a microwave in a freezing rainstorm. Jack haughtily reminds Kenneth of the Inuits. Kenneth says forlornly, "Sir, you have to let go. At least that's what my Nana is telling me from that tunnel of light behind you." Jack scoffs that Kenneth's Nana is an idiot. And it's not the first time he's said as much.
Downstairs, Lutz runs frantically up to Lemon to tell her about the writers' prank on Pete. He begs her to stop it before things go too far. Determined to shed her R.A. image, she refuses to, claims she loves pranks, and walks away breezily. Lutz tries to tell the writers to back down, but his little whimper of a voice just isn't up to the task.
Meanwhile, Jack smugly brings back the microwave to the lab in Stamford. The engineers mistake him for their lunch delivery man, but he barrels on with his pissing contest. He fires up their "so-called microwave," which reads "Start Time: 19:85." As the plot of Microwave Time Machine start rolling around in my head, Jack gives a puffed-up speech about how he has trumped them, only it's stilted periodically by the microwave's (a.k.a. Jack's) interjections. When Jack gets to the part about his legacy at GE, the microwaves dismisses it as "Over. Done." Jack tells the engineers the microwave has his voice. The engineer responds, "You all sound the same to us, Chuck Dungaree." Jack cuts off his speech and reveals the epiphany he and the microwave have had: It may just be time for him to hang up his hat, pass on the torch, and all those other clichés. He congratulates them on making the finest microwave he's ever seen and leaves. Just steps behind him, the delivery man (also played by Alec Baldwin) walks in. Asks the engineer in all earnestness, "Are we racist, or do those guys look a lot alike?"
That night, Jack walks into his office to find Pete rocking a Baja jacket, strumming his guitar, and inviting Jack to "jam out, have some brews, and talk about everything... and nothing." In his deflated state, a return to the college experience he never had is just what Jack needs. And apparently it's what Pete needs, too. He says he "only had about two weeks of real college before Paula got pregnant... twice." They start a half-cocked rendition of Jethro Tull's "Aqualung."
Downstairs, Chris calls Lemon out for giving away her grandfather's watch. He found out thanks to the inscription on the back: "Not Stolen Property of Adolf Lemon." He deems her desperate, and Jenna tells Lemon it's over. Everyone gives her the cold shoulder, though one guy screams, "You suck!" With that, Lemon resumes her God-given role as R.A. She shuts down their lottery on the grounds that the NBC handbook deems it gambling and promises fines for anyone throwing footballs in the studio. As the coup de grace, she threatens to put down the dog -- "with a smile" -- if she sees it again. Everyone moans as she mimes high-fiving a million angels.
Upstairs, she walks in on Jack and Pete in the middle of a seemingly pot-induced discussion. Jack tells her to "think fast!" so of course she gets walloped in the head with a beer can. She sets down a pizza she actually brought for herself and asks what's going on. They tell her about their college night. She says, "Oh yeah? Wanna see me shotgun this?" Before they can brace themselves for the horror, Jack and Pete sit with eyes transfixed as Lemon starts folding up the entire pizza. Pete shrieks, "Now she's unhinging her jaw!"
Bonus: The writers wear doggie collars and stand in buckets of ice in their skivvies as Jack cracks open a beer and tortures them frat-style for their prank on Pete. Character updates in the style of Animal House follow: "Jack Donaghy had promised his pregnant girlfriend he wouldn't drink. He spent the night on a couch that cost more than your car." -- "Later that night, Liz Lemon's pilonidal cyst returned. It is currently her best friend." -- "Kenneth Parcell briefly died on Jack's balcony. He came back with a message from God that he has forgotten." -- "Ogbert 'Tracy' Jordan went on to invent a new kind of borkulator." But not any new types of jokes, alas...
White One-Liners
Jack: I'm just revisiting some old GE quarterly reports. My first cover from my first year at the company, 1985! Good times. Just out of the frame was a wheelbarrow full of cocaine.
Lemon: So, uh, why the trip down memory lame? Haha! High-fiving a million angels!
Ragged Jack
Lemon: Huh, I always forget you used to be poor.
Jack: Thank you. But yes, I've had to work my entire life. It began when my father left, and I started working on the Boston docks as a 12-year-old stevedore. "Bails up, you Micks! Bails up!"
Lemon: You've been working since you were 12?
Jack: I had to. Those jobs put me through college, but they also kept me from having the college experience. I was up early every morning, working my way through the dictionary for the linguistics department or sweeping the floors at the Princeton monkey lab. It wasn't the feces that got to you, Lemon. It was the crudely scrawled notes of "Help me!"
A Trip Down Memory Lame, Indeed
Lemon: College wasn't that fun, Jack. I mean, sure, the first two weeks are nice...
Jack: Lemon, I really don't have time for a long--
Lemon: The fall of 1988! A young Liz Lemon enters the University of Maryland, Richard Marx haircut, pilonidal cyst under control. It was a magical time, Jack!
Jack: Don't worry about getting to your point. I'm going to live forever.
Lemon: The registrar accidentally gave me a handicapped room. It was huge! And for two weeks, it was party central. I was popular. People gave me nicknames. A blonde girl high-fived me! Then [she walks across the room to start wistfully out of a window] like all good things, it ended before it even began.
Jack: Lemon, that's actually my thoughtful window-staring spot. Visitors stare over here.
Springtime for Lemon
Lemon: You know, usually everyone around here makes me feel like Hitler. But today, I feel like... Hitler in Germany!
Jenna: Awwww, being popular must be such a new experience for you.
Lemon: It's not entirely new. [She pulls out a picture of her be-mulleted self in college.]
Jenna: I would experiment with that girl.
Tracy: Too small.
Lemon: That's me for two weeks in college. I was popular for one glorious fortnight, and then it went away. I don't know what I did wrong.
Tracy: You probably said "fortnight."
Jenna Does Higher Education
Jenna: How long do you think this can go on?
Lemon: I've got it under control.
Jenna: This is why I hated my first two weeks at the Royal Tampa Academy of Dramatic Tricks. No one knew who was the sluttiest. But I showed them. Oh, I showed them all! When we graduated a week later--
Lemon: Whatever, Jenna.
Watch the episode below, discuss it in our forums, then see whether 30 Rock is a good place to work!
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