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Lemon worries that her relationship with Carol -- whose last name, we learn, is Burnet -- is reaching a holding pattern, so Jack advises her to see a therapist. Instead, she unloads all of her man neuroses on Kenneth. There are lots of flashbacks ranging from her disappointment with Santa Claus to how her uncle instilled in her a deep-seated gag reflex for eggs. The one-sided exchange quickly becomes emotionally unwieldy for Kenneth and his many emerging personalities. Jack takes on the burden of Kenneth's pig-related childhood traumas, himself dissolving into tears about latent daddy issues.
Along the way, Tracy asks Jack to invest in Staples, a theme restaurant fronted by his son Donald (who's two years older). Naturally the restaurant is a poorly conceived mess at which the main highlight is a fight show between unlicensed Japanese monsters with names like Godzila and Mecha-Godzila. (Yep, the one "l" is intentional, for legal reasons.) After visiting Staples, Jack advises Tracy to cut off 43-year-old Donald. Then he gets a good ol' fashioned head-screwin' from Kenneth and blesses Tracy to continue throwing good money after bad, re: Donald's utterly unrealistic, highly unprofitable dreams.
It's Jenna and 'Gina's six-month anniversary, so naturally Jenna expects a proposal... to make a sex tape. Instead, 'Gina takes her to the vacant lot where they first "face-kissed" and asks her to come to Ohio to meet his parents. Jenna flips out, and Lemon warns her that self-sabotage is imminent. Jenna does not heed her advice and suggests the sex tape. 'Gina tells her (s)he can't live up to her adventurous expectations and breaks things off, leaving Jenna to evenly divide their panties and cry herself to sleep.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!30 Rock. Tracy barges into Jack's office screaming, "Hey! What's that sound? It was opportunity knocking!" Jack points out that Tracy didn't, in fact, knock. At which point, Tracy's two-years-older "son" (a.k.a. con man leech) Donald knocks on the door and walks in wearing a T-shirt that says "OPPORTUNITY." In hindsight, Tracy admits that Donald's initial plan to enter first may have more sensible after all. They want to try it again, but Jack tells them to get to the point. Tracy reintroduces Donald and lets his "son" make the pitch. Donald tells Jack he has the chance to get in on the ground floor of an exciting new business venture -- a theme restaurant Donald is opening in Times Square. Donald tells him they already have a sizable investment from Brown & Folderson. Jack tells the dim-witted duo that he never invests in anything without doing his research. He tells them he'll visit the restaurant tonight. Donald warns him that it'll be his loss if some other investor comes along first. Then, despite his phone not ringing, he takes a "call" from a "Mexican billionaire" named Señor Mexico and stars speaking in broken Spanish as he leaves the room. Of course Tracy runs screaming after him, claiming that Donald always leaves him out of the loop. Credits.
Downstairs, Lemon walks into Jenna's dressing room and starts talking to the back of Jenna's head. When "Jenna" turns out around, Lemon is startled to find that it's actually 'Gina (a.k.a. Paul, Jenna's drag queen impersonator-slash-boyfriend). Jenna explains that they're mirroring until they achieve touchless orgasm. Luckily for Lemon (or unluckily, depending on how you look at it), Paul declares himself "finished" just a second later. Then he takes off for work, and Jenna spills that they're celebrating their six-month anniversary that night. She thinks Paul is going to pop the question. Lemon says maybe it's a bit soon, but Jenna clarifies that she will say yes... to a sex tape. She says marriage is like death and that you lose all the spark. Lemon thinks the comfort and routine is the whole point of being with someone for a long time. Whereas Jenna thinks relationships are like sharks, Lemon says she and Carol (who haven't spoken in five days) are "legless turtles rotting on the beach." Jenna grimaces and Lemon realizes what an unflattering comparison she just made.
Newly insecure, Lemon heads up to Jack's office to ask him what makes guys bored in a relationship. "That's an excellent question," he replies. "The answer is, questions like that." She mentions that she's gone several days without speaking to Carol and has other issues that are building up inside of her. Jack advises her to find a therapist so she can unload her problems and move on with her "life" (air quotes his). She says she's tried but can't find anyone she likes. She asks if he's ever seen a shrink. Of course he hasn't, but he thinks it will be useful to her -- and even more useful to him, since he usually doesn't speak to a woman about these kinds of issues unless she's having sex with him.
That night, Donald welcomes Jack to his restaurant. He has thoughtfully named it Staples because they offer "the basics... food, drinks, fun." Jack informs him Staples is the name of a giant office supply chain. Donald replies confidently, "Well, we'll see who's still in business 200 years from now." Jack surveys the restaurant and tells Donald he's going to pick a problem at random. He asks if the theme of the restaurant is "not enough tables." Donald explains that they need room for the monster fights. He has modeled his restaurant after Medieval Times, only instead of jousting knights, he offers scraps between unlicensed versions of iconic Japanese monsters. With that, Donald takes the stage to introduce the first fight of the night, between Godzila ("with one 'l' for trademark reasons") and Mecha-Godzila. Godzila knocks over two of the patrons' table, which I'm guessing is not good business practice, but Donald is too swept up in his unlicensed monster fight to care. He runs smiling back to Jack and keeps his hyper-enthusiasm even as Mecha-Godzila (a.k.a. George) punches Godzila in the nuts, and the actor under the suit cries out for help.
Back at 30 Rock, Kenneth delivers a message from Carol (a.k.a. Captain Burnet), who claims not to have cell phone service during his layover in Daytona with his flight crew: Stewart, Brenda, Amber and Crystal. Adds Kenneth, "Also, in the background I heard lady giggles and the sound of a beautiful sunset." Lying down on the couch, Lemon says this is exactly why she needs to find someone to talk to. Kenneth asks what she needs to talk about. She says sometimes she feels men aren't completely honest with her. Kenneth adopts an attentive mien, sits down in a chair across from her, and tells her to go on. She says all her high school boyfriends turned out to be gay or "a girl dressed as a guy to get a journalism scholarship." She mentions her dad's attempted gentleman's intermission and how it affected her ideas about marriage.
"Then of course," she says bitterly, "there's Santa Claus." Kenneth tells her to talk about that. She tells him she didn't get the CB radio she asked for when she was seven years old, and her dad blamed Santa. Flash back to the year, when she tracked down the Santa at the Schuylkill Galleria. A young, Hamill-haired Lemon calls Santa a fat fraud, so he rips off his beard and agrees with the "little boy" (Lemon) that he is a fraud. "I guess Santa Claus was the first man to ever betray me," she says tearfully. Kenneth hands her a tissue, and she admits that it's good to talk about this stuff. He tells her placidly, "There's a reason God gave us two ears and a mouth -- listening is twice as important as talking." Then a strange realization washes over Kenneth's face as he says, "But he gave us 10 fingers. He must really want us to poke things!" He runs out, jabbing everything and everyone in sight along the way.
Elsewhere, 'Gina leads a blindfolded Jenna out into the night. He removes the blindfold, and she recognizes the locale immediately: "It's the vacant lot where we had our first face-kiss!" He says what they have is beautiful and that people need to see how they feel about each other. It's the lead-up she's been hoping for, only 'Gina takes a left turn right before the money shot and, instead of asking her to make a sex tape, asks her to join him as he visits his parents in Ohio this Christmas. He leans in to touch tongues, porno-style, but Jenna is too horrified by this development to reciprocate. One of the bums yells out, "Hey get a room! Whatever that is..."
The day, Jack tells Tracy Donald's restaurant is a disaster. Tracy says he knows that and he is desperate to find more investors. Jack asks about Brown & Folderson. Tracy tells him that's what he calls his wallet and says he's backed every one of Donald's foolish business schemes. He says, as Donald's "father," he has no choice. Jack rolls his eyes at this last claim but continues on, telling Tracy he's doing Donald no favors by encouraging him. He tells him to cut Donald off. "But he's only 43 years old!" says Tracy. Jack tells him that not everybody's cut out to be a businessman, "for example, curly-haired men and people who need glasses." Tracy doesn't want to crush Donald's dreams. Jack insists that he's really just letting Donald "fly with his own wings." Says Tracy, "And I bankrolled that, too! Thank God we tested it with a monkey first!"
Down in the studio, Kenneth finds Lemon to ask her about joining the TGS softball team. She joins 25 others with the response of "Shove it up your goonhole." She tells him she's been thinking ever since their talk yesterday. She lies down on a conveniently located couch, and he sits down with his clipboard in a chair just across the set. She tells him about her aunt Linda, who got divorced because her uncle Harry was cheating. Kenneth notes it's another male betrayal. Flash back to Aunt Linda bitterly saying Harry hated her cooking as she serves Lemon a plate full of spaghetti topped off with fried eggs. "Here's a fun game," she chirps, "put on Harry's cologne and give me a back rub in the bath!" Lemon realizes mid-sentence that her trust issues and her food issues are related, just as Uncle Harold is the direct cause of her gag reflex for eggs. Lemon realizes that Kenneth is the perfect therapist because she can dump all her problems on him, walk away, and move on with his life. She deems it a win-win and breezes off, leaving a shaking Kenneth wishing she'd never brought up the name Harold.
Moments later, Lemon unpeels a boiled egg as Jenna walks up to tell her "last night was a disaster -- and not the good kind that ends with me getting to sing at a benefit." She updates her on Paul's invitation to meet his parents, who live in a suburb. Lemon thinks it's progress. She thinks Jenna is afraid of being in love and is self-sabotaging. Jenna insists she's the one trying to make it work and moves ahead with her plan to propose the sex tape, though she says, "call me old-fashioned, but I think that's the man's job." Jenna moves on, and Lemon catches sight of Jack. She says she's made some big breakthroughs, and demonstrates this by talking and eating a boiled egg at the same time. Jack rightly dismisses the conversation as disgusting and keeps walking.
He enters Tracy's dressing room to pump Tracy up for his big talk with Donald. He tells him to be strong, rational and devoid of emotion. Tracy blows that within five seconds of Donald arriving by bursting into tears and declaring his love. Jack delivers the news to Donald, and Tracy tells him to be a "big boy." Donald says he'll be fine because he has other ideas, such as a microbrewery that serves frozen yogurt. Naturally, he plans to call it Microsoft.
Elsewhere, Lemon has cornered Kenneth again and found yet another couch for an impromptu therapy session. Her words bleed together as we cut to Kenneth's Shining-like scribbles of "Harold" all over his notepad. Just as Lemon thinks to delve into her issues with sex, Jack walks into the room. Jack tells Lemon that Kenneth can't handle being her therapist -- "Look at his head shape. He has no brain pan!" Kenneth says flatly that he's okay, then raises his voice to a girly register and adds, "And so am I. I'm Cheryl!" Jack tells her that dumping her problems "on some half-baked Barney Fife" has started a "chain reaction of mental anguish." He points to Kenneth's notepad as proof. "But he's such a good listener," begs Lemon, "and he takes my insurance." At which point, Jack shuts the door in her face.
He sets about relieving Kenneth of his mental burden, which Jack will then crush in his "mind vise." He asks who Harold is, hoping it's a person. Nope! Harold was a pig that Kenneth took on as a role model and father figure after Kenneth's own father died when he was young. One day, Kenneth's mother announced that Harold had to be sold... to the slaughterhouse. Having nothing to keep him in Stone Mountain, Kenneth decided to leave for New York. Only he needed $300 for the journey. So he entered a pig-eating contest because "Why, I once ate an entire witch;, a pig was nothing." But with his bib on and utensils in front of, can you imagine what pig was placed in front of Kenneth? Harold! "I ate all of him -- even the face, in case of a tie." Jack holds back vomit as Kenneth's frenzy grows. "I ate him, sir! I ate my father-pig!" Then he squeals like a... well you get the drift. Jack tries to get this session back on course, spinning it so Kenneth actually gave Harold's death meaning because his loss made Kenneth what he is today -- "the lowest level employee at the last-place network in America!" Kenneth gets up, emboldened and equipped to mull over what they've talked about. He leaves, asking whether Jack is okay to take on his emotional strain. Jack assures him he is. Kenneth leaves, and Jack looks down at his paper, on which the word "DADDY" is scribbled ad infinitum. He struggles to crush these latent issues with his mind vise, ultimately collapsing into girlish wails and smashing his face into a pillow.
Paul arrives home to Jenna's apartment, complaining that his day got really crazy when he got custard all over his penis. Such are the perils of working at a roller skating drag queen revue! He sees all the candles and Jenna in her negligee and wonders what she's up to. She proposes the sex tape, but he says he's too tired. They get into a huge fight because she thinks he's not adventurous enough, and he thinks she's afraid of settling down. They reach a point where they realize they want different things in life. He tells her he won't beg her and leaves for evening, asking her to fairly divide up their panties before he returns the day to collect his things.
The day, Kenneth anxiously tells Lemon he has another message from Carol. He begs her, "Please don't get sad and remember things and infect me again." She tells him everything's fine and apologizes for traumatizing him. He says it's okay because he had his "brain cleaned" by Jack. He starts to go into the Harold story, but Lemon stops him, saying her "brain pan" is also not big enough to handle it.
Staples. Tracy stops by as Donald cleans up. He offers Tracy his "share of the profits," a pink ladies' trench left in coat check. Jack runs in to tell Tracy he was wrong. He urges him not to turn his back on Donald and explains that Kenneth's stories unearthed a memory from Jack's own childhood. He tells the two of them his boyhood dream was to be an astronaut, a deep sea diver or a scientist, but his father projected his own failures onto his family. In one particular instance, Jack was rehearsing for a third-grade science play when Jimmy Donaghy came home drunk and mercilessly mocked Jack for struggling to pronounce the word "protein" correctly: "Well, looky he-ah. Dahc-tah Jack. Boy wants to be a scientist. Chowdahhead cahn't even say the words! You'll nevah be nothin'!" Flash back to Jack on the stage as he sees Jimmy in the audience and freezes, saying "protoin" instead of protein and "orgasms" instead of organisms. The audience titters and Jimmy repeats his cruel dismissal.
Back in the present, Jack says he threw away all his science-related possessions the day. He tells Tracy, "A parent is the one person who is supposed to make their kid think they can do anything, says they're beautiful even when they're ugly, thinks they're smart even when they go to Arizona State." He tells Tracy to support Donald no matter what and tells Donald to go and make him proud. Donald tells him that his speech was nice but agrees with Jimmy Donaghy that Jack didn't have what it took to be a scientist if he couldn't even be protein in a school play. He admits that he's a failure and begins to walk away. Jack yells out after him, proudly delivering the speech he bungled all those years ago. It's so forceful, Tracy and Donald can't help but clap. Re-energized, Donald asks Tracy for $50,000 to start a call-in line for people who want air quality reports across the United States. He wants to call it American Airlines. Tracy proudly tells him this plan will work, and they hug each other with renewed passion.
Bonus! Lemon thinks she has reaped the rewards of working at being happy as she sits on a park bench eating an egg salad sandwich to Godzila (or the failed actor who briefly played him at Staples). Instead of joining in on her happiness, he basically reiterates each and every one of her worst fears before running off to wreck Tokyo. See below to find out that Lemon's life is -- appropriately, and as we expected all along -- one big joke.
Tracy Jumps on the Bandwagon
Tracy: You remember Donald -- my son who's two years older than me.
Jack: Ah, yes. Please come in. As I recall, you own the Tracy Jordan Institute for Black Karate.
Tracy: You wouldn't believe this, but that business failed. I blame Obama.
Modern Love
'Gina: I have to go to work. My new manager is making us wear name tags. I might as well be working at a roller-skating drag queen restaurant under Taliban rule.
Jenna: But after your shift, we still have our special night, right?
'Gina: You have no idea how special. [They touch tongues and wiggle them around, then Paul leaves]
Jenna: We're celebrating our six-month anniversary, and I think Paul's going to pop the question.
Lemon: Really? That's a little fast, isn't it?
Jenna: And I will say yes when Paul proposes... that we make a sex tape and leak it on the Internet.
Lemon: I thought you meant marriage.
Jenna: Oh God, no! Marriage is like death. You settle into a routine. You lose all the spark.
Lemon: I don't know. I always thought the whole point of being with someone for a long time is to get to the comfortable routine part.
Jenna: No. Relationships are like sharks, Liz. If you're not left with several bite marks after intercourse, then something's wrong.
Lemon: Well nothing's wrong with me and Carol. I mean, we haven't spoken in five days, but that doesn't mean anything. Because we are not sharks. We are legless turtles rotting on the beach.
Jack Goes Coping
Lemon: Have you ever been to a shrink?
Jack: No. I believe that when you have a problem, you talk it over with your priest or your tailor or the mute elevator porter at your men's club, then you take that problem and crush it with your mind vise. But for lesser beings, like curly-haired men and people who need glasses, therapy can help. But Lemon, I want you to get better. Because, and I mean this, I'm tired of talking this much to a woman I'm not having sex with.
Tracy Is Nothing If Not Literal
Jack: Tracy, I went to the restaurant last night. That place is a disaster.
Tracy: Damn it, you think I don't know that? I poured more money into that restaurant than my money pit in Connecticut.
Jack: You have a house in Connecticut?
Tracy: No, I do not.
Modern Love 2
Jenna: You want to take this to the level? Let's video tape our lovemaking, pretend the tape got stolen, and let the whole world see!
'Gina: Wow. I don't know Jenna. I'm pretty beat.
Jenna: I see. Fine. I guess we're just done having any adventure or excitement in our lives.
'Gina: Well, jeez [throws off his wig]. I'm sorry that I'm happy with the way things are. I mean, come on, why can't we just paint each other's toenails, watch vintage pornography, and then go to bed in our swing like a normal couple?
Jenna: Because it's boring. We might as well be married!
'Gina: Okay, this isn't about us being adventurous. This is about you being afraid to settle down with me.
Jenna: That's not true.
'Gina: Fine, let's do this tape. Then what? What will you want ?
Jenna: Well there's a sex resort in Japan where white people are treated like slaves!
'Gina: No, Jenna, you're making it impossible to live up to your expectations.
Jenna: What are you saying?
'Gina: I'm saying, adopting a dog so it can watch us make love, and then returning it, claiming that it bit our imaginary child, is everything that I need.
Lemon Quickly Sours
Lemon: This is what happens when you work at being happy. Godzila sits to you when you're eating an egg salad sandwich. What a world!
Godzila: What's the point? I moved here to make it on Broadway. Now look at me. I'm pathetic. I've got no real skills, a degree in theater tech. So you move back to Pennsylvania, live with your parents. All of your old friends have kids and careers, and what do you have? Maybe your name on a TV show that no one'll even remember. Shoulda moved to Cleveland with that guy when I had the chance!
Lemon: Damn you, God-zee-ra!
Watch the episode below, discuss it in our forums, then see whether 30 Rock is a good place to work!
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