Episode Report Card Lady Lola: B- | Grade It Now! YOU GRADE IT All's Well That Ends Mel
By Lady Lola | Season 5 | Episode 12 | Aired on 01.27.2011
When the stuff we know occurred, went down!
So find it in your heart,
Step up and do your part,
And help the people,
The thing that happened, happened to.
Help the people,
The thing that happened, happened to!
Jack applauds and congratulates her, "Fantastic, Jenna. You really brought the song-writing computer's words to life!" Lemon walks in, still in disbelief that Jack is carrying out this scheme. He says all he needs now is a disaster. Lemon offers up her Tracy disaster and updates him that she needs $80,000 to purchase "Uptown Girl" and close the loophole. Jack tells Lemon she'll never out-crazy Tracy and advises her to have it out with him like adults. She thinks that plan is doomed to fail because Tracy is an actor, not an adult.
Writers' room. Everyone is feeding Lutz, rubbing his feet, and the like in an effort to sway his decision. He swells that he feels like The Bachelor and wonders "To whom shall I give my rose?" The sycophants let out a coordinated peel of laughter. He reminds them ominously that only three of them can ride to safety in his car, so Pete smiles and feeds him another hot dog. Cut to the bathroom, where Lutz confesses nervously, "I don't have a car!"
Out in the corridor, Tracy crosses paths with Lemon, who is carting a computer and a microphone. She tells him she's rigged up her computer to Auto-Tune and will remove the melody from anything he sings to expose him for the lazy bastard he is. She says into the microphone, "Liz Lemon won, do-do-do," and explains that she was singing those words to the tune of "Here Comes the Sun." But Tracy's one step ahead of her. He puts a New York Rangers hockey helmet on his head and tells Lemon and the producer that he's leaving to shoot garden gnomes at Tupac's house. Yep, he's still alive. Of course, Queen of Jordan can't use any of this footage because the Rangers logo is trademarked. Lemon concedes that Jack was right and pulls Tracy into his dressing room to talk without the cameras. In essence, they both think they saved the other's career. While Lemon thinks Tracy would be hawking jet skis at a boat show, Tracy thinks Lemon would be teaching acting at a nursing home with Dennis still bossing her around. Lemon tries to shoot back that Dennis dies and she wins the lottery in her alternate reality, but Tracy one-ups her, saying he'd run her over with a jet ski. Yep. You can't out-crazy Tracy. Point, Jordan.
Jack calls Jonathan into his office to tell him the good news: A natural disaster is upon us. Jonathan hopes cataclysm has befallen Indian Kashmir, but Jack dashes his hopes and tells him a typhoon hit Mago, an island near Fiji. With intense structural damage but no fatalities, it strikes the perfect balance between sadness and potential. Jack's eyes glisten as he envisions the "footage of beautiful Polynesian people, proud and topless. Maybe a pelican... near some diapers..." Jonathan squeals that their plan needs a code name. Jack's already settled that: Operation Righteous Cowboy Lightning.
Downstairs, the producer shows Lemon and Tracy an edited version of their argument that he shot through a crack in the door to Tracy's dressing room. Lemon tells him indignantly that she looks weird in the shots because she's snarting. Tracy considers that another betrayal. They demand the producer bury the footage, but he tells them they must film a happy ending. They remain unwilling to compromise and walk off in a huff.
Meanwhile, Lutz cracks the whip on Kenneth as he wheels Lutz into the writers' room in a wagon. Pete skips up to give Lutz the apocalypse road trip mix he made for him and says he hopes Lutz's car has a CD player. Lutz assures him it has two -- and flames on the side. Frank runs in with tickets to a test screening of the Captain America movie. Toofer asks who Lutz is going to take to the screening and everyone gathers around to make googly eyes and/or take off items of clothing. Frank tells him to hurry and make his decision because they have to get to New Jersey by six o'clock. Lutz wonders how they'll get there. D'oh! Cut to Lutz in the bathroom, wailing, "What am I gonna doooooo?!"
Upstairs, Jonathan fretfully tells Jack to turn on the news. Lester Holt comes on the screen to deliver the news that Mago is Mel Gibson's private island, and the only damage sustained was to his house and the house for his cars. Says Holt, "No word yet on the fate of Gibson's collection of anti-Semitic and misogynistic literature." Jack sprints downstairs to shut down the telethon. He has to stop at the elevator, where he sees an interview with Mel's brother Oskar Gibson, an ardent Holocaust denier. He gets downstairs. While he's looking for the right room, he hears that Mel was entertaining Jon Gosselin at the time of the typhoon. By the time Jack gets to the edit room, it's too late. Jenna asks in her pre-taped segment, "Why do bad things happen to good people? We'll never know." Images of Mel and Jon Gosselin flash as she tells the audience, "Look at these pictures, look at these beautiful souls." She tells them that every dollar will go to rebuilding Mel Gibson's sex Jacuzzi then launches into her song. Jack drops his head into his hands and sheds tears of defeat.
That night, Lutz rolls up in a brand new car with the dealer's sticker in the window, no plates, and flames that were obviously slapped on with magic marker and electrical tape. The writers call his bluff and call him pathetic. He runs after them, dropping to his knees and begging them to be his friend. At which point a crook jumps into the open door of the running car and drives off.
Up in her office, Lemon flips distastefully away from the telethon and lands on Queen of Jordan. The violin strains of OneRepublic's "Secret" begin to play on the show as Lemon and Tracy walk toward each other. What follows is a cobbled scene of their argument and reconciliation, which was filmed using the "reality TV magic" of stunt doubles who look absolutely nothing like Lemon and Tracy. Still, the two of them, who are watching the show in separate rooms, can't help but get emotional and remember the good times they had together. They meet in the hallway to hug it out for real. Tracy gets his boob squish after all!
Bonus! Lemon walks into Jack's office. It's filled with gift baskets and presents. He tells her the telethon was the highest rating "since that episode of SVU where the detectives watched American Idol." Then things get pretty meta. Lemon espouses the value of crafting a story with an ending, rather than slapping some musical on top of some meaningful looks and making things seem resolved. Cue her and Jack exchanging loaded glances to the tune of "Secrets." She walks out, looks back. She walks out some more, then hops to a karate stance, and he reciprocates. She turns and walks out again, finishing with the John Bender fist pump.
So tell me what jokes you want to hear. Something that were like those years. I'm sick of all the insincere. I'm gonna give all my jokes away...