In a hurry? Read the recaplet for a nutshell description! Finished? Click here to close.
"With Tracy away, it's time to let Angie be the star," says the Queen of Jordan -- which also happens to be the lens through which we view everyone's favorite Midtown address this week. And what a lens it is. An entire subplot involves Jack's embarrassment at tripping in front of the camera. The Jack smack occurred during a meeting to plan a launch party for Angie's self-referential, sure-to-be-smash single "My Single Is Dropping." Lemon wants no part in planning the party because she's stressed about getting Tracy back from "Africa." While she tries to trick Angie into calling Tracy and begging him to return, Jack sets about embarrassing himself further by attempting to prove his athleticism, resulting in a string of "Jack is a gay" jokes that climax with him bragging that he played Maria in an all-male production of West Side Story at Princeton. When Lemon's subterfuge inevitably fails, she tries to no avail to hack Angie's computer. Angie finds her. Cue contractually obligated weave-pulling by Angie, plus Manzo "thick as thieves" spouting and Giudice table flipping by Lemon. They reach an impasse shortly after Lemon awkwardly pulls out her earrings, and they both realize the world will be a sadder place if Tracy never returns to it. Get well, Tracy Morgan!
In happier subplots, Jenna and Angie's Staub-ish token crazy white friend Randi both try to stir up drama. The former by drunkenly hurling wine and accusations in others' faces, the latter by revealing her stripper past. In fact, it's Frank who's actually got the real dramz. Turns out he got LeTourneau'd by his eighth grade teacher (Susan Sarandon), who returns for a bittersweet reunion... and not just because Randi is working the pole behind their heart-to-heart. Perhaps sensing that Randi is winning this battle, Jenna plans to win the war by forcing Pete to plan an intervention for her, thus guaranteeing screen time. Pete takes this plan and runs with it, sending her to rehab so he can take advantage of Tracy and her absence to file an insurance claim and get paid without working. In the end, Jenna finds herself drinking all alone while hiding out from the interventionist in an air duct. Just another Thursday evening for Jenna, really.
Watch a clip from the episode below, discuss it in our forums, then see the show's best and worst guest stars!
What are people saying about your favorite shows and stars right now? Find out with Talk Without Pity, the social media site for real TV fans. See Tweets and Facebook comments in real time and add your own -- all without leaving TWoP. Join the conversation now!
Want more? The full recap starts right below!Previously on Queen of Jordan: Angie got Auto-Tuned. Her wisecracking, heavyset friend Portia flipped a table. Her token gay D'Fwan and token crazy white lady friend Randi clashed. And Tracy told Angie that he was leaving for "Africa."
We open at the Jordan estate, as Angie tells D'Fwan to glue in her business weave because she has an important meeting with Jack Donaghy that day. Cut to 30 Rock. As Angie walks to Jack's office, she says Tracy's trip to "Africa" is her chance to focus on herself. First up: Launch a music career. She explains, "It has been my dream to be a singer ever since I was a little... drunk the other day and rented out a recording space." Jack (chyron: "NBC Executive/Tracy's Boss) welcomes Angie in an especially good mood, since Queen of Jordan helped NBC finally beat those damn Music Choice channels ("except, of course, Latin Beats"). Angie says she's on to the thing, specifically her single "My Single Is Dropping" is dropping. Jack says the studio will be free while they run another "Best of" special -- to which Lemon (chyron: "Another Person") interjects that legal told them they can't use the word "best" -- and offers Lemon to help Angie plan a party. Lemon thought they were getting together to discuss getting Tracy back, but Angie says she's loving the spotlight and hopes Tracy stays away for months. Lemon blurts out that Angie can't do that. Angie snaps back, "Are you giving me orders? Am I a waiter? Is this the restaurant that I'm opening up with Dennis Rodman and Webster?" I want to go to there. Jack steps forward to make peace with them, trips over his own feet, and falls flat on his face. In an interview, he orders them not to use the footage.
Elsewhere, Randi thinks Angie's single release party is the perfect place to reveal her shocking secret past as a call girl in Delaware. Is a secret like that even shocking anymore? Also, hello Danielle Staub redux. Lemon refuses to write Randi's sordid history and tells Randi to write it herself. Randi retorts, "For your information, I am a Christian illiterate, so that's not an option." Just after Lemon vows not to get sucked into any "crazy reality show nonsense," Jenna (chyron: "Former Child Star") shows up to declare her anger at Lemon for "that thing [she] did" and throw a glass of wine at Lemon. Lemon ducks, and we cut to an interview where Jenna says that she is absolutely not trying to get air time by instigating fights as she promotes her new website, Jennas-Side.com. Say it out loud. Jenna feigns ignorance as she asks, "I mean, is wine throwing something that even gets you on a reality show?" Cut to a montage of much wine-tossing, including a three-way varietal vault and a shot of Randi throwing a glass of wine at a German shepherd in a party hat.
A bit later, Toofer (no chyron) tells Pete (chyron: "Powerless Bald") that Lynn Onkman, some teacher from Queens who had an affair with a student, is being released from jail. They turn to Frank, who looks suspiciously like a kid in Onkman's eighth grade class and ask him to name the teacher-sexing student. He clams up, and a lurking Randi drops the bomb that it must have been him. The guys hoot and holler about how impressed they are, but Frank takes offense at the implication that his affair was anything other than pure love.
Meanwhile, Angie and Lemon meet for a party dress fitting, in which Angie refuses to wear anything that fits or is age-appropriate. Jack interrupts and takes Lemon aside for the kind of supposedly private, highly subtitled conversation with Lemon that reality shows love. He first insists he didn't trip, eliciting a laugh from Lemon. He insists that the media will make a mockery of him for one tiny slip-up. As proof of his point, he references Hitler, saying, "No one ever talks about his paintings." Lemon tries to console Jack, claiming they won't use the footage. Cue black-and-white slow-mo shot of Jack's fall from grace. Lemon tells him to focus on their real problem -- the fact that Angie won't help them get Tracy back because of her focus on her stupid projects -- including but not limited to being the new spokesperson for the Ham Council. Jack concedes that Angie does have a way with that particular word. Cut to Angie: "HAY-UM!"
Back in the closet (trust me, this location will have ripples later), Jack tells Lemon he didn't charge Lemon with organizing Angie's single release party because of her love of Amy Grant. In fact, he wants her to strategically use her time with Angie to manipulate Angie into calling Tracy. Lemon says she knew Jack would have her back. Apropos of that, he tells her that her shirt is tucked into her underwear. I suspect that's not the first time he's had to come to her rescue on that particular front. Jack and Lemon part ways. Lemon heads back to Angie, saying that if only Tracy were there, he'd be all, "Damn, woman, I want to make love to yo' neck!'" Angie snippily tells Lemon not to do impressions of other races.
Now it's D'Fwan's time to shine! You see, he's not just a gay hairdresser, he's also a homosexual party planner. As such, he is producing Angie's party. Kenneth (chyron: "Elderly Page") checks in to tell D'Fwan that Party City had neither giant, see-through clocks nor strap-on Pegasus wings. But they did have crepe paper pineapples! Jenna interrupts to announce that she's drinking wine and calls out Portia for having no class. Randi walks in, and D'Fwan sulks that he won't be in the same room with her. Apparently they're arguing over something contentious that may or may not have been said off-camera but ended up with them arguing in the back of a limo with one of the Blue Men from Blue Man Group. Alas, it's not a David Cross cameo.
As they shoot daggers into each other with their eyes, Lynn Onkman (Susan Sarandon, chyron: "Educator/Sex Offender") stumbles in, looking for "Frank R." She finds him down the hall in the writers' room. They both smile broadly. Everyone else looks on dubiously.
Out in the corridor, Grizz and Dot Com ask if Angie's token good-for-nothing brother is back on meth. He tweaks, "Uh! No! Why?! You got some?!" Before they can answer, a football hits Dot Com in the head courtesy of Jack Donaghy, who hopes to illustrate his graceful past as a football player at Princeton. Dot Com (chyron: "Grizz's Best Friend") says he's sick of Jack's disrespect. As Jack begins to regale the fellows with sports stories, Grizz excuses himself to have lunch with a phantom best friend named Greg. Grizz's chyron? "Greg's Best Friend." Jack brags that he played both baseball and football. In fact, he "went both ways." Dot Com sees this golden opportunity and lets Jack dig his own verbal grave by asking him whether he was ever on the DL (slang for both the "disabled list" and the "down low"). Jack says he was and that much of his time on the DL was spent getting rubbed down in hot tubs. As you do. Jack adds insult to injury, so to speak, by proudly proclaiming that he was a "switch hitter -- pitcher, catcher, whatever the boys needed." Cue Halpert-style grimace at the camera from Dot Com. Interviews Jack: "I think I made my point."
Portia time, bitches! By which we really mean Jenna time. She stumbles in saying that she "drank all the throwing wine" and knows what Portia said about her. Portia is happy to learn this because she has legitimate concerns about Jenna's drinking. So naturally Jenna thinks it's the perfect opportunity to loudly declare that she's in denial about her "disease," then confess in an interview that she wants Pete to throw her an intervention so she can get more screen time. Boffo planning, Maroney!
Over in Tracy's Angie's dressing room, Lemon walks into find that Angie is unimpressed by the "white nonsense" also known as the single-release costume Lemon styled directly from Amy Grant's "Baby, Baby" video. Lemon says it's too bad Tracy's not there to stick up for her, then pops in a DVD she claims features the people auditioning to be Angie's back-up dancers (for her 15-second song). In fact, it's footage of Angie and Tracy's wedding on August 30, 1991. Naturally, the video backfires when it reminds Angie that Tracy showed up to their wedding in red shorts, a flat-top hairdo, a tuxedo T-shirt and handcuffs, then told her he was bringing a friend on the honeymoon. Angie says that her relationship with Tracy has never been better since he moved to another continent. "I'm on Angie time now," she declares, prompting a head tilt and open-ended look from Lemon.
Meanwhile, Randi says that Frank and Lynn's story of forbidden love really touched her. As such, she let Frank use the stripperobics studio she bought with money from being shot by a cop. The star-crossed lovers meet, and Frank updates Lynn on all the things she missed while she was in the clink. For Frank, that mainly means the various, declining film versions of The Hulk. We get the back-story on the moment they fell in love -- she was giving him a scoliosis test and let her hand linger on his spine. Lynn wonders why Frank asked to meet her at the studio. Pan over to Randi workin' the pole as they talk. Frank admits that he can't invite Lynn to his place, since he still shares it with his mother. He tries to grab her hand, but she recoils. She says sadly that he hasn't grown up since she went away, which he blames on the fact that she stole his innocence. He says he is who he is, then raises his hand and asks to be dismissed. Randi clutches her heart... while hanging upside-down on the pole thanks to her clenched thighs.
Elsewhere, Jack takes a meeting with D'Fwan to discuss a spin-off where D'Fwan plays matchmaker for wealthy dogs. D'Fwan admits that this ingenious idea was a ruse. He wants to confront Jack about not being true to himself. D'Fwan says he understands this quandary because he was once in the military... "before I went berserk around all those dudes and tried to bang everybody." Jack suddenly realizes the many double entendres that escaped his lips the day before. He explains himself, adding that there is nothing gay about the Princeton fight song. As proof, he sings, "Oh, the merry men of Princeton are charging up the rear, holding all the balls--" He stops shorts and admits that he actually gets that one now. He insists that he's neither gay nor clumsy and proclaims that the producers have nothing on him that's embarrassing. Then he stands up and pulls a Mariah Carey.
Down the hall, it's time for the Jenn-tervention featuring Pete, Kenneth, in-house hair stylist Richard Esposito and Jenna's two psychics. She wails that she'll have no part of it, then excitedly commands them to write their letters.
Angie is tearing Webster a new one for a bounced check as she walks into her dressing room and finds Lemon on her computer. Seeing that her mind-trickery was a resounding flop, Lemon has gone rogue and is trying to hack Angie's computer to e-mail Tracy the following: "Tracy, as your wife, I'm ordering you to come home. The kids need you, and I want to give you all the sex things you like. For instance, doing it across the bed instead of up and down. Come home now. Sho'nuff, Angie" Angie tells Lemon to mind her business, then rips a strand of Lemon's hair out. "There's more where this came from," she says, "I'm contractually obligated to pull out some bitch's weave eight more times this season!"
The Jenn-tervention continues with Jenna singing about the beauty of redemption. Finally, after Pete reads his letter, Jenna accepts the gift the others are offering her. A strange man walks in, and Pete introduces him as Charles, who has a van waiting outside to take Jenna to treatment in Minnesota. Jenna's face falls. Pete interviews that he only partly wanted to see the fear in Jenna's eyes. He also realized that, with both Jenna and Tracy gone, he could file an insurance claim and get paid without working.
Randi: "After my second husband shot me the second time, I realized that love is the most important thing in the world." With that, Frank finds Lynn at her restaurant job ("one of the benefits of being in love with a registered sex offender"). She apologizes that their reunion didn't work out. He tells her she was right and proceeds to throw all his childish things into the deep fat fryer. He says he wants to become the man she waited for -- "the man [she] helped cheat on the President's Physical Fitness Test" (his weak point was the shuttle run). She winces as he moves to throw his Skeletor action figure into the bubbling grease. He tells her, "Skeletor's not my favorite. You are." Her blurry-faced boss comes up to ream out Frank for ruining his cooking equipment, fires Lynn, then demands a release to sign so he can raise awareness among viewers about Blurry Face Syndrome.
30 Rock. Lemon sees a life-size cut-out of Angie in the NBC Experience Store window and realizes it has replaced one of Tracy. As she digs Tracy's cut-out from the trash, Angie's party kicks into gear upstairs. She sympathizes with Jack about Irritable Bowel Syndrome. He hisses that it was the chair and spins to walk away. In doing so, he runs smack into D'Fwan, who titters, "I hope you're not this clumsy on the dance floor." Jack finally gives up, saying the producers can portray him as clumsy, gay and flatulent if they wish, because he has nothing to be ashamed of. He accepts D'Fwan's invitation to dance and busts out enough straight, white-guy moves to convince D'Fwan of his heterosexuality. Ironically, this only makes Jack insist that he's a fantastic dancer. To wit, he played Maria in an all-male production of West Side Story at Princeton. Yep. That happened. And Jack is still very secure in his masculinity.
Across the room, Pete finds Jenna slugging back a glass of wine. She claims she explained herself to the interventionist, and they had a good chuckle. And yet! The interventionist appears and explains that Jenna clocked him with a wrench. Jenna says she'll never go to rehab in Minnesota, throws a glass of wine in his face, grabs a bottle, and makes tracks.
Angie takes the stage to introduce her single. She's interrupted by a cardboard-toting Lemon, who orders her to call Tracy. Lemon says that Tracy is part of her TGS family... "and my family is thick as thieves." Then she turns over a table. She starts to take out her earrings, asking, "Now who here wants to teach me how to fight?" Angie begins to weep, at which point Kenneth announces that he's found a stray glove in the elevator. Ummm... moving on. Lemon apologizes to Angie for making her cry, but Angie reveals she's sad because she's also been trying unsuccessfully to get Tracy back. All she really wants is for things to go back to normal -- "to wake up in the morning, and look over at my husband asleep... on our neighbor's roof." Lemon worries that, if Angie can't get Tracy back, who can? Together, the ladies wonder what will become of their lives without Tracy. Kenneth pops back up to announce that the single glove is actually his and ask anyone who finds a glove to return it to him. With that, Jack McBrayer fulfills his union line quota for the week.
week on Queen of Jordan: Jack challenges D'Fwan to a dance contest. Jenna drinks while hiding out from her intervention in an air shaft. Randi takes issue with what Lemon "said" about her. Jack carries on insisting it was the chair, because he only passes gas once a year for an hour atop a mountain in Switzerland. The angry German shepherd returns to throw a glass of wine in Dot Com's face. And Kenneth finds himself with three gloves.
No jokes this week. Turns out throwing all those Real Housewives references, hyper-meta bits, and gay jokes into one episode is the comedic equivalent of mixing all the colors together and getting brown.
Watch a clip from the episode below, discuss it in our forums, then see the show's best and worst guest stars!
What are people saying about your favorite shows and stars right now? Find out with Talk Without Pity, the social media site for real TV fans. See Tweets and Facebook comments in real time and add your own -- all without leaving TWoP. Join the conversation now!