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With the show at stake, Lemon and Kenneth go on a wild Tracy chase. They begin at the Queens pizzeria whose logo appears on the box Kenneth and Lemon saw while Skyping with Tracy. Kenneth outwits the pizzaiolo and gets a lead on Tracy's whereabouts, but it's to no avail when they arrive two weeks too late. Tracy Skypes Kenneth for his lizard Jeremy's 11th birthday, which gives Lemon the clue she needs to discover where he's hiding. They find Tracy in the upstairs of Lemon's own apartment (thanks to her futon that conspicuously lacks sex stains). He tells them he's been hiding because he can no longer take the pressure of being an award-winning performer. Lemon gives him a pep talk that involves the words "attack the Lincoln memorial with a hammer," and Tracy realizes he's just a few shenanigans away from being his old, pressure-free self. Tracy Jordan is back!
Pete discovers his one true talent: Arm wrestling. It all starts when he feels emasculated by one of his crew members (Rob Riggle) and takes his frustration out on the writers with an arm wrestling match. Once he learns of his freakish strength, Pete decides to challenge the meathead crew guy to an arm wrestling match. He has second thoughts when he sees the meathead being emasculated by his own wife and decides to throw the match. Naturally, this good deed backfires when Pete re-enters his losing streak during an arm wrestling match with Frank and goes back to being an emasculated sad sack.
Jenna gets a job on a Saw-lite torture porn, but it's quickly shut down when the state of Connecticut doesn't think the movie is portraying the state in a positive light. Jack, who is trying to run a network where all the shows work, realizes that her movie used to be a sitcom pilot. Long story short, the answer is product placement, and lots of it. The movie becomes a ridiculously inappropriate, yet family-friendly vehicle for shilling every product under the sun. In other words, the perfect project for Jenna.
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Want more? The full recap starts right below!Lemon and Kenneth march into Tracy's dressing room to interrogate Grizz and Dot Com about Tracy's whereabouts. They play coy, so Kenneth pulls out a knife and says, "We have ways of making people talk..." Then he pulls out an apple and continues, "By giving them fresh apple slices." Lemon plays bad cop, saying the show is on the line. Dot Com agrees that they want Tracy back, too. "Do you know how much our Cobra payments are?" he asks, adding, "And he's the only one who knows the combination to the candy safe." Pan over to a clear safe holding scads of candy. Grizz chagrins, "The worst part is being able to see the candy!" Lemon threatens to stop letting them use her office for their history club. "That's ironic," says Dot Com, "because week's topic is fascism." They pound it out as Lemon gives them the side eye. She leaves, shutting the door in Kenneth's face. Credits.
Lemon heads to Jack's office so they can powwow about more possible ways to find Tracy. Jack says Kenneth should just Skype Tracy, but Lemon tells him Tracy is the one to initiate contact -- and only on special occasions. She tells him there's a chance he'll call tomorrow for his lizard Jeremy's birthday. Other than that, there only lead is the local pizza box she spotted in Tracy's last Skype session. She says they traced the phone number to a pizzeria in Queens. "Listen to me," she quips, "I sound like Cagney and Lacey, but without the slutty clothes." Jack tells Lemon she has to find Tracy because the show works with him. It's all part of Jack's new plan to fix NBC by making only shows that work. Gone are the days of shows like Who Nose?, about an olfactory-deficient detective who must use every sense but smell to solve crimes, and Dad 2.0, about a father who programs a computer to take care of his son after he's gone.
Down in the studio, Pete is getting interrogated by the crew members when Tracy is coming back. One in particular named Reggie (Rob Riggle), calls Pete a "bald bitch" and razzes him with such classics as "That's what your wife told me in the shower this morning." Hey-oh! Pete acknowledges that he's been bald -- ever since he hit that gypsy's kid with his car -- but insists he's still the boss. Instead of subservience, he gets a guy coming out in a swimming cap, dancing around, and yelling, "I'm the bald bitch!" as the crew guys laugh at Pete.
Jenna enters the writers' room, pronouncing, "Listen up, fives, a 10 is speaking!" She tells them that her JennaBabies were recalled after it was discovered they were merely a front to smuggle drugs from Mexico. As such, she's got another back-up plan: She's starring in a movie called Take My Hand. She describes, "It's kind of an artsy character study about a young woman who has a lot of holes drilled into her head by a deranged veterinarian named Slaughterface." She says the movie has some serious cred because "the producers of this movie rented Saw and watched it." She tells the gang she'll be in Stamford, Connecticut, filming until further notice, then adds, "On an unrelated matter, does anyone know where I can get intimate bleaching done in Stamford, Connecticut?"
Seeing that they don't, she leaves. She runs into Pete along the way and tells him she's leaving to shoot a movie. He sputters, "What? You can't do that." She retorts, "That's what your wife told me in the shower this morning!" She laughs and raises her hand to high five. When he leaves her hanging, she high fives his forehead and traipses out. Pete continues inside, where Frank asks if they can order lunch from Ikea. As producer, Pete insists he gets to decide where they order lunch. Frank proposes a contest of strength to determine where they order. They have an arm wrestling match, and Pete handily (get it?) beats Frank, then proudly declares, "Who's ?"
Queens. Lemon and Kenneth head to Federici's pizzeria with a bit in which Kenneth is supposed to be Lemon's son, who is studying at the New York Pizza Academy. The pizzaiolo, a Pizza Academy of New York man, says he should hate Kenneth on sight, then asks what frat Kenneth is pledging. Kenneth sees through his trick question -- there are no frats at PANY, silly! With that, the pizzaiolo is bound by pizza academy tradition to grant them any request. "Wow," says Lemon, "this could not have gone any better." They ask for all his delivery receipts for the last two months. Says the pizzaiolo, "Ah, you got that delivery receipt exam coming up, huh? What a bear!" He hands them a box of receipts and heads to the back. Kenneth deems this pursuit a dead-end, and beckons Lemon to follow him out. She grabs the receipts and makes a run for it.
30 Rock. Frank beats everyone at the show at arm wrestling, one by one. From Cerie to Grizz and Dot Com (together), and even Jack, who congratulates him, saying, "According to the transitive property, you've just defeated Moammar Kadafi at arm wrestling." Toofer wonders how Pete is so good at arm wrestling. Pete admits he never works out, but we get a flash to his home life, where one child is on his back, holding back an arm while he uses his other arm to shove down the heads of his unruly children. Since he was victorious in the contests of strength, Pete gets to pick the lunch order. He screams, "Takeout from Hooters!" Frank points out that that makes no sense. Pete throws up his arms and yells, "We'll know they touched it!"
Stamford. Jenna is filming a scene for her blatant Saw knock-off until the director abruptly yells cut. He tells the crew that they didn't get the tax break from Connecticut they expected and don't have enough money to move forward. For some reason, the film commission didn't think torture porn portrayed the state in a positive light. Go figure.
Back in Queens, Lemon and Kenneth find the building where Tracy's signature pizza ("Large cheese pizza with one slice taken out so I can pretend I'm eating Pac-Man like my hero Blinky the Ghost") has been delivered many times over the last two months. We see a Silence of the Lambs-style crosscut between Lemon ringing the doorbell, Tracy hearing the doorbell, Lemon still ringing, and Tracy getting up to answer the door. Tracy finally answers the door to reveal he's not been found but has changed his delivery order to Thai food. Lemon and Kenneth are met with a strange man, who says he moved into the apartment two weeks ago. Kenneth notices a copy of Black Yachts magazine and a Rubik's Cube smashed out of anger that have been thrown in the dumpsters. With these clues, he knows for sure that Tracy has been at this very apartment. Lemon thinks it's hopeless and desperately asks the stranger if she can work for him. "I'll do anything!" she tells him. "I'll get in my bra, and you can throw nails at me. I'll dance for you." As he closes the door, Kenneth grabs Lemon by the shoulders and shakes her. He tells her they have others options, such as dropping down to their knees and screaming to the wind, "Mr. Jordan, where are you? Come back? For the love of God, come back or we'll die!"
Jenna marches into Jack's office to tell him about her problems on-set. Through process of deduction, Jack realizes that Take My Hand is an old NBC property that has wasted millions while languishing in rewrites. Jenna tells Jack that he'll never see any money off it because "Connecticut's being a douchebag," and the only way they will get funding is to make the movie an advertisement for Connecticut tourism. Jack vows to make the movie work. Jenna suggests they should "hire some of those ugly people who have the papers and change the shapes on it." Ventures Jack, "Writers?" He puts the kibosh on that idea, suggesting he and Jenna spearhead this project themselves. Jenna tells him to meet him in her dressing room, saying she'll get a computer from one of the ugly people. Jack chips in "the world's greatest encyclopedia, [his] mind."
Downstairs, Pete is passing through the studio when Reggie asks, "Hey, is that a to-do list? 'Cause if your wife's on there, I've already taken care of her." Pete angrily challenges him to "the wrestling of arms" at midnight on the stage in front of everyone. Reggie thinks tomorrow would be more convenient. Pete says he'll meet him anytime, anywhere -- except for a 5 PM PTA meeting he can't miss because he's this week's Snack Dad. Reggie must be shaking in his boots!
Out in the corridor, Jack notes that Lemon looks like Hell. She explains that she was spending the day thinking like Tracy in an effort to find where he's hiding. The results were predictably disastrous. Her last hope is to get Jeremy the lizard and hope Tracy calls to wish him a happy birthday.
Jack finds Jenna in her dressing room. She informs him that Connecticut is home to the oldest public library in the United States. He wonders, "Could you use that to motivate Slaughterface sewing the sheriff's mouth to his own anus?" Jenna types away furiously. Jack deems her work elegant but asks if "vaginatorium" should be capitalized.
Pete and Frank leave work for the day. Along the way, Pete sees Reggie at one of the doors. He brags about how he's going to humiliate Reggie in front of all his meathead buddies. Frank thinks Pete's like a new man. "I am," affirms Pete. "Last night I had sex with Paula, and neither one of us was wearing a Walkman." They continue looking at Reggie disdainfully until they notice his ex-wife come up and publicly berate him for being a broke loser. Pete comments, "Never thought I'd feel sorry for a guy with a tattoo of a leprechaun vomiting on a book."
Jenna resumes filming, only now there's a "Visit Connecticut" poster on the wall behind her, the latest murder victim is wearing a UConn Huskies T-shirt, and the blood splatter on the wall now reads, "www.IHeartConnecticut.com." Slaughterface enters the room, revealing a Yale banner and a postcard-style Connecticut poster behind him. He tells her ominously, "No one's coming to save you... because we're deep inside one of Connecticut's 30 beautiful state forests. Thirty!" Jenna begs, "Oh please, don't kill me. I still haven't tried the famous seafood pizza at Sally's in New Haven!" The director yells cut and tells them to move on to the scene where Slaughterface Santa beats Jenna to the docent to the Danbury Railway Museum. Jack busts in, telling them to hold off because he's just convinced Wal-Mart to sponsor the movie, as long as it is a family-friendly, wholesome production. He tells them the production will be profitable and calls Jenna to her dressing room to continue writing.
Down in the studio, Pete calls Reggie aside. He tells him he knows what it's like for your kids to think you're a loser. He offers to throw the arm wrestling match to save Reggie some face. "You know what your wife told me in the shower this morning?" Reggie asks. "You're a good guy!"
Elsewhere, Kenneth has fallen asleep waiting for Tracy's call. The computer finally buzzes with an incoming Skype. Lemon warns Kenneth to act completely natural so they can hold Tracy on the line as long as possible. Kenneth immediately freaks out and starts speaking in a quasi-Australian accent with lots of strange dips in his cadence. Tracy senses something is wrong... with Jeremy. Lemon hops into view and tells Tracy not to hang up. "Uh-oh! Jeremy, call me when you're alone," he tells the lizard before hanging up. Kenneth apologizes to Lemon for screwing up their one shot, but she's satisfied because she now knows where Tracy is.
Stamford. Slaughterface walks into the scene with a Santa hat on, saying, "Merry Christmas!" Jenna screams joyfully, "I practice abstinence!" Cut out to a muppet in the shot as they all scream, "Connecticut!" And... cut! Jack returns with Phil Rosenthal, creator of Everybody Loves Raymond, who has offered to pay the production five million dollars so he can pursue his dream of becoming an actor. Jenna looks at him coldly, saying that she never heard back from him about her audition and wondering if he made a decision. He tells her, "Yeah, 15 years ago. We went with Doris Roberts. But thank you for tying your headshot around a brick and throwing it through my window."
Studio at 30 Rock. Reggie thanks Pete for taking a fall so he can look good in front of his kid. Pete says self-righteously that all that matters is that he's doing the right thing. He blissfully lets Reggie win the match, then we abruptly cut to Frank beating Pete at arm wrestling. He's wearing the same clothes he had on yesterday, and it appears Pete's reign as World Arm Wrestling Champion was all a figment of his own imagination. Pete goes back to being the schlub he always was. But is Reggie his very own Tyler Durden? Or just an asshole? Either way, the writers are getting lunch from Ikea. Mmmmm... Swedish meatballs and soft serve.
Lemon walks into her own apartment and marches up the stairs to her addition. She finds Tracy, who tries to cover by assuming a pose and yelling "Wax statue!" Kenneth thinks they've been thwarted, but Lemon sees through the charade. While they were Skyping, she recognized her college futon with "its trademark absence of sex stains." She can't believe Tracy has been hiding in her apartment for the last two weeks and calls it the stupidest idea he's ever had. He disagrees, saying it's his most clever because TGS is Lemon's life. Her apartment is the last place she would be. "Life lesson from unlikely source," he throws in her face, also noting that he'll waive the $60,000 in appearance fees. Lemon realizes that she has, indeed, returned to her place only to sleep, during which Tracy has whispered suggestions in her ear to buy every kind of mustard. Still, she hasn't gotten the right kind -- the red one that says "Ketchup" on the label. He stops short, saying, "I hear it now. That's on me."
Lemon asks what's wrong with Tracy that he's afraid to come back to the show. Kenneth asks, "Did you also spill ice cream on your mom's boyfriend's record player?" Tracy says that he wanted the level, but now the pressure of expectations was too great. Lemon tells him he can get rid of the pressure by returning to his old ways. If he just acts like the malfunctioning member of society he once was, he can enjoy his old life again. With this anti-pep talk, Tracy is ready to break out some serious antics. He takes off his shirt and knocks over a lamp as he walks out, looking back with a knowing grin. Kenneth wishes him well: "Godspeed, Mr. Jordan!"
Bonus! Jack shows Lemon the finished cut of Take My Hand. Jenna beatboxes on the set filled with Huggies, Tide, Oreos, and other products while Rosenthal raps in a cop costume and Slaughterface dances like Sudeikis in the background. Jenna shills that the single is available on iTunes. Lemon thinks no one will pay to see this dreck, but Jack says it doesn't matter because it's already profitable. Cut back to the screen, where there's a number to text if you want to vote for Rosenthal. Lemon wonders why there's a voting option if it's a movie, not a live TV show. Jack says, again, it doesn't matter because some numbskull out there will text the number, and they'll make 99 cents each time. At which point, Lemon texts the number so that Rosenthal won't win over the muppet. The bubble pops up over her picture, and an announcer says, "To vote for Liz Lemon, text 'Liz' to 6-2-2-8-8."
Time for jokes, this week with 100% more Temple Grandin!
Tracy Is the Lizard King
Jack: What about Grizz and Dot Com?
Lemon: Neither does anyone Tracy's close to -- his wife, Charles Barkley, Edward James Almost, who is an Edward James Olmos lookalike that Tracy is friends with...
Jack: Kenneth talks to Tracy on Skype. Why doesn't he just call him?
Lemon: It doesn't work that way. Tracy only contacts Kenneth on special occasions like Bastille Day.
Jack: I'm going to go ahead and assume that Bastille is a stripper.
Lemon: As well you should. Now there's a chance he may call tomorrow because it's his lizard's birthday.
Jack: Has it really been a year since we were all at the Waldorf, eating that cake made out of lizard meal?
Lemon: Yep, Jeremy's almost 11.
What's the Opposite of a Francophile? Jack.
Jack: This morning I figured out how to fix NBC -- we will only do shows that work.
Lemon: That's nonsense.
Jack: Do you know what the business model is in the entertainment industry is? Make 10 shows and hope that one of them works. We produce more failed pilots than the French Air Force. [Jack and Lemon high five.]
Age Ain't Nothin' But a Fumble
Lemon: Well, as hard it is to believe given our apparent ages [points to Kenneth], this is my son.
Pizzeria Owner: Seems about right.
Lemon: Well... good.
Live Free or Try Hard (Yeah, I Know That's New Hampshire)
Director: Cut! I just got a text from the studio. We're shutting down production.
Jenna: What?
Slaughterface: But I turned down Carousel at the Goodspeed for this.
Director: I'm sorry, Dana, but our budget depends on getting a tax break from Connecticut, and they say we're not portraying the state in a positive light.
Jenna: How are we not doing that, Sean? [Cut to a shot of her in front of a wall with "Welcome to Hell" written on it in blood.] I'm a little baffled over here.
Director: Yeah, it's just that we're spending taxpayer money saying there's a veterinarian running around Connecticut trying to make a house of breasts for the governor to live in.
Jenna: But there's a positive message at the end of it -- If you're a woman in Connecticut, Slaughterface will kill you!
The Devolution of Torture Porn
Jenna: Jack, can we talk as one 10 to another.
Jack: I'm an 11 but continue.
Jenna: Me, my ass double, and a drill who once appeared in Home Improvement are currently starring in a film called Take My Hand.
Jack: Really? Years ago, Universal had a project by that name. It was a romantic comedy with Reese Witherspoon and Patrick Dempsey.
Jenna: Reese Witherspoon is just a likeable version of me.
Jack: Then she dropped out, and it was rewritten as a buddy comedy with Dempsey and Josh Hartnett, but everyone fell asleep during the table read, so we moved it over to Telemundo where they tried to turn it into a variety show hosted by a supermodel and a soccer ball with a mustache.
Jenna: I met that soccer ball once at a no-hands-allowed sex party!
Jack: Then after another round of rewrites, it was picked up by our low-budget thriller high-budget porno division Splatter Flicks, and now it's a horror movie starring [checks his computer]... "any blonde actress."
Jenna: Thank you!
Jack: Wait, that's our project? This is exactly what I was talking to Lemon about. Three years, millions on rewrites, $20,000 in first class flights for the drill! And we still have nothing to show for it.
Thinking Like Tracy
Jack: Lemon, you look terrible, and I once watched you eat oysters while you had a cold.
Lemon: We had, Jack, then we lost him. So Kenneth and I had to spend the rest of the afternoon thinking like Tracy. I ended up eating a swordfish dinner at a strip club, and Kenneth grabbed a cop's gun and shot a blimp.
Jack: Well, tomorrow's another day, so go home, drink a glass of wine, and watch a show about wedding cake disasters.
Lemon: I can't go home, Jack. TGS goes away if I don't find Tracy. I'm just going to wait up and hope Tracy calls his lizard.
Tracy: Did you make sure Tracy wasn't pretending to be his own wax figure at Madame Tussauds?
Lemon: Yes. There was some confusion, and I ended up punching the real LeVar Burton... I'm gonna go get Jeremy. I hope he's not still in heat. He has gotten my top off before.
The Pitfalls of Fame
Tracy: As a time saver, I will refer to the two of you as "KLemon." I wanted that level, KLemon-- Now remember, to save time, you two are KLemon -- it's a combination of--
Lemon: Just keep going.
Tracy: I had everything I dreamed of -- awards, respect, Justin Long's autograph. But I also got expectations. People thought I could change the world, and it's too much pressure, like the time I got stuck in Temple Grandin's hugging machine at the Golden Globes party.
Lemon: You pretended to be in Africa so that no one would be disappointed in you.
Tracy: I'm sorry that I did this to you, half of KLemon. I had no choice. Sean Penn wanted me to go to Haiti with him, and I'm not strong enough for the pain and the human misery... of a three-hour plane ride with Sean Penn.
Tracy Takes Off
Tracy: I'm tired of hiding. I just want my old life back.
Lemon: Then you need to stop respecting you and remember what an idiot you are. You're off the leash, Tracy.
Tracy: It's not a leash, it's a very long skin tag!
Lemon: You want your old life back? You're Tracy Jordan! Hulk Hogan called you a dirtbag, the NAACP once hired someone to kill you, you wore a penis hat to Princess Diana's funeral!
Tracy: Because I had worn it to their wedding. It was special to the three of us!
Lemon: You were the worst, and you can be again. You just have to go out there and remind people who you really are. Go trash a hotel room, expose yourself to Elmo, visit OJ in jail again, attack the Lincoln Memorial with a hammer!