'30 Rock': The Tracy question

There's a question that comes up pretty regularly in my household as the fiancee and I watch 30 Rock: Is Tracy Morgan a genius, a complete nutjob, or some combination of the two?

I still haven't resolved the question in my mind, but tonight's episode definitely fell on the "genius" side for Mr. Morgan. And the show, too, which easily had its best episode of the post-strike mini-season.

I'll try to keep the spoilers from falling into Uncanny Valley.

The episode was full of palace intrigue, with Jack grooming Liz to be his successor, Devin Banks (hooray Will Arnett) still trying to scheme his way into the CEO's office and Dr. Spaceman running around the studio in a cape.

It was Tracy and Frank, though, that had me just about falling off the couch with their mini-Amadeus drama over Tracy's fervent need to create something that will leave a lasting legacy his children can be proud of. So of course, he's creating a pornographic video game.

Tracy's creation sticks in the craw of porn connoisseur Frank, who has been working for years to crack the secret of Uncanny Valley -- something, he assures Tracy, that "history's greatest perverts -- Walt Disney, Larry Flynt, the Japanese" have never been able to crack. That is, the tendency of realistic-looking animated humans to look creepy rather than pleasant (think Tom Hanks in The Polar Express).

Despite Frank's exhortations, and even after having it explained in Star Wars, Tracy will not be denied. "My genius has come alive," he says, "like toys when your back is turned." (This, by the way, is my new favorite line ever, and I will be making every effort to employ it in everyday conversation whenever possible.)

And wouldn't you know, he's done it. Frank may rage at the inequality of genius, but Tracy has found a way out of Uncanny Valley.

Which brings us back around to the question I've posed at the top. Tina Fey has said more than once that the character Tracy Jordan is sort of like the actor Tracy Morgan, but magnified several times. What's so fantastic about both the way Tracy the character is written and Tracy the actor plays it, though, is that you're never quite sure (I'm not, anyway) where one ends and the other begins. It's that little thought of, "Hmm -- does he really believe/think/do that?" that makes it all that much funnier.

In the nominal A-story, meanwhile, Don Geiss (a returning Rip Torn) tells Jack that even though Devin Banks is about to marry his daughter, he wants Jack to take over GE. Jack, despite telling himself he wouldn't, gets all misty at the news, but Geiss is OK with it: "You get one cry in life; you've chosen well." The only catch is that Jack has to keep his promotion a secret until the board of directors rubber-stamps it.

Jack then decides to groom Liz as his replacement, after seeing security-cam footage of her mauling Devin in an elevator to make up for the fact that she'd just spilled the beans on how she accidentally sold NBC to the Germans a few episodes back. ("To get through it I pretended he was a sandwich," Liz notes.) Jack knows he can trust her, and after taking a gander at the face-slappingly high salary she'll get, Liz abandons her jazz-handy creative persona for the straight-ahead arm-pumping of the corporate life.

She appears to take to it, too, coming up with "Button Classic" for the microwave division and immediately saving the company a few million bucks in research costs. Trouble is, though, she also takes to being "business drunk" ("It's like rich drunk," Jack tells her. "Either way, it's legal to drive.") and forgets to bring Geiss a dessert, causing him to lapse into a diabetic coma. Call Dr. Spaceman!

And so we get Chris Parnell in a cape. There's no reason for it. But it's funny.

Geiss, though, can't be revived, and Devin, seeing an opening, gets the board to approve Don's daughter Kathy, his beard wife-to-be, as the new CEO. Kathy, who was seen earlier in the episode eating flowers and who, Devin says, likes to crawl into the space behind the dryer.

Blurg, indeed.

Presumably the Jack-Geiss-Devin story will continue to play out over the two remaining episodes of the season, and I can only hope Tracy's does too. We'll end this, as we always do, with the bullet points:

• Geiss to Jack: "You hung in there while so many cracked under the pressure. Like Bob Duncan." Jack: The head of the stress-ball division hanged himself."
• A selection of Tracy lines: "I've got to do something important so my kids respect me -- like be a senator, or a wizard." "Eureka! [Griz: "What is it?"] We should call Eureka, she always has good ideas." "Damnit! Why is leaving my children a legacy that will live forever so hard? It's been almost a half-hour."
• Liz's mean streak has really been played up in the past couple weeks, first with Dennis and tonight with her dismissive attitude toward the TGS staff and Devin after she gets promoted. Fey does this stuff pretty well, so I hope we get to see more of it occasionally in the future.
• Jack, wondering when he can share the news of his promotion: "I want my mother to know before she dies so she goes to the grave a defeated woman."

What's your take on Tracy: Genius, madman or both? And how do you see these two stories playing out for the rest of the 30 Rock season?

E-mail

• Digg
• Facebook
• Fark
• Yahoo Buzz
• Stumbleupon