<div xmlns:cc="http://creativecommons.org/ns#" about="http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinyredtype/1231397269/">http://www.flickr.com/photos/shinyredtype/ / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0
I don't have a vast amount to say about last week's 30 Rock premiere, except that I would watch Tracy Morgan walk down the streets of any city on pretty much any day for almost any given half-hour time slot. But one thing did strike me about the show. Far more than any other mainstream television program (The Wire excluded, both on grounds that it's The Wire and that it's on HBO), 30 Rock organizes and engages with the idea of organized labor. That makes sense in part because television as an industry is fairly unionized, so it's realistic within the context to have unions in the mix. But 30 Rock also manages to mine some considerable humor from not simply the existence of unions, but from the details of the way unions and employers interact.
Take "Sandwich Day," in which the TGS staff eat the fantastic Italian sub the show's Teamsters have brought for Liz Lemon, and are required, by the terms of the union's contract, to defeat them in a drinking contest to obtain another one for her. It's a fantastic joke on the absurdities of old-school, grandfathered contracts, but it's also extremely funny to watch the TGS staff flounder as they try to relate to the Teamsters. Whether it's Lutz declaring that he knows "all about driving the long-haul" because he roadtripped to South by Southwest, or Jack, in an irritated tone, informing the staff that the drinking contest requirement is "in their contract" and so he can't do anything about it, it's amusing--and perhaps even a little gratifying--to watch the folks on the privileged end of that particular interaction flounder.
And one of the most notable parts of the premiere, for me, was that they did it again, sending Kenneth and the other pages out on strike after Jack cut their overtime:
And the details were absolutely perfect. The pages form an alliance with a local that represents mall Santas and bucket drummers. And Steve Buscemi in his always-fabulous role as Jack's private dick is back, this time as an undercover union buster. He's incredibly incompetent at it, of course, but how can you resist lines like these, which Salon's Heather Havrilesky justly singles out:
Jack: Lenny, this page strike is an embarrassment to the company.
Lenny: I get it. It's like I tell my assistant: Your weight is a reflection on me.
Jack: I can't have that apple-cheeked goon outside screaming about my bonus. What are my options?
Lenny: Let me ask you a question, Mr. Donaghy. How do you kill a snake?
Jack: Cut off the head!
Lenny: Of course! Thank you. Now I won't be afraid to go into my garage. All right here's how we play this page thing. I go undercover, infiltrate the union. Take this Parcell guy down from the inside.
That Tina Fey, who was out on picket lines during the writers' strike two seasons ago, would have progressive union politics isn't remotely surprising. But in a world where fewer and fewer people are familiar with the mechanics of union politics, it's a brave act. Maybe it's part of the insular conversation that keeps 30 Rock's audience relatively small. But it's a brave act none the less.