30 Rock is over and I have feelings and none of them make sense

So um.

I decided I needed to make a 30 Rock post. But honestly, I'm not really sure where to begin. I mean, obviously this show means a lot to me, considering I cried like a total lame-ass at it tonight and it's probably the first time I cried in like 3 years. Obviously it means a lot to me, because it led me to realizing that TV and comedy were the two things I wanted to at least attempt to dedicate my life to. Obviously it means a lot to me because I sprinted home from my last class in the freezing cold while on the phone with my mom telling her to make sure she turned on the TV so that if I was late for the series finale, I could just rewind it and pretend I wasn't.

And honestly, part of  me feels like this isn't exactly the end. I mean, it is, but this show's impact is never going to disappear from my life. I'm still going to watch every single episode over and over and over again. I'm still going to watch it in syndication every night, even if I'm just basking in the sound of its jokes as background noise. And I know that pretty much every single piece of comedy I watch - or every single piece of comedy I write - was partly inspired by my love for 30 Rock.

I've told the story of how I got into 30 Rock like a million times, so I'm not going to tell it again, but basically, I can safely say I grew up with the show. It started when I was an awkward, acne-clad, jew-fro rocking 8th grader (note: only the jew-fro has gone away, although prescription acne medication is certainly helping!) who really didn't know who the hell I was or what I was doing. I mean, my favorite shows were Mad TV and American Idol, guys. Shit was dire. But I decided to try out 30 Rock because my friend Ashlee would kill me if I didn't, and I remember loving it pretty instantly. I was only 13 and I'm pretty sure I barely understood half of the jokes - but there was something about it that was so unique, that was unlike anything I had ever seen in a TV show before. They were just so unafraid to be totally, unbelievably weird. I mean, I watched Pee Wee Herman dress up as a deformed Austrian prince and kill himself with a glass of wine. That kind of stuff has a lasting effect on kids.

Honestly, it didn't instantly click for me that the reason I was so drawn into 30 Rock was because it felt like parts of my own, weird brain were being televised right before my eyes. And there were times early on when my lack of identity got in the way of my enjoyment of 30 Rock, as I tried to get into other dumb interests, like...music or something. Blerg. But as I got older, I started to realize just how happy the show made me, and I tried to figure out why. And then it clicked. This was me. This bizarre, ridiculous show was the thing that brought me joy and the thing that I was most passionate about. It was around then that I realized nothing made me happier than sitting down and watching 30 Rock and experiencing some of the most daring, original, creative, balls-to-the-wall comedy I had ever seen in my life. And then I kind of never looked back. I started watching other comedy shows, I started writing my own comedy. I had found my identity. I was still kind of the awkward kid from the 8th grade, but I was the awkward kid from the 8th grade with a purpose, and that purpose was to spread my weirdness to everyone else, like 30 Rock had done.

So since then, there's been dozens of comedy shows I've also grown to love - at times, seemingly even more than 30 Rock itself. But these last few weeks of 30 Rock have really brought home the realization that nothing will ever top 30 Rock for me, because 30 Rock is what started it all. Every single show that I love, I love because I was a nerdy teenager who looked forward to nothing more than spending 22 minutes with  Liz Lemon, Jack Donaghy, Jenna Maroney, Kenneth Parcell, Tracy Jordan, Pete Hornberger...even Lutz, guys, even Lutz. So while 30 Rock may not be making new episodes anymore, it's never going to be "over" for me. It's going to continue through everything I do in comedy, whether it be watching it or writing it or wishing I was writing it - whatever it may be, it'll all be because of 30 Rock.

Anyway this has had far too many feelings than I'm comfortable with. So I'll leave you all with this:

"Now I know how webisodes feel" - Tuesday Comedy Clusterfuck 1/8/13

New year, same old Tuesday comedy clusterfuck. Well, now with added Cougar Town! So let's dig right into the ridiculously abundant comedy choices our friend television gave us tonight.

Ben and Kate started off the year a little below the high standards it set for itself in the fall, having one of those typical "off" episodes that tries to cram too much into one half-hour. The only plot that felt completely satisfying was the BJ sub-plot, which had her meet her mother and successfully add another comic layer to her already hilarious character. I always like when we meet a characters' parents for the first time and it all feels so natural that it actually seems like that character was shaped by whatever guest actor is dropping in to play their parent and not a room of writers, and Ben & Kate achieved that with the BJ plotline. The rest of the episode was...fine, and had some really great moments - particularly from Dakota Johnson, who is already nearing all-star levels. But the show was juggling so much - Ben's failed business prospects! Kate's insecurities as a single mother! Being happy with yourself! - that it never quite stuck the landing on any of it. All of these themes are viable directions for the characters and would've been better off in separate episodes, rather than being crammed into one. Still, an episode that ended with a fake newscast by Ben and BJ which included the line "the only safe squirrel is a dead squirrel" can't be all that bad.

New Girl kicked off 2013 in pretty strong fashion, though. "Cabin" was a solid showing of everything the show does well - excellent character moments, a handful of top-notch Nick Miller speeches, and subtlety impressive characterization. Really, the entire episode could've just been the two couples in the cabin getting drunk and acting ridiculous, and it would've been a quality half-hour of television. But, as has become typical with New Girl, the show yearns for something more, so "Cabin" was both hilarious and a clear set-up for upcoming character movement. The show in particular seems to be building towards some kind of revelation for Nick, trying to figure out what it is he truly wants. Clearly, what he wanted wasn't Angie, someone completely out of his comfort zone who he thought "pushed him forward" but really just confused both of them. Having the episode end with Nick, freshly dumped by Angie, not quite processing his break-up was an interesting choice, and one that sets up a lot of interesting territory for the next few episodes. But I would be lying if I said my favorite part of the episode wasn't B-plot - a delightfully cringe-worthy story about Schmidt demonstrating some hardcore reverse racism and trying to get Winston to "embrace his culture". It's not really a sweeping statement to say that the scene where Schmidt and Winston invite a man into their car and the three of them proceed to think they're robbing each other is the funniest TV scene of 2013 so far, but I feel like it might hold that title for a while.

Happy Endings had two offerings this week, one on Sunday and another one tonight. Why ABC is doing this is...not really as exciting as it seems, they just needed something to fill the hole 666 Park Avenue left and they happened to have unscheduled episodes of Happy Endings/Apartment 23. Anyway, Sunday's episode was Happy Endings at its playful best, throwing out two comfortingly wacky plotlines and watching its actors sell the hell out of them. I thought tonight's episode, though, was the show's weakest in quite a while. The fact that I still laughed pretty much through-out the entire thing goes to show just how consistently satisfying the show has been lately, but I thought the plots were all pretty dull and just never really came together. I was surprised, in particular, with how straight the show played the pretty generic pop star plot. Typically, Happy Endings will take a stock sitcom storyline and tweak it to fit their own outlandish style - like how Sunday's episode looked like it was going to have a groan-worthy "characters break something while their friend is away and try to fix it" plot, until said characters end up killing their friends' racist parrot in the process. But tonight's plotlines - especially the pop star one - were pretty much straight out of Sitcoms 101. The exception would probably be Max's plotline, which did a typically great job of subverting a lot of gay stereotypes to tell a weirdly meaningful and simultaneously bizarre story about Max's sexuality. The other two had plenty of laughs, but ultimately lacked that spark that makes for a truly great Happy Endings.

Don't Trust the B---- in Apartment 23 has been seriously fucked over by ABC's weird scheduling decisions. After Sunday's episode put June in a new job and had Mark almost ready to admit his feelings for her, tonight's episode - a holdover from Season 1 - hit the reset button and put her back in the coffee shop while Mark just started to realize he had any feelings for June. Despite all that, both of this week's episodes of the show were really good, demonstrating the show's impressive ability to put together an incredibly ridiculously and cartoonish half-hour and still somehow make us care about the characters in them. In fact, if you take tonight's episode and stack it up against Sunday's (produced much later) episode, you can see how much the characters have grown over the course of the show's run - particularly June, who's gone from a Chuckie Finster "I don't know if that's such a good ideaaaa, Chloe" type to someone who can be just as cunning as Chloe herself, in her own way. I mean, tonight's episode had her desperately trying to win the love and respect of her neighbors, while Sunday's episode had her stabbing her nemesis at work. That's some excellent character work. Maybe one day we'll get to see in the order it was supposed to happen.

I don't even really have anything to say about The Mindy Project anymore, other than the usual "it should be so much better" type of stuff that everyone on the internet is already saying. At this point, it just feels like the show is about absolutely nothing - the plots are all meaningless, just about every character other than Mindy, Danny, and maybe Morgan is totally disposable, and the show doesn't even really have a central focus other than "Mindy's a mess" anymore. Tonight's episode could have been a nice story about Mindy's relationship with her brother, and it could've provided us with some nice-needed characterization for the show's problematic lead character. Instead, it...ended with a broad and not all that funny rap number where Mindy had to stand in for her brother's back-up singer and sing dirty lines to him, and...that was it. The show has just added two more great comedy writers to its staff - 30 Rock alumni Jack Burditt and Tracey Wingfield. Let's hope they can get this show on track. I mean, no one else could, but...

Oh, and I also watched the cable premiere of Cougar Town. I've only sporadically watched the show, but I did watch the premiere and I enjoyed it quite a bit. It's one of those shows on my backlog to catch up with, and I'm hoping to do so as soon as possible. I'm planning on writing something about what the show's move to cable could potentially mean for the broadcast sitcom soon, so I'll talk about it a little more in-depth there, if it happens!