30 Rock, How I Will Miss You

Since it was the debut of 30 Rock that first inspired this blog, it seems only right to post about its end. Before 30 Rock and Liz Lemon, I never knew there were other women out there like me, who loved Star Wars and ham, who often didn't know which part of the dress was "front" and who would much rather stay home and watch "Mad Men" than go to any weird parties where people talked to each other.   What a relief to discover I was not alone.

And then to find out that this show was not just a great piece of news for my self-esteem but also ridiculously inventive, brilliant and breathtakingly funny -- well, how fabulous was that?

I will admit with shame that I skipped a season or two somewhere during 30 Rock's run, when it seemed that the humor had become less clever and inventive and more cold and mean...and not funny. Which was kind of a deal breaker. Call me old fashioned but I like my humor funny.

So I've been quietly compiling this last season on my DVR, wondering if I should even jump back into the pool. But then the reviews for the finale started coming in and fueled by nostalgia, I got up at 5 a.m., put on my earphones and watched it in the bathroom where my sleeping son wouldn't sense me playing with what he has clearly decided is his iPhone. (This is how I watch TV now. It takes me six days to watch a whole Castle between brushing my teeth and flossing.)

All of this is my long, out of practice way of saying the 30 Rock finale was perfect in every way imaginable. There was a Brian Williams joke. Great Tracy Jordan jokes. Pitch perfect satirical tear-down of mommy message boards. Lutz finally got his revenge (Blimpies!), Kenneth proved his immortality and even Jenna was funny, as she finally experienced heartbreak with the removal of her dressing room mirror. But best of all, there was my dear Jack Donaghy's shipboard confession of platonic love -- a speech that managed to be poetic, beautiful, charming and still include the phrase "scale bone mountain." Everything I had loved about 30 Rock was perfectly encapsulated in that one short scene.

I will miss you, 30 Rock. But I promise you this -- I will use the word "hogcock" in a sentence (out loud and not just in my head) at least once this year. It's the least I can do for a show that gave me so much.

12 Fictional Females Who Don't Take Crap From Anybody! Day 2

Emma Peel, "The Avengers"

WHY SHE RULES: Arguably, there's never been another woman on TV as unmistakeably cool as Emma Peel. For two years in the mid-1960s, Mrs. Peel served up feminine modernity with an elegance, charm and humor that made everyone sit up and take notice. She was a scientist, a woman of independent means, who joined with British spy John Steed to solve crimes and protect the world from evil-doers, whether they be deranged kitties, comic book artists or cyborgs -- and she did it will wearing the most awesome clothes ever. She could defeat bad guys with her intellect or her karate moves, both worked just fine. And she always, always had witty things to say and time for champagne when the hard work was done. As Steed said at the beginning of each episode, "Mrs. Peel, we're needed." And as suave and awesome as he was in his own right, this dynamic duo would not have been the same without Mrs. Peel. And 1960s England would not have been half as cool.

Hermione Granger, "Harry Potter"

WHY SHE RULES: Honestly, what would Harry and Ron do without Hermione? For one thing, they'd have flunked out of Hogwarts ten minutes after they got there, all covered in chocolate frogs and such. Hermione was the brains of that trio, a bad-ass witch who helped her friends work together to reach their potential and save the world from evil time and time again. She was the one who kept her head, kept the boys calm and cool and used her noggin to solve problems and make plans. She was not only a wickedly good witch, she was also the world's best study buddy. And she still had time to woo Ron, keeping him entranced and scared while still possessing the awesome ability to turn him into a squirrel at any moment. What woman hasn't dreamed of that kind of power? Exactly.

Maude, "Harold and Maude"

WHY SHE RULES: If you've never seen "Harold and Maude," you're missing out on one of the most wonderfully original female characters ever created. For those who don't know, "Harold and Maude" is a film about Harold, a young man obsessed with death and Maude, a Holocaust survivor who loves life, and the brief romance they share in the days before her 80th birthday. From the moment Maude picks up Harold at a funeral and she dupes him into helping her steal a car, you know that this is a woman who marches to the beat not only of her own drummer but an entire percussion section. She lives in a train car, loves sculpture, collects the air from memorable places and packs all the joy of life into every second that she breathes. The audience falls in love with her just as quickly as Harold and it's because of her strength. This is a character who faces death not with guns or quick retorts but with sheer, unadulterated bravery. She's tough in all the ways that matter.

Liz Lemon, "30 Rock"

WHY SHE RULES: Liz Lemon let America know what you and I have known all along: nerdy women are awesome. She showed that knowing the difference between "Star Wars" and "Star Trek," wearing bi-curious shoes and being really, really smart doesn't make you less of a woman, it makes you more of an individual. Like her fictional predecessor Mary Richards, Liz Lemon is the quiet at the center of the storm, the rudder that keeps the Crazy Ship on course. Sure, she occasionally walks off with other people's babies, dates Beeper Kings and wears her dresses backwards, but who among us hasn't done that? Liz is a tough gal with a wicked sense of humor who's not ashamed to make a guy do "The Worm" when he gives her flack. She is her own person and doesn't care AT ALL what anyone else thinks of her -- okay, well, she cares for about five seconds but then she just gets mad. Liz Lemon is an American hero, goddamit, and in nerd country, she's our queen.

TOMORROW: The Final Four

Liz Lemon's Top Nerd-tastically Nerdy Moments

In celebration of the return of "30 Rock," here's a look at some of Liz Lemon's best nerd-defining moments:

"I'm going to gut you like a tauntaun!"
Liz Lemon loves her "Star Wars" and she's not ashamed to flaunt it! She smacks down Jenna every time she mistakes a certain "trekking of the stars" for "Star Wars," and she's not afraid to threaten Kenneth with a good tauntaun-style gutting when he won't reveal Tracy's whereabouts in "Hiatus." And best of all, she compares her fear of meetings with Jack to Captain Needa's fear of, well, getting dead with Darth Vader:



"Those shoes are definitely bi-curious."
Who among us hasn't been mistaken for a lesbian at least once? Jack Doneghy falls for the old stereotype that frumpily-dressed women are gay, which, as a side note, is a total disservice to the multitude of hot, well-dressed lesbians out there. Judging Liz by the bi-curious look of her shoes, he sets her up on a blind date with a gay woman. For any nerdy woman who has ever had to explain that wearing flats doesn't necessarily mean they eschew the dudes, this was pure gold.

"Are they still in there?"
Every once in a while, a comfortably dressed nerdy woman gets to don the glamorous duds. Liz gets that chance in "Black Tie," accompanying Jack to one of the social events of the season. Liz's gown and her ongoing reactions to it account for at least half the laughs in this brilliant episode. From putting the dress on backwards to wearing a polar fleece over it ("I didn't know I'd be going out...") to making a walk down a staircase look like a tense high-wire act ("Careful, careful...") to forgetting about her plunging neckline, doing a happy dance and immediately worrying that the girls had flown out, she's living every nerdy woman's anxiety-filled dream of dressing up pretty. Of course, she ultimately loses that dress by taunting a crazy, bottle-wielding Isabella Rossellini. Just like prom!



Everybody loves Gopher!
You know how when you meet a good looking guy, you lose all ability for coherent, rational thought? Yup. In "Fireworks," Liz pretends to be an alcoholic in order to get close to her NBC crush, Floyd. In order to even the score after Floyd learns the truth behind her tall tale, Liz admits to all of her own deepest, darkest secrets. And, well, there are some things you just don't want to know about your favorite fictional characters:



Making flannel sexy
In "Corporate Crush," Liz shows how nerdy women can bring the sexy back -- by dancing in flannel pajamas, waving around a used Kleenex and seductively bending over to turn on...the humidifier. We knew Floyd was a keeper when he found that sad display just as endearing as we did.

The nerdy woman's perfect date
Liz nearly found true love with Floyd, a man who knew just how to please a nerdy woman -- with card games and by mocking bad movies. Ah, Floyd, with your love of the flannel sexy dance, you were one of the good guys. Fictional Cleveland is lucky to have you.



"Yeah, suck it, I do read the paper!"
Here's a tip: hell hath no fury like a nerdy woman scorned. When one of her writers, Josh, tries to negotiate a huge salary increase and ends up humiliating Liz in the process, well, she gets her revenge -- by making him do The Worm, among other cruelties.

We don't talk about Liz Lemon like that around these parts

I've got a bone to pick with a Miss Sarah Seltzer and it's in the shape of Tina Fey. In the most recent issue of Bitch Magazine, Seltzer wrote an essay on "30 Rock" called "Sour Lemon" which argues "...Fey should be a feminist role model. So why does she still trade in on sexist stereotypes at the expense of herself -- and smart girls everywhere?" Later she adds, "And if the sexist jokes are a way for the smart, attractive, and powerful Fey to make herself less threatening, then that's not very funny at all."

Please give me a moment while I take off my apron, hand my husband his slippers and say, "What the fuck are you talking about, woman?" For one thing, putting aside the character of Liz Lemon, Tina Fey should not only be considered a feminist role model, she should be given her own burning bra trophy with a built-in eternal flame. She has succeeded in a field that is extraordinarily male. Most funny women who make it succeed as performers. Fey made it as a writer and eventually became the first female head writer in Saturday Night Live history, which is the gender equivalent of a woman becoming the pope. Then she went on to write Mean Girls, a film with a core message that says it's good to tell the popular girls to piss off and it's good for young women to be smart. And finally, she has created an Emmy-nominated sitcom in which a woman, Liz Lemon, heads her own successful show, called, of all things, The Girlie Show. How much more frickin' feminist street cred do we need to give this woman, for Betty Friedan's sake?

Seltzer complains that Liz Lemon is not strong enough and is only painted in stereotypical strokes. Okay, but the thing is, comedy traditionally, you know, plays with and subverts stereotypes, rendering those stereotypes weak by making them the object of derision. It's a little something-something called satire. It's what funny people do. Seltzer has issue in particular with an episode called "The C-word" in which Lemon gets called a naughty word by one of her subordinates. "After an angry speech and subsequent collapse in exhaustion," Seltzer writes, "the message has been hammered home: women can't handle authority."

Oh man, this woman's lucky I'm too busy earning 60 cents on the dollar and being subjugated to get too riled up, but I'm still getting cranky here. My problem with her argument is this: the academically feminist version of a strong woman is not realistic. It's academic, which is fine when it's all about publishing papers. Why do all "feminist" chickies have to be Cagney and Lacey-tough? Seriously. One day Hillary Clinton might be leader of the free world. You don't think she felt flustered when Edwards made that crack about her jacket last week? Simone de Beauvoir was all feminist, but you don't think she got a little self conscious when Sartre called her fat? And when Condi Rice gets those crank calls from Rumsfeld in the middle of the night, you don't think she gets insecure?

My point is, why do strong women have to be portrayed as, well, tight-assed men to be taken seriously? The reason Liz Lemon is appealing to women is because in spite of her insecurity and vulnerability, she always gets the job done. She's the one that solves the problems and not because she's some sort of symbolic mother, narratively compelled to rescue and nurture everyone. She does it because it's her job and she's good at it. I'm tired of people writing women either as girly know-nothings or substitute men or angry bitches or any other two-dimensional variation that requires no thought. I want a character who's true to life, someone like the women I know, women who are goofy and silly and who worry but who are still brilliant and strong and really, really good at whatever they choose to do, whether it's write comedy or have a family or ride magical ponies.

So keep your Gloria Steinams and your academic stiffs. I'd rather have Liz Lemon's relateable and highly entertaining craziness any day of the week.

Honorary, imaginary girl nerd leadership role FINALLY filled -- and not by Scooter Libby

The Israelites had Moses. The Canadians had Tim Horton. Now girl nerds have Tina Fey.

We liked her snarking it up on SNL. We liked her in Mean Girls. And now? We love her in 30 Rock where she's turned girl nerdness into an art form. Like macrame or tracing pictures of horses. She is, quite undeniably, the well-dressed epitome of girl nerdness.

This is why The Park Bench Crew has decided to make Tina Fey our honorary, imaginary chairnerd. Anyone who concocts a character like Liz Lemon who wakes up with food in her hair, worries about her boobs falling out of low-cut dresses, outs herself by talking up Heroes in a roomful of hipsters and accidentally makes out with her cousin not only deserves our attention, she deserves our allegiance. You say jump, Tina, and we'll say, how high? And then we'll probably think about it for a really long time and ultimately decide not to jump because it seems like an awful lot of effort and that Beauty and the Geek marathon just started and we already jumped once last week. Just know, though, that we were totally there for you in spirit. Viva, Tina, and welcome to the club.