30 Rock's Perfect Leap Day Episode

In order to wash the acrid taste that Stacey Dash's appearance at the Oscars has left in my mouth...

MERRY LEAP DAY!

And on this extra day, let's take some time and remember a perfect episode of television that was gifted to us four short years ago. Now, 30 Rock is one of my favorite shows, and it will no doubt be remembered throughout all time for its great jokes, pacing, and commitment to a bit. But I also hope it will be remembered for giving us "Leap Day," an episode of TV dedicated to the most magical day of all – February 29!

"It's Leap Day. Real life is for March!"

Back in 2012, 30 Rock was in the midst of Season 6, in which pretty much every other episode revolves around a major holiday. That doesn't change with this ep, which revolves around everyone's favorite holiday (of the holidays that only occur every four years).

"God grant you on this leap day fair / a calm wind and the ocean air 

Leap Day magic's all around / as Leap Day William comes to town"

Creating a holiday from scratch is no easy task, and director Steve Buscemi and writer Luke Del Tredici throw themselves into crafting a compelling celebration that feels real and lived in, with enough bits and pieces of other holidays and traditions thrown in to film familiar.

"Leap Day William, Leap Day William, Bursting from the sea / 

Will he bring his bucket of sweets for Mom and Pop and me?"

At the center of the holiday is Leap Day William, a part-fish demon-like old man who emerges from the Mariana Trench every four years. He then proceeds to trade children's tears for candy (and, in a simpler time, cigarettes). On the scale of creepy requirements for giving out gifts to children, it lies somewhere between Santa demanding good behavior and the Tooth Fairy requiring your old dead molars. However, his disturbingly realistic gills on his neck and sharp fangs put him more in the Krampus category of holiday deities.

"Poke your eye, pull your hair, you forgot what clothes to wear."

"Stomp on your foot, kick you in the knee. Yankees suck, Go Pats."

The holiday also requires celebrants to wear a specific color combination in order to avoid a shaming from fellow Leap Dayers. Thankfully it's the fairly flattering combo of Blue and Yellow (I would happily smack the Irishman who decided I have to wear green while celebrating some dude named Patrick even though the color makes me look sallow).

Seeing the cast wearing primary colors brings a tear of joy to my eyes and warms my heart. It's a Leap Day miracle!

"Hey, take a leap, pal!"

"THAT'S THE SPIRIT!"

Like all good holidays, there's also a movie that teaches people exciting life lessons. In 30 Rock, that film is Leap Dave Williams, starring Jim Carrey and Andie MacDowell. It's mostly a play on The Santa Clause with a bit of Groundhog Day and Liar Liar thrown in for good measure. An uptight lawyer (Dave Williams – Carrey) falls into an ice-fishing hole and turns into Leap Day William. He then proceeds to learn some valuable lessons, reconnect with his son, and solve "the big case from earlier." Because, as Andie MacDowell so pointedly says, real life is for March. If you've never seen it, USA Network has got you covered – they're running a 24-hour marathon!

"I am always coughing up blood. Could that be Leap Day William trying to get out?"

Stripped of all the ceremony and wacky hijinks, the Day of Leap is really a wonderful occasion that brings out the best in people. It's an extra day where you can take chances and do things you normally wouldn't do, like have sex with a billionaire for money, listen to rap music, or eat rhubarb leaves. It's also a day for spreading love, candy, and kindness. Even Tracy gets into the giving spirit, ignoring the fact that he's not getting a Leap Day bonus and spreading Benihana cheer to the homeless and less fortunate (one of whom is played by the delightful Hannibal Buress). 

"It's a Leap Day Miracle!"

"Nothing's impossible on Leap Day!"

Leap Day is a time for family. It's a time for joy. It's a time for eating that giant rhubarb in the Citarella window – the one as big as Kenneth! And remember...

"Nothing that happens on Leap Day counts."

Merry Leap Day to us all!

My Mom and I Review Some Movies and TV Shows

There's been a new addition to the Tableau family (that's a link to a generic baby, in case you don't know what a baby looks like), which means that, over the last month, my mother has been in my neck of the woods way more often than usual. And, since I don't really know how to communicate with people without talking about movies and television, my mom and I have been consuming a lot of pop culture together.  Here's a breakdown of some of the fluff we imbibed:

Cinderella (2015)

This live action adaptation of Disney's classic film adds some modern touches and nixes the songs.

Mom: The transformation scenes are amazing.

Tableau: When Cinderella and her mice and lizards are magically changed in time for the ball?

M: Yep. Compared to the other movies, you could actually see the changes happening. You can see the animals morphing into their human/horse counterparts, yet they still maintain elements of their original features. The lizards, especially.

T: The transformations scenes are both really beautiful, and Helena Bonham Carter as The Fairy Godmother is a lot of fun. She is certainly having a good time.

M: Cate Blanchett, too. She's over-acting in the best way. I also like that they show more of Cinderella with her mom (Hayley Atwell). 

T: It helps strengthen her character, and it helps to sell the idea that Cinderella would stay with her stepmother after her mother and father die, since her mother was all about being kind and courageous. How about Cinderella (Lily James) and Prince Charming (Richard Madden)? Do you buy their romance?

M: Meh. They are okay. Nothing to write home about.

30 Rock: 1 Year Later

Do it for Television!

One year ago today, my favorite television show OF ALL TIME aired its final episode. That's right, 30 Rock has been gone from the airwaves for 365 days. After 7 seasons (many of them truncated), Liz and Jack rode off into the sunset, never to be heard from again. Except for in my fan fiction, where they're both fighting for their lives in a post-apocalyptic hellspace. Obviously, everyone has a mohawk, and eye patches are plentiful.

Over this past year, it's been nice to see the cast pop up time and again on other television shows and films.  Jane Krakowski has been making the sitcom rounds, and her Trop50 ads have become a television staple. Tina Fey pops up time and again, hosting awards shows and securing sitcom deals, thus guaranteeing that her rapier wit will remain on our screens for years to come. Even Jack McBrayer has been on The Middle quite a few

30 Things We'll Miss About 30 Rock

30 Rock ends its impressive 7(SEVEN!)-season run tonight at 8pm (7pm Central) on NBC, and we have been lamenting the loss for quite a while now.  Since we recently learned to count to 30 a few days ago, we thought is was only appropriate that we look at the 30 things we'll miss the most about one of the greatest shows of our time:

Alias on 30 Rock [30 Rock]

Liz Lemon's Intensity Would
Probably Scare Sydney Bristow

Lately, I have been very much obsessed with both 30 Rock and Alias. At Tableau your mind, we have been writing a lot about 30 Rock because the series finale is airing this Thursday, and we've been thinking about Alias because the stars of the show have been everywhere this awards season. Alias also recently became available on Netflix Instant, which means my Facebook mini-feed is full of people discovering the show for the first time.  It got me thinking about how much the two shows relate to one another (and it's not just because both Sydney Bristow and Liz Lemon subvert Rikke Schubart's ideals of the female action hero as Mother, Daughter, Rape-Avenger, and Dominatrix, amirite?). While 30 Rock has certainly spent more time referencing LOST, the writers/casting agents do show a certain affinity for Alias.

In honor of both shows, I would like to highlight some of the few 30 Rock moments that took me right back to my favorite times with super-spy Sydney Bristow:

30 Rock's Final Week

We're currently four days away from the end of 30 Rock. The one-hour finale will air, we will cry, and then it will be over. Unlike other great comedies like Seinfeld, Cheers, or even older comedies like The Dick Van Dyke Show or The Mary Tyler Moore Show (we've got a whole Mary Tyler Moore obsession over here), it's not clear yet what the impact of 30 Rock will be. If anything, it seems like networks are hauling butt in the opposite direction, choosing to develop shows with easily digestible comedy and empty jokes with no relevance to the characters or their motivations. Despite a lot of wonderful comedies on the air right now, it seems like 'smart' comedy is quickly falling away. This season will mark the end of 30 Rock, but also the end of The Office and the possible end of countless others (Don't Trust the B, Happy Endings, Ben and Kate, etc.). More than any other show, though, 30 Rock feels and has always felt like a show created for us: for TV nerds that missed countless sporting events, mitzvahs (both bar and bat), holiday celebrations, and community events so that we could spend more time with our beloved TV boxes, who were always there with a new episode of Pete and Pete or a re-run of Alias just when we needed it. For people that count television among their loved ones and cried during the Friends finale, not because it was really that great an episode, but because it was the end of an era, dammit!

Is this the time to wallow in our suffering, crying "LIZ LEMON!" to the heavens and a vengeful god? Perhaps, but it's also a time for reflection, for soaking in the joy that the show brought us. Regardless of the strength of 30 Rock's final episode this Thursday, there's no denying the brilliant seven seasons that have come before it, nor the momentous final season that we have seen, gifted to us by Tina Fey, Robert Carlock, and all the other amazing people behind and in front of the camera.  We've followed Liz from the lettuce-hating creator of The Girlie Show to the woman that she is now: slightly more put-together, married with two children, still a hater of all things green and leafy, and the showrunner of the (just cancelled) TGS with Tracy Jordan. We've watched Jack wrestle with the contradictory nature of his conservative values and those of the hippie, 'feminista' employee that he loves so much. We've watched Liz and Jack Donaghy's relationship grow from antagonistic to friendly to pseudo-sexual to way-too-enmeshed to whatever they are now. We've seen Jenna go from a fame-loving nincompoop to a brilliant psychopath, hellbent on being famous no matter what the cost. We've been confused as Tracy Jordan does whatever it is Tracy Jordan does (WWTJD? IDK). We've enjoyed Kenneth as he used kindness to be continually fired and demoted, until he finally got the Head of Television for President of NBC title that was his all along (he loves TV so, so much). We've been simultaneously creeped out and overjoyed by the antics of Pete, Toofer, Frank, and Lutz, and we've stared too long at Cerie when we were supposed to be watching something else in the scene. We've cried with Jonathan, we've laughed with Colleen, and we've been shamed repeatedly by Jack's ex-wife Avery. We've even fantasized about astronaut Mike Dexter and considered settling with Wesley Snipes.

Now, more than ever, it's time to look back at the brilliance. We've spent many Thursdays enjoying 30 Rock, and we've spent the last few Thursdays looking at our favorite moments from the show. This week on Tableau Your Mind will be no different. We'll be checking in with old flames, favorite episodes, and missed moments. We'll be looking at Jack's relationships, 30 Rock's indelible mark on product placement, and so much more. Unless we're too busy crying - then we'll just be posting YouTube videos.

Jenna Sings "Muffin Top" [30 Rock]

Everyone Knows The Most Delicious Part of the Muffin...
Is The Top

We were going to really take time with our 30 Rock article this week, with insightful comments on Jack's relationships with women and quippy asides that really highlighted how much we love and appreciate the show.  However, we just got off the bumpiest and most nausea-inducing car-ride from Agra to New Delhi, and we're not feeling particularly inspired.

So, here is Jenna Maroney's "Muffin Top," a dance-pop techno hybrid which was, at one point, the number one song in Israel:



UPDATE: The previous videos we posted got deleted from the source, so here's a new one:

30 Rock Unaired Pilot

Rachel Dratch and Jane Krakowski as Jenna

Everybody! Set your DVRs and your peepers, because 30 Rock returns tonight and starts the road towards the finale on January 31st. We're sad to see it go (but we love to watch it leave). On the road to the end, we'll be here every week look back at our favorite moments. Since we're moderately obsessed, there's a good chance that it will be way more often than once a week.

Since we're too sad right now to actually write anything, we thought we would give you a video that's been going around the internet today of the original, unaired pilot, wherein SNL-alum Rachel Dratch played Jenna DeCarlo, the character that would go on to be played by Jane Krakowski.



We're gigantic fans of Rachel Dratch, but this Sliding Doors version of 30 Rock would have deprived the viewing public of the many great characters that Dratch did play on the show, including that weird prostitute who kept shouting 'Valen-times', the Blue Dude, Barbara Walters, Elizabeth Taylor, and  Legreta "Greta" Johansen, the best cat-wrangler/Liz Lemon enthusiast east of the Allegheny. Plus, this version of Jenna is a little too close to Liz Lemon herself, and, just like the world doesn't need two Jenna Maroneys, it also doesn't need two Elizabeth Lemons.

White Diamonds!

Jackie Jormp-Jomp [30 Rock]

Let's all sit back and enjoy Jane Krakowski as Jenna Maroney as Janis Joplin Jackie Jormp-Jomp (née Janie Jimplin).  If you recall, Jenna starred in Sheinhardt Wigs' movie about Janis Joplin, but they couldn't get the life rights nor the song rights, so a lot of amazing things happened.

Like Yoplait Yogurt, it is so good.
Like Greek Yogurt, it is good for you.
Like Dannon Yogurt with fruit on the bottom, it is also so incredibly depressing:

skip to second 46 on this one:

TGS with Tracy Jordan: A Hellscape [30 Rock]

It's a lot to deal with.

Last week on 30 Rock Thursday Rock, we made an all-inclusive list of Liz's love life and celebrated her marriage to Criss Chros. Rather than pair that with a list of Jack Donaghy's ladies, we thought we would turn instead to Liz's professional life.

As Head Writer for TGS with Tracy Jordan, much of Liz's job involves wrangling the two (sometimes three) leads of the show, each with their own brand of extreme narcissism. Tracy leans more toward pure crazy and bouts of ennui, while Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) is a fun mix of sexually conniving trickster and paranoid baby. As much as 30 Rock is about

30 Rock: 100 Episodes, 20 Hours of Comedy

The 100th episode of 30 Rock may not have been the show's best hour (the bar is set SO high), but it gave fans pretty much everything that they wanted: meta commentary, tons of guest stars, flashbacks, and some emotionally resonant character notes. Let's take a look back, shall we? (Also, click to enlarge the pictures - They're meant to be enjoyed at the highest definition!)

Jealousy, Love, Betrayal, Comedy

Down to the plot:
Due to a gas link in the GE Comcast Kabletown building, everyone in the TGS is experiencing vivid, nostalgic (not to mention convenient) flashbacks and hallucinations. Janitor Michael Keaton needs to fix the leak fast, as the 100th episode of 30 Rock TGS with