30 Rock Ep. 3 Recap

I haven’t been this excited to steal terms from 30 Rock since Liz revealed that “lizzing” was the combination of laughing and whizzing (not that I laugh and whizz or anything…). In this episode, 30 Rock has bestowed upon us the terms “Pokémoning,” “sex idiot,” and “stride of pride.”

The episode starts out in the morning with Jack getting out of a limo, kissing a leggy blonde woman goodbye. He explains to Liz that he is on a walk of shame (though he still looks perfect, not a hair out of place). Liz says that the walk of shame should be renamed “the stride of pride.” Jack reveals that the blonde woman is Pizzarina Sbarro (called Zarina for short), heiress to the Sbarro Pizza fortune, but that he is dating multiple women to fulfill all of his needs. Since Avery left, he has decided he won’t be able to find everything he desires in one woman, so he has different women for black tie events (Zarina), one that understands his DVR, one for smoking cigars and discussing business, and one for amazing sex (Mindy). He calls it “Great Escaping” because he got the idea for a team fulfilling different needs while watching The Great Escape.

While trying to have a baby, Liz is experiencing a sexual awakening. She wants to go to brunch with female friends to discuss her latest escapades (like the four different positions she now knows) like the characters on Sex and the City, but can’t find anyone who wants to go. Cerie says they stopped serving brunch after the ’90s, while Sue thinks her sex stories would be too much for Liz. Liz even tries to get Jack to join her, but he declines; she tries to force her female writers into brunch at her desk, but they escape.

The writers are horrified to see that a magazine article has listed Jenna as 56 years old, so Liz, Pete, and Kenneth work feverishly to prevent Jenna from seeing the article. Kenneth awkwardly seduces Jenna so that he can steal the copy of the magazine from her dressing room, and Liz calls in a fake story about how young Jenna is. Jenna is upset by the second article; it turns out that she planted the story that said she was in her 50s. She wants the public to believe that she’s older so that she can skip over the middle-aged actress curse and can join the glamorous older actresses. She notes that after a certain age, you don’t have to look good, you just have to look good for that age.

Tracey tweets that women aren’t funny, which infuriates Liz. She argues that there are many funny females, but he isn’t convinced. Liz notes that maybe it is that men and women find different things funny. I would go ahead and assume that these are arguments Tina Fey has had to deal with in real life. Instead of women, Tracey finds monkeys funny. Liz gets even angrier and argues against monkeys. Tracey invites a monkey named Professor Wigglebottom (whom he found on YouTube) to be on the show. All of the male writers find the monkey hilarious and ask for it to be included on the show. Liz is so mad that she decides to perform her two-woman comedy show she did with Jenna back in Chicago in 1996 and make it mandatory for the staff to attend.

While out with Mindy (the woman Jack sees for sex), Jack runs into Zarina and bashfully explains that he is out with another woman because they’re not exclusive. Zarina understands; in fact, she is out with Olympic swimmer Ryan Lochte (who is making a cameo). Jack tells Zarina that he has been “Great Escaping” her, she tells them in her generation the term is “Pokémoning” because in Pokémon, you’ve “gotta catch ’em all.” She also reveals that Lochte is her sex idiot, a dumb person who is skilled in bed. Mindy, who is distracted by shiny things, is Jack’s sex idiot. Jack had thought that he was a total package, so he feels he needs to find out the other men Zarina is dating to see what role he falls into. He has Cerie help him to get the other mens’ email addresses from a romantic mass email Zarina sent, and Jack arranges to meet the other Pokémon. After seeing that she has a sex idiot, a hippie, a man to upset her parents, a Wall Street businessman, and a guy with great hair, he learns that his role is that of the older father figure.

Jenna finds out that she has been passed over for the new spokesperson for the GeriChair, a motorized chair for staircases marketed to older people. Liz asks her to revive their old comedy show, which Jenna agrees to only if they can do the sketch where Jenna plays a child at the doctor’s office (with Liz playing the doctor). The pair put the show on and the staff laughs, proving once and for all that women are funny. Even Tracey laughs, but he thought that the joke was that there was a female doctor. Liz accepts it. Gerald Chair, the elderly creator of the GeriChair, is at the performance and announces that Jenna will be the new face of GeriChair after all. Nothing makes you look older than trying to look young, so the skit made Jenna look “a million years old,” like she intended when she selected the sketch.

Later, Jack confides in Jenna that he needs to dump Zarina because he is the aging Squirtle in Zarina’s Pokémon collection (he’s clearly been doing his Pokémon research). Jenna convinces him that he doesn’t want to do some of the youthful activities like seeing a DJ or going rock climbing that a woman Zarina’s age wants to do, so it’s handy to be in the older father figure role. She points out that as an old man, people will bring him soup. He does enjoy soup, so he agrees to stay on as Zarina’s older man lover.

Tracey discovers that the hilarious Professor Wigglebottom is actually a female monkey, so he must accept that females are funny.

Liz never gets to have a brunch full of sex stories, but she finishes the episode by typing questions raised in the episode into her laptop while lying on her bed, wearing a tutu and wild curls in her hair like Carrie Bradshaw of Sex and the City. It turns out that she is writing an email to Zappo’s customer service about modifying her order.