The 30 Rock Book

Never has reading about something I love been so joyless. I almost gave this three stars, because it's exceedingly average. Then I almost gave it two stars, because it was annoying to slog through and finally reach the end. But as I reached the “sources”, and realized that, as I suspected, all the bigger names quoted in this book came from DVD commentaries and previous interviews, and that the most notable interview this author actually landed was the 5th billed star, I was filled with a soft boiled rage. The rage you feel when the rug has been pulled out from under you. The quiet intensity of feeling you get when you perform a task for hours and then realize that task was useless. Reading this book is useless.

Where to start? The first thing is that it tries to be an oral history. I love oral histories. My favorite ones so far for tv have been The Wire and The Office. The Wire's author got interviews with almost everybody in the cast and crew, an incredible achievement. The office's author didn't get interviews with the really big stars of The Office, but made up for it by getting really good, in depth interviews with lots of the secondary actors and the crew. The author of THIS book, in contrast, I'm sure tried to get the best interviews possible, but didn't really. And some of the people interviewed are just really bizarre choices, or the sheer AMOUNT of page time they get is strange. It feels like he sent an email out to everybody who ever appeared on the show, and anybody who agreed to the interview, he decided to focus on them. Matthew Broderick, Paul Reubens, the girl who plays Kathy Giess and an actor that I barely remember in the show make up a staggering amount of the “actor” interviews for this. If you added up all the screen time of those people, it would be a third of an episode. And they are constantly giving quotes! The episode Paul Reubens is in is given like 10 pages. 10 pages for a Paul Reubens guest spot! This is outrageous!!

Make due with what you have, I suppose. But the early portions of this book spend A LOT of time on something that barely relates to 30 Rock, which is Aaron Sorkin's tv series that aired at the same time. The stars of that show are interviewed for this book, talking about THEIR show! What?!

The other thing that is bad about this book is that it is just flat out written in the most boring style ever. Imagine someone actually writing out the plot for 24 episodes of 30 Rock, including explaining some of the funniest jokes. Over and over again. For 7 seasons. That's this book. Occasionally a writer is given a quote about working on the episode. But mostly, this is an episode guide.

The final thing I hated about this book is just how much social justice naval gazing it is doing. “Hey, that's an important thing to point out and discuss”, I hear you saying. You're not hearing me. It's ALOT. I would hazard a guess that 20% of this entire book is talking about jokes that didn't age well, or blackface, or jokes about gay people, or transgender people, and every single time, it just acts like everybody involved is the worst person ever, and then immediately backtracks to talk about how wonderful everyone is, as soon as the “incident” is done.

I absolutely think shows need to reckon with the way comedy evolves over time and how problematic aspects have been shoved aside for too long, and 30 Rock had multiple instances of blackface in the mid 2000s- this needs to be discussed. I don't fault the author for talking about it. I just think it should have maybe had an entire chapter dedicated to it as a whole, with some sort of focus, and actual commentary from the people affected (especially the black community, which the book hammers the show hard for, but as far as I know, has mostly white interviews). It felt like every 5 pages, the author was bringing up ANOTHER problematic joke and raking Fey over the coals for it. Then two pages later, more quotes about wonderful and hilarious and genius Fey is. Hell, when discussing Fey and Carlock's new show Mr. mayor, the author could not resist mentioning that while the show has a diverse cast, the two leads were white! THE GODDAMN HORROR!

Mostly, I'm upset that there are a finite number of books written about shows, and this was a total waste of a 30 Rock one. I hope somebody comes along that can do a better 30 Rock book, hopefully with some substantial interviews.