I’m sure I have railed against this before on my blog, but if you’d like to see a not-at-all discreet eyeroll, then compare me to Carrie Bradshaw. Do it. I dare you. My corneas are positioned. My mildewed ballet flats carry me around the city just fine, save a recent bout of plantar fasciitis; no Manolos for me. I’d like to think that my editorial repertoire consists of more than “The other day I got to thinking,” and I certainly need more than one cosmopolitan to facilitate a successful flirtation with an eligible bachelor. So I’m proclaiming a moratorium on those references, thanks. But feel free to point out the Liz Lemon similarities. She is my television avatar, prone to social gaffes with men and often cavalier about matters of diet and personal hygiene. I’m flattered.
When Liz accompanies her boyfriend, Floyd, to Cleveland in season 1 of 30 Rock, she seriously considers leaving New York, high on the midwestern fantasy of cleanliness and the lure of easier living. A stranger in Ohio suggests she could be a model: “You are so skinny,” but adds maternally, “you really should eat something.” Anywhere but New York would a rumpled writer who subsists on Sabor de Soledad cheese puffs be considered dangerously waifish. “We’re all models west of the Allegheny,” Liz’s friend, Jenna, tells her later. She returns from their Midwestern getaway with a post-vacation glow as if she had been pampered at a luxurious resort.“For God's sakes, Lemon, we’d all like to flee to the Cleve,” her boss Jack Donaghy scowls, “but we fight those urges.” Whenever I leave Manhattan for a trip home, I too float back to LaGuardia on a cloud of suburban comforts. Drive-thru windows! Backyards! Cheaper cereal! (I’m coming at you thanks to the free wireless at Chick-fil-a back home). Inevitably, my euphoria fades, and I’m leery about my devotion to my adopted city.
I’ve been a pre-bandwagon fan of the critically acclaimed sitcom, but my affection for the show was amplified as I moved up here just days before it became clear that the recession was going to have the Best Year Ever, beating out print journalism in a laughable landslide. As much complaining and lamenting I do on this blog (I cringe at my documented selfishness I will fully see later, no doubt), I realize I’m not the only one to come to terms with unemployment and compromised goals. But with my constant rewatching of the 30 Rock episodes and clips, I vicariously took solace in the crazy folks under Jack's hawk eye- a creative! full-time! writing! job!
Before I began to refer to myself as “unemployed”, I would walk through Rockefeller Center to get to work everyday. With the end of my job, I truthfully was more heartbroken that I had no excuse for my daily jaunts through the home of the peacock- there go my chances at ever having a platonic meet-cute with Tina (or beguiling SNL writer Seth Meyers with my ability to stealthily hipcheck gawking tourists on Fifth Avenue). My new freelance status corresponded within a couple of months with my move to a new apartment in which I went from having a TV to depending on computer reruns for free entertainment. So what if I have already seen the episode with Oprah three times? That’s neither here nor there. I no longer have my own office that affords me a daily front row look at workplace antics and politics. I envied their occupational camaraderie and reveled in the boyish shenanigans of Liz’s distracted staff. I empathize with Kenneth the Page’s Southern naïveté and secular innocence and his occupational optimism tethered me back to my once bursting ambition, now supplanted by monetary concerns and research of egg donation. Tracy’s malapropisms served as conversational fodder to enhance my sense of humor, and Jenna’s hair- well, a gleaming reminder that I should probably nix the second day of baby powder and actually shower.
There’s a scene in season 1 in which we see Liz’s true colors in navigating the dating scene of New York. A moderately handsome stranger approaches and asks if the seat next to her is taken. “Dude, can’t you just be cool?” she scowls. “I gotta move my coat. There are like four empty seats down there!” Her friend Jenna points out that the guy wanted to buy her a drink. “Really? I already have a drink. Do you think he’d buy me some mozzarella sticks?” Liz asks. Girl, I feel you. I would easily choose a platter of fried cheese over male attention. Bless our hearts.
30 Rock has reinvigorated my love for the city and reminded me why I moved here, when all I have wanted to do is curl up in my Slanket by the light of Hulu and screen New York’s calls. My year stint in the city is a reason for a fete as any. This is a milestone that I haven’t yet packed it up and hauled back down south. Thanks, Liz, I’m still around.
Season 4 of 30 Rock premieres this Thursday on NBC, 9:30/8:30pm Central.
