Will 30 Rock go off with a big bang?
After seven seasons, 138 episodes and countless awards, accolades and post-Saturday Night Live recognitions, 30 Rock is calling it a night.
The hour-long finale, Last Lunch, finds Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) having a tough time adjusting to being a stay-athome mom while, back at the studio, former network honcho Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is taking new stock of his life.
Newly installed network president Kenneth (Jack Mc- Brayer) is no longer Tracy’s (Tracy Morgan) toy to kick around, to Tracy’s chagrin. Meanwhile, back on the sound stage, limelight-seeking glamour puss Jenna (Jane Krakowski) readies a tearful farewell song and the cast and crew of TGS, 30 Rock’s showwithin-a-show, gather for one last bow for the cameras.
Despite the accolades — 90 Emmy nominations and 14 wins, to go along with the Screen Actors Guild comedy awards Fey and Baldwin won this past weekend — 30 Rock was always a tough sell with mainstream audiences. As Fey alluded in her SAG Award acceptance, The Big Bang Theory, which 30 Rock has faced all season, was always the bigger crowd pleaser.
Where 30 Rock’s loyal core of devotees saw wit and sophistication, other viewers saw whiny condescension and a smug, self-satisfied air of cultural and intellectual superiority.
30 Rock was the definition of a TV show made by the coastal elites for the coastal elites.
(NBC, Citytv — 8 p.m.)
One long-running comedy calls it a night; another prepares its eventual end. The Office finds Pam (Jenna Fischer) asking her work colleagues to help her track down the vandal who defaced her mural. Sounds reasonable, right? But then Dwight (Rainn Wilson) springs into action, and reason gets tossed into the shredder. (9:30 p.m., NBC)
Here’s an issue you won’t see on 30 Rock, but you do see each week on Girls. And it’s another reason why Girls is the more connected and plugged-in of the two shows.
The CBC documentary program Doc Zone looks at the sobering number of recent college graduates who can’t find decent-paying jobs in their chosen fields, let alone start a career. Generation Jobless focuses on the picture here at home, where the unemployment rate for twentysomethings is pushing 15 per cent. If recent evidence is anything to go by, this is one issue you’re unlikely to hear anything about in the next election, federal or provincial. (9 p.m., CBC)
Steven Pasquale plays a mercurial neurosurgeon with a Jekyll and Hyde complex in the new medical drama Do No Harm. By day, he’s Dr. Jason Cole. He’s a winner. He saves lives, he’s charming, he’s respected by his colleagues, he oozes self-confidence.
By night, he becomes a freak by any other name, with a propensity for violence and a “differently enabled” way of looking at the world.
The good Dr. Cole is selfmedicating, but there’s a catch: the meds are starting to wear off. Do No Harm is a classic case of a new show that, based on its first hour, could go either way. Time will tell, as it always does. (10 p.m., NBC, CTV)