Remember how 30 Rock and Studio 60 premiered at the same time, and everyone knew that there was only room for one “behind the scenes at a late-night sketch comedy show” series, and most people, it seemed, had their money on the Sorkin one? Before they aired, one of my friends even dismissed 30 Rock “the un-funny sitcom version” of what was sure to be the far-superior Studio 60.
Well that obviously turned out to not be true. But while Studio 60 became universally hated, 30 Rock was busy being universally ignored. No one I knew was watching 30 Rock. I fell instantly in love, but felt as though I were by myself. I tried to get my friends into it, but nobody was biting. Until, that is, Jack and Kenneth played poker.
30 Rock is kind of a behind-the-scenes show, but it’s more about the absolute absurdity of the people who work there. While TGS was pretty prominent in season one, it all but disappeared by the end of season 3. So while the first season focused more on the office politics, the third episode of the series, “Blind Date,” gave us a taste of what was to come.
In this episode, Jack and Liz are still trying to figure out their relationship. She sees him as “the man,” and he sees her as someone who “hasn’t been touched in any way” in quite a long time, and sets her up on a date with a woman. So while Liz is off figuring out whether or not she can become a lesbian, even though she’s not into the “sex stuff,” Jack invades the writers’ weekly poker game.
It is in this poker game that we discover that Alec Baldwin isn’t going to be merely playing the straight man on this show; that even though he is playing the big executive, he isn’t above getting drunk and channeling a little Hannibal Lecter while playing poker with a hapless NBC page.
Unfortunately, this is the only clip I could find of this encounter between Kenneth and Jack, so you don’t really get to see how brilliant Jack McBrayer is in this episode. But this is the one in which McBrayer began to transition from quirky background player to integral member of the cast. Between this and Baldwin infusing a sense of humor into the Jack Donaghy character, I had a lot less trouble convincing people to give 30 Rock a chance after this episode.
Clacked by Kona Gallagher 
on Aug 09, 2009 @ 10:00 EST5EDT
I don’t even remember that scene… time to dust off the DVDs and watch them a second time :-)
My moment was when Jack helped Tracy out with his therapy session by playing the roles of everyone in Tracy’s life.
They just replayed that episode last week. It was truly a moment of genius.