Green Week on NBC Thursday Night - Hilarious!

I don't watch a lot of series television. I enjoy the shorter seasons of cable shows, like "The Closer", "Monk" and "Psyche". The HBO and Showtime series can be too gritty or too adult ("Big Love" was fascinating, but a little too gratuitously sexual - and definitely not for the kids). Network TV is usually even worse. Any show that is consistently on the same night at the same time without getting moved around the schedule is usually graphically violent (Law and Order SVU, all the CSIs, Criminal Minds, etc.) and has too much sexual content. I enjoy a good thought provoking drama, a cerebral crime show, but honestly, at the end of the work day and after everyone's homework is done, dinner cooked and the house cleaned, I want art to flow over me. I don't want to have to work at it. So, I try to find some good comedies. For me that has meant I am out of pop culture sync since I don't watch "Ugly Betty" on Thursdays (I catch it later on cable if I catch it), I watch "My Name is Earl", "30 Rock", The Office" and "Scrubs".

Last night, as part of its "Green Week" NBC had green night on Thursday. The green theme was a little subtle in Earl, except that Earl was trying to get his three convicts for the "Scared Straight" day at the local schools to put in little environmental pitches. Like the big guy who dumped a body in the woods, Earl reminded him to tell the kids that later he felt bad about littering. Which the big guy said he actually did feel bad about. But, by the time "30 Rock" began it was clear, it was on. The fictional network in the show, owned by GE, needed a green mascot., The actual network, needing ratings improvement and following up last week's appearance of NBC heyday comedian, Jerry Seinfeld, went all out. It resurrected David Schwimmer, from that other heyday show "Friends", to be the mascot dubbed by Alec Baldwin as "Greenzo". Tina Fey, the only force for sanity on the fake show within the real show, didn't think much of the name (it conjures "Gonzo" from the Muppets, not a super hero for change). Schwimmer, however, dove right into his role as corporate shill. See, Baldwin's bosses at GE really wanted to use the green week as a way to sell more appliances and further monopolize the energy market. They planted corporate catch phrases like "the market will be the salvation for the energy situation" and "If you really want to save the planet from global warming, if it exists, then buy this new GE front loading washer". This last pitch was made on a fake broadcast of the Today show with Meredith Vieira.

Baldwin's character was over the moon most of the show about how his master plan with Greenzo was bringing him one step closer to corporate uber power, but he watched in dismay as the drunk on environmental power Greenzo skewered Meredith the next day on the show and went far afield from any planned corporate approach to dumbing down the green movement. Fey's Liz Lemmon shook her head and said the guy was out of control. So, the next day for a new forum Jack used his old connections and his usual deception to bring in a ringer, Al Gore, to make the green statements. When he and Lemmon met up with Gore, big Al commented to Liz that back in the day Jack had been a liberal who was an aide for Senator Kennedy. Jack quickly shushed him, ashamed of his hidden 'past' (a nod to Baldwin's over the top liberalism in real life), and tried to get Al to make the 'free market' speech. Gore would have none of it as Schwimmer bounded, uninvited onto the stage and Jack went to tangle with him, and as Liz asked Gore if he couldn't make just an honest pitch instead Gore cocked his ear and said somewhere there was a whale in danger and he had to go.

I wasn't completely sure at the end of "30 Rock" if they had, as usual, managed to mock both the phony liberal spin on global warming, and the phony conservative spin - but it appeared they had.

Satire is a wonderful thing, and "30 Rock" is unabashed satire. It has so many crazy themes going on at once (the subplot of dorky page Kenneth's annual party that always ends up being attended only by Liz - being spun by Tracy Morgan to get a good turn out, and the unspeakable things that ended up happening at that party were priceless) that you wonder when you hear something in passing if you really did. It is a perfect lead in to "The Office", where the deadpan, pseudo-documentary format requires you to sharpen your mind to take it all in (in this case it was Michael getting himself lost in the woods to prove a point to, who knows who about his hurt feelings over not being invited to Ryan's wilderness weekend). Yes, Michael survived without modern conveniences, but just barely - no thanks to his faithful cohort Dwight, who shadowed Michael but had committed to himself not to interfere in any way and to let Michael die if need be. It was a marvelous parody of those reality shows (they actually named "Survivorman") where people are supposedly at the total mercy of nature and in genuine peril while struggling against mighty nature, even as a camera crew shoots away. And rounding out the evening "Scrubs" capped on with its little messages about how DNRs help save energy, etc.

But, "30 Rock" really crystallized the whole concept of everything from the inundation with green awareness (and I specialize in environmental science, so am conservation oriented myself and always have been), the commercialization of green awareness, how we can skew messages to get people to consume what we sell even as we are telling them to conserve, and even of how networks and entertainers may or may not in any way help the long term efforts. And, it was just entertaining on its face. You could laugh at all the silliness and not think about it. Which is great.