30 Rock Metafiction, Daisies

Sitcoms have a shoddy reputation, and deservedly so. They are essentially disposable. Even Entourage, Californication, and Weeds, three sitcoms I look forward to, are more guilty pleasure than anything else. They may fashion themselves as something more than your average sitcom, but that has more to do with saying fuck and gratuitous sex than content. In fact, 30 Rock may be more the more groundbreaking sitcom, sans dirty words. It’s the only sitcom on network TV worth watching – I’m sorry, The Office has its moments, but they try too hard to inject saccharine nonsense, to elevate to “dramedy,” and they fail, dramatically. Granted, judging from ratings, I am in the minority with this opinion!

The New York Times Magazine devoted an entire issue Sunday to “screens,” a typically pretentious theme, complete with a Jennifer Aniston interview that, while I didn’t read it, probably makes her look like a cross between Ava Gardner and Mother Theresa. But there is an interesting article buried in there about 30 Rock and the groundbreaking – yikes I’m sorry – narrative they use. Digressions upon digressions upon digressions, where the digressions themselves become the main draw for the viewer. The article mentions Family Guy and Arrested Development as touchstones, two programs I am not too familiar with, but they also get into something I am familiar with - metafiction, and its influence on 30 Rock and life in general. A Clip:

Metafiction goes back a lot further than the 60’s and 70’s novels the writer claims. The Grand Master of the form, Thomas Pynchon, said in his intro to Slow Learner that Moby Dick was the first to experiment in this type of storytelling, the text peppered with long tracts on whaling, and Melville interjecting his own voice into the story at various points. Ulysses is one everybody knows, but even the straightforward, easy reading Steinbeck broke up his narratives with philosophical, off the wall passages – i.e. Grapes of Wrath. You could even make an argument that jazz is a form of metafiction. Obviously not to the extent of Pynchon (a big jazz guy himself, see V), or David Foster Wallace and his footnotes and 30 page tennis stories, but the seeds were sown long before Gravity’s Rainbow. GR is just the best example – and also, one of my favorite books! A pie fight in the sky! Nazis! Physics! Scatology! Astrology! I could read it over and over. But I digress . . . 30 Rock utilizes this technique to great comedic effect, and if you are a fan of the show the article is worth checking out. Also, Tina Fey . . . hot.

Also of note - ABC has pulled the plug on Pushing Daisies, Bryan Fuller's Burton-esque twist on the procedural that gained all kinds of critical acclaim but couldn't develop an audience. It is a shame, the show was a lot of fun - but as with all these genre shows that make it to network, unfortunately it is sink or swim. Just to put the network pressure into perspective - Daisies averaged twice the viewers that Battlestar Galactica gets, and three times that of Entourage. Just goes to show you that these shows need to be on cable to bloom. One silver lining is the word around the campfire is that Fuller will be returning to Heroes, where he was a head writer the first season.