I could write a long-winded post expressing my concern about how 30 Rock‘s recent surge of big-name guest stars (Jennifer Aniston! Matthew Broderick! Oprah!) might eat away at screentime for members of its brilliant ensemble cast — Jane Krakowski, Tracy Morgan, Maulik Pancholy, and Scott Adsit, to name a few — but my colleague Dalton Ross’ email pretty much sums up my feelings on Tina Fey’s great sitcom in just two sentences.
From: Ross, Dalton
Sent: Wednesday, September 03, 2008 5:47 PM
To: EW TV Department
Subject: Re: Oprah In Talks To Do 30 Rock
There is a dangerous amount of stunt casting going on with this show. Does it really want to be the new Will & Grace?
It’s not the doing it that matters, it’s the doing it right. I tuned out of W & G long before the show became short hand for stunt casting. But 30 Rock’s best episodes featured guest stars: Paul Reubens, David Schwimmer, Carrie Fisher. If it attracts more viewers then everyone wins.
Not only are all the guest stars distracting (especially if they use them as much as W&G), but I can’t stand Oprah and I’m not exactly excited about Jennifer Aniston (one of Oprah’s minions), either.
Hope they don`t get all sentimental.
The show is good because it is clever and FUNNY.
It’s all about the writing. “W&G” wrote some guests well (Minnie Driver for example) and most others poorly. I’m confident Fey & Co. can write great episodes with guest stars.
If they can still write lines like “you know how I love my big beef and cheddar” for people like Isabella Rosellini, I have faith they’re use Oprah, Jennifer Aniston wisely. The only guest star I didn’t like was David Schwimmer as Greenzo. That didn’t work so much.
The real question is what will Oprah do in her episode – WHAT WILL SHE DO-OOOOOOOOOOOOOO?!
i don’t know. i see dalton’s concern, but i have faith in tina. i think the show allows actors to play around and try new things. for some reason, because there’s so many cast memebers on the show to begin with, it doesn’t seem out of place to have new people.
Yeah, I agree with NineDaves.
While it’s true that the show has a tremendously talented cast top to bottom (some of the bit players are great and Jane Krakowski deserved an Emmy nom) the influx of guest stars doesn’t feel as forced here as it did on Will & Grace.
The premise of the show is conducive to its central characters running into outsiders (non-regular cast members) as opposed to “Will and Grace”, which forced us to believe that its main characters regularly ran into Cher, Jennifer Lopez, Janet Jackson, Kevin Bacon, etc.
But the best part of 30 rock is that the guest stars work well in it and don’t become the focal point of the episode. Even when a guest is involved in a big part of the plot, it becomes more about how Liz, etc deal with it than the guest themselves, which is great. Although the Seinfeld episode got on my nerves a bit, I thought Greenzo overall was hilarious.
I also have faith in Tina & co., and as long as they don’t lose focus, I’m down for most anything that brings attention to this “Rock”, the (somewhat)-ratings-challenged-but-(inarguably)-funniest show on TV.
Also, there are far worse things one can be than “the new ‘Will & Grace’” (though I’m pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down, Dalton).
I just want a scene with Oprah and Tracy Morgan. It almost sounds too good to be true.
Oprah rocks. I’ll watch anything she does.
30 Rock doesn’t need the REAL Oprah! Tracy can just dress up like Oprah again!
Julia, you didn’t like Greenzo? I thought he was hilarious. “You know what also takes a long time? Building a new Earth!”