30 Rock

Even though The Simpsons was my first and favorite foray into the world of non-children's television, 30 Rock always feels like my first real sitcom. Oh sure, I watched reruns of Seinfeld, Everybody Loves Raymond and, uh, The Nanny in syndication, but 30 Rock was the first I actually followed while it was airing. It was just about the funniest live action TV show I'd ever seen in my life. I grew up loving cartoons (still do!) and steadfastly refusing to really watch any non-cartoon TV shows going into high school. With this in mind, of course 30 Rock was going to be the show to hook me, because it's probably the closest a show can get to being a cartoon, minus the animation.

Obviously I have a lot of nostalgia about this show, which is why tonight is kind of bittersweet. After 7 seasons and 136 episodes, 30 Rock is finally hanging it's slogan bearing trucker hat. Originally a critical and ratings failure, it's hard to believe the show was not only able to hang around for such a long time but be consistently really funny, give or take a season four. Not only that, I would go so far as to say that it's final season has been one of the strongest runs of television in the past couple of years, up there with season two of Community and season five of Mad Men.

The Golden Globes 2013: An Exercise In Pointlessness

Really, all award shows are pointless. Grammys, Tonys, Oscars, Emmys, all of that are all pointless. Winning any of those isn't a guarantee of quality. For fuck's sake, Crash won an Oscar, and the Grammys have nominated Nickleback six times. But even with that caveat, the Golden Globe awards are a special kind of meaningless.

Quickly, without looking on Google, tell me what movie won the Best Drama Golden Globe 10 years ago. How about five years ago? How about last year? Chances are your mind is blanking out. That's because absolutely nobody cares about the Golden Globes. With the Oscars you can at least say that people will remember them, or that a nominated movie will get more attention from John Q. Public. I'm betting a lot of people are going to be seeing Beasts of the Southern Wild now that the Oscars have given it a nod (and that's a great thing, because it's a movie well worth seeing). But nobody is going to be rushing out to watch Salmon Fishing In The Yemen because it got a Golden Globe nomination.

So why do we humor this show? Why is it broadcast nationally and then picked apart and dissected by the media for a day or two before it goes back to being forgotten? I don't know the exact reason, but I'm guessing it's because it's been around for long enough people consider it a tradition and because the awards it gives out only focus on the big stuff. No technical awards here. It's the product of our obsession with celebrities, where we are content just watching them get awards from the least essential arbiters of quality ever. Oh well, at least Tina Fey and Amy Pohler are fun to watch. Can they just host every award show ever?