(30) Rock On

So, after the first day of being sick, where I wasn't really able to focus my eyes on anything much beyond the inside of my eyelids, I decided to watch discs 2 and 3 of 30 Rock Season One that I had on loan from BigPond.

Between erratic television scheduling and cracked discs, I've had a bit of difficulty watching 30 Rock in any kind of sustained way over its four seasons, and if that hasn't been enough for me to just give in and buy it, then it's finally been due to the program itself, or at least from what I've managed to watch of it this weekend, that henceforth I will be on the look out to buy 30 Rock, preferably on sale.

I haven't mentioned it here before, but this semester I'm convening a subject in a television degree, and there are so many moments in 30 Rock that just speak to the massive changes that television as a medium has undergone in the past decade or so that I think it would be remiss of me, as a television scholar, not to own it.

Just off the top of my head:

Jack Donaghy is the Head of West Coast Television and Microwave Programming for GE .

Liz Lemon explains to a colleague of TGS with Tracy Jordan that 'This is not HBO, it's TV'.

In one episode a webisode is featured. It consists of a character's entrance to a room and two spoken lines before the credits--longer than the webisode--roll.

There, in three brief instances, you have commentary on the industrial context of contemporary television, as well as aesthetic and technological developments. Brilliant.



Finally, I can't overlook the irony of my desire to buy 30 Rock on DVD.

The DVD has contributed to changes in television that have brought about this current crop of extraordinary television narratives; it's encouraged the production of texts that can bear repeat viewing.

So, that's why I'll buy the DVDs of this TV show, because I don't want to miss a single self-referential moment of this television sit-com about the production of a live television variety show. And then I'll want to watch every moment again.