30 Rock Addresses the NBC Late Night Issue

Months ago, NBC was in the news as a result of a controversy involving their 11:30 time slot on week nights. The story of Jay Leno and Conan O'Brien attracted a lot of attention and the network faced bad publicity when O'Brien walked away from the Tonight Show (and Jay took it back). Since then, I have been waiting to see how the sitcom 30 Rock would respond to this situation, and this week I found out.

30 Rock has been parodying the goings on at NBC since the show first aired three years ago and often features actual NBC personalities who work at 30 Rockefeller Plaza in New York. News anchor Brian Williams, talk show host Jimmy Fallon, SNL announcer Don Pardo, comedian Jerry Seinfeld, and even Conan O'Brien have appeared on the show before as themselves. A few episodes ago, 30 Rock addressed the sale of NBC by General Electric to Comcast by having NBC sold to the fictional Philadelphia based company "Kabletown".

I was not sure how they would handle the NBC late night issue, with Leno and O'Brien both being referenced as real people on the show in the past, but they nailed it. In the 30 Rock version, NBC Vice President for East Coast Television and Microwave Oven Programming Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is told by his assistant that they have a "janitor emergency" on their hands. Into Jack's office enters a Kashmiri immigrant janitor named Khonani. Khonani reminds Jack of the promise he made to him five years ago to promote him to 11:30 custodial shift. He had threatened to quit unless he could leave the late night shift for an earlier one. Khonani wants to move up to 11:30 because it is more prestigious and he convinces Jack that the current 11:30 janitor, Subbas, will be willing to step aside because he wants to retire and spend more time on his hobby of "collecting classic car- *cough* *cough* -dboard".

When Jack sat Subbas down, it was clear that Subbas did not want to leave the 11:30 shift. Jack quickly came up with an idea that would keep both janitors happy. He could have Subbas work at 10, as a way of reinventing late night custodial work or "innoventing" as he called it. They shook hands and it seemed as though things would work out and Jack Donaghy would be lauded as a managerial genius.

It was not too long before Khonani realized the problem with the new plan: since Subbas was working at 10 PM, there was no trash to clean up at 11:30. He realizes that his lifelong dream of "hosing the tonight shift" is not worth it if there is no trash to take out. Jack suggests the possibility of letting Khonani and Subbas share the 11:30 shift becuase he does not want anyone to get upset over this janitor emergency. Khonani explains that one of them has to leave and he is willing to do it to protect the integrity of the 11:30 shift. Besides, he will easily be able to get a job "at Fox- *cough* *cough* -woods casino" where his cousin is the head janitor. Khonani quits and Subbas is free to take back 11:30.

This episode made me laugh so hard. It was brilliant the way they made two janitors in the NBC studios a microcosm for the problems that the network has had with its late night talk show hosts recently. Although Conan did not go to Fox (he signed with TBS last week), it is still a brilliant use of referencing the actual situation's people and places without acknowledging that it was anything bigger than a custodial shift.