No, I didn’t change my identity. I just watched the last episode of 30 Rock.
I’ve not watched a single TV show in my life, where I identified with a character, let alone the main character. Maybe a little bit with Angela Chase in My so-called life.
There’ve been some, where I wanted to be a certain character or really admired them, but now I found one. Of all shows I’ve ever seen it had to be a silly comedy show with 20 minute episodes.
I started watching 30 Rock a few weeks after its final episode. It came recommended and I had heard good things about it, also, I found that I quite liked Tina Fey. So I thought, why not and started on the first season and quickly moved onto the second.
I watched episodes on my tablet whilst I was preparing food a lot, sometimes on the tube on the way home. I laughed a lot. Tina Fey’s humour really appealed to me and her character was one I could identify with, I mean truly identify.
At the beginning of the show she’s 35. I’m 34. She’s a writer for a struggling TV comedy show. I’m a writer just trying to get myself out there for the very first time. She’s the go to person for everybody around her, surprisingly so am I. We’re the problem solvers and the listeners and those, who will take charge, if we want to or not.
We’re snarky and sarcastic and full of heart. I don’t have her horrible eating habits, but I get almost everything else she does in her private life at home and elsewhere. Every struggle and all the attempts to get over her own awkwardness.
I get her, I really, really do. We even both wear glasses.
She’s struggling to establish a meaningful romantic relationship, for the most part downright avoiding even getting into one, while secretly hoping for Mr. Right.
I suppose we have a lot in common here as well, but I’m looking for Mrs. Right. She wants her life to take a certain direction, so do I. We want the same things and we both struggle. But we’re both strong willed, opinionated, passionate, creative women. And even if it’s not always clear which path to take or how we get what we want, we always know what we don’t want.
Clearly the reason I ended up loving this show is because I found myself in it. Tina Fey wrote it that way and this was precisely her intention, for me to find myself in it. Maybe not me personally, but someone like me, which includes me.
When we look to the screen, falling in love with a show, a character or a movie, we’re always looking for ourselves. It’s those shows, where we do find ourselves that we love the most. Those hidden gems. They tend to be the smaller shows, the outsider shows, the ones with the human element.
Everything else is just entertainment and quite possibly easily forgotten and less mourned. I’m sure many of us found someone to relate to in Six Feet Under or Friday Night Lights. Game of Thrones not so much, but that one is hugely successful for very different reasons.
I’ve had many shows I enjoyed watching, but won’t ever revisit. My favourites will all one day get a spot in my DVD collection, which is currently quite small, but will be growing.
30 Rock I will miss. I will miss Liz Lemon. I will be able to revisit her and maybe it won’t be the same as the first time around, but I’m sure I will find new things that I didn’t see before and that will be just as well.
Loving a TV show or a fictional character isn’t rational, but somehow we’re wired that way and someone has done something right, if they get through to our hearts. It’s what I’m still trying to figure out.
My favourite line in the whole series was uttered by Liz Lemon in the last episode (said to Tracy Jordan): “You frustrated me and you wore me out, but because the human heart is not properly connected to the human brain, I love you.”
Truer words were never spoken.
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