Plot
Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and Dennis Duffy (Dean Winters) have gotten back together after Dennis was the only person who remembered her birthday. Disturbed by Liz's acceptance of mediocrity, her boss, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), tries to reform her into someone who enjoys the good life. He refers Liz to the fanciest restaurant in the city, Stone. Nevertheless, Liz declines Jack's offer to be her mentor. That night at Stone, Jack and his date walk by Liz and Dennis's table, with Jack very unimpressed by Dennis's manners. The following day, Jack introduces Liz to a former mentee of his, Howard Jorgensen (Brian Stack). At lunch the next day, Liz realizes she is frustrated with her relationship with Dennis, then she storms off to Jack's office to ask for help. Jack motivates Liz to end it with him. Liz comes home to break up with Dennis, only to find him distraught after a loss of his favorite hockey team, the New York Islanders. As a result, Dennis moves in with her.
Meanwhile, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) is upset after being identified in a magazine as an actor behaving normally, far from the insane persona he is trying to maintain. To re-establish his street cred, Tracy gets a dragon tattoo on his face, but is later identified as made of sharpie. At the same time, Josh Girard (Lonny Ross) is told that he is to receive a special gift from Liz Taylor (Rachel Dratch) as a response to an impression he did of the actress on TGS with Tracy Jordan. Liz Taylor sneaks into the 30 Rock studios and, upset over Josh's impersonation, brutally beats him with a fire extinguisher.
At the same time, Jack, responding to audience research, starts cleaning out green clothes from the set. He asks Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski), one of the stars of TGS, how old she is, and she tells him that she is 29. As a result of this exchange, Jenna gets botox and collagen injections that go terribly wrong. Later, during a sketch rehearsal—involving impersonations of Condoleezza Rice, Laura Bush, and John Kerry—the various mishaps of Tracy, Jenna, and Josh prompt Liz and Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit) that it would be impossible for the three to perform on the show. Fortunately, the power in the NBC Studios goes out, canceling the show.
Read more about this topic: Jack Meets Dennis
Famous quotes containing the word plot:
“Morality for the novelist is expressed not so much in the choice of subject matter as in the plot of the narrative, which is perhaps why in our morally bewildered time novelists have often been timid about plot.”
—Jane Rule (b. 1931)
“Those blessed structures, plot and rhyme—
why are they no help to me now
I want to make
something imagined, not recalled?”
—Robert Lowell (1917–1977)
“We have defined a story as a narrative of events arranged in their time-sequence. A plot is also a narrative of events, the emphasis falling on causality. “The king died and then the queen died” is a story. “The king died, and then the queen died of grief” is a plot. The time sequence is preserved, but the sense of causality overshadows it.”
—E.M. (Edward Morgan)