"30 Rock" takes on perceptions of small-town America

Is small-town America more virtuous than the rest of the country? Jack Donaghy, the manipulative network vice president on the TV show "30 Rock," thinks so.

In the episode "Stone Mountain" (aired originally October 29, 2009), Jack (played by Alec Baldwin) sets off to middle America to find a new comedian for his late-night comedy show. His rationale is that he'll find someone "more American" (and hence more popular) if he looks beyond big cities.

"Small towns are where you see the kindness and goodness and courage of everyday Americans … people who are still living by core American values." Jack says.

Predictably, Jack's head writer, Liz Lemmon (played by Tina Fey), disagrees.

"No part of America is more American than any other part," she says. "Americans are the same everywhere." For a half-hour network sit-com, the show provides a complex analysis of our perceptions of big cities and small towns.

I was ready to cringe at rural stereotypes but found the show surprisingly free of oversimplification and overstatement. Sure, there's the hotel clerk who is a little too nice and drawls a bit. But there's also a good-old-boy comedian whose foul-mouthed insults would fit right in at a Manhattan comedy club. He's no better – or worse – than any stand up comedian anywhere when it comes to wholesomeness.

"30 Rock" deals with Stone Mountain, Georgia's, troubled racial history only in passing, when a local TV news anchor states that it's news that a local man is going to be on TV "with a black man." Stone Mountain was the birthplace of the second iteration of the Ku Klux Klan and the state park has a monument to Confederate leaders. But neither of these facts found their way into the script.

This isn't "30 Rock's" first trip to small-town America. The show's first season featured an episode called "The Rural Juror," in which self-absorbed actress Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) gets a role in a movie with that tongue-twisting (or tongue-swallowing) name. I think of that episode nearly every time I answer the phone at work.
-- Tim Marema