Memoir Reading- Last Blog

The scene I selected to discuss is about Tina Fey reflecting on her decision to start 30 Rock and the show getting picked up by NBC. The scene starts with her discussing how it was her eighth season writing for Saturday Night Live and acknowledging the fact that she needed to start a new chapter to her life. She discusses some struggles she had “pushing herself out of the nest” as she calls it. She goes on to use the basic idea of writing about what it is like to write for SNL. She was unsure about the idea at first, but went on to write the pilot episode and gather an idea of who she would want as actors. Fey talks about how she thought the pilot was pretty bad and how shocked she was when she found out that NBC had decided to pick up the show. In the end of the section, she discusses how she was happy they went out on a limb for her show.

In my synopsis I didn’t even try to mention all the hilarious inserts Fey used in her writing. Littered throughout the five-page section are puns, witty remarks, and comical asides. Reading it made me feel a number of emotions from happiness to concern. I found myself laughing at all her comedy but then worried and interested about the show’s rocky start. I felt sympathy with Fey when she was talking about the decision to start the next chapter of her life because I was the one who decided that it was time to go back to school and pushed myself out of the nest, just as she did. I also found myself fairly surprised that it was that hard to get the show picked up, because I have seen the pilot many times and I think it is very funny. I can’t imagine someone thinking the show would fail.

This excerpt is very important to Fey’s story for many reasons. First off, I think it is interesting to get an insight into the struggles she ran into starting the show, from the decision to do it to the question of it getting picked up. Before reading this I just assumed that Fey had the idea for 30 Rock and decided to write the show on her own and there wasn’t a question about it getting picked up, but after reading this, I realized that was far from the truth. It is also essential to see Fey looking back on her decisions and being happy with herself, even when she ran into issues.