A history lesson from Tina Fey

I've been thumbing through Live from New York, an oral history of Saturday Night Live. It's a great book for leisurely reading. There's one anecdote after another and almost everyone who's been connected with the show over the years is included.

This quote from Tina Fey made me laugh:

"The seventies and the twenty-first century are just so different. There's no drugs and there's no sex at the show now. I would have been terrified if I was here back in the old days."

I know what she means. Have you ever watched any of those early shows? I have the first season on dvd and there are a lot more drug references than I think you'd ever see today.

I said almost everyone is included in the book but there's one notable exception. Apparently, Eddie Murphy has some bitter feelings toward SNL and declined to be interviewed.

Hey, I know what that's like. I once tried to get an interview with him myself, when he was on tour doing his standup routine in the mid 1980s. I even made a personal pitch to actress Susan Saint James, wife of then-producer Dick Ebersol, who promised to give him my business card.

For the next few weeks, I kept getting notes on my desk from colleagues (this was before voicemail) saying that "Eddie" had called. He never did.

30 Rock returns

One of my favorite tv shows, 30 Rock, returned this week. Yay! I definitely need some more humor in my life.

The season opener did not disappoint, even though it seemed like the writers were trying to cram an awful lot into a little over 20 minutes. Tina Fey, who certainly has helped make Saturday Night Live must-see tv again this fall, was at the top of her game.

There were some great lines and two hilarious plot strands: Fey's Liz Lemon desperately trying to impress adoption agency representative Megan Mullally, and Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy clawing his way back up from the mailroom to the executive suite.

As an extra special bonus, one of my blogging buddies, Kari from Persistent Cookie, has a new gig as the 30 Rock correspondent for Give Me My Remote. It'll be fun having someone to discuss the show with every week. And, we've got Oprah appearing on what I know will be a very special episode. Can it get any better?

In the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley calls 30 Rock a "clever update, not to say rip-off" of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. (And she means that as a compliment, I think!) I can see the parallels: single woman trying to make a career behind the scenes in television, surrounded by a demanding boss and quirky coworkers.

Of course, Tracy Morgan is the vain and self-absorbed Ted Baxter character played by Ted Knight, and Alec Baldwin would be the counterpart to Ed Asner's brusque but kindhearted Lou Grant. But who's Gavin MacLeod's understanding confidante Murray?