30 Rock Wiki
Register
Advertisement


Hogcock! was the penultimate episode of 30 Rock, airing on January 31, 2013 to 4.88 million viewers. With TGS having been cancelled, Liz struggles to adjust to being a stay-at-home mother and craves to be back at work. Jack attempts to turn Kabletown into a perfect company, but begins to struggle with his growing realisation that he isn't truly happy. Tracy has difficulty getting on without Kenneth, now that he has been promoted to president of NBC and can no longer run his errands. Jenna is mortified to learn that her diva tantrums are being ignored, now that nobody is contractually obliged to put up with her, so she decides to look for her next step as an actress.

Synopsis[]

Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is struggling to adjust to being a stay-at-home mother and decides to pitch new network president Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer) a television show about her life, but he rejects it and explains to her that "woman", "writer", "New York" and even "quality" are some of the new television no-no's he is adopting in order to try and win back a bigger audience to the network. Meanwhile, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) is busy trying to turn Kabletown into a perfect company, using the "Six Sigma Wheel of Domination", but is struggling to find fulfilment in it, pondering whether, as per his mother's dying sentiments, he is truly "happy". At TGS, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) is struggling to get on without Kenneth as his best friend and runner of all errands, and dismisses Grizz (Grizz Chapman) and Dot Com (Kevin Brown) as they try to explain to him that Kenneth is president of the network now. Finally, Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) makes the horrifying discovery that her tantrums and unreasonable demands are being ignored by the crew, who are no longer contractually obliged to put up with her.

Stuck at home, Liz turns to a mothering forum and gets into an argument with another mother, which culminates in the pair agreeing to meet at Riverside Park in order to fight it out. However, upon arriving, Liz discovers that the other mother is in fact Criss (James Marsden), who is taking just as badly to having a job as she is to not having one. The pair realise that they are the wrong way around; that Liz should be working and Criss should be the "stay at home mom". At TGS, Jenna decides to prepare for her next step and vows to abandon comedy and only do dramatic roles, so she gets a gig on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, but is disappointed to find that she'll be playing a corpse. She attempts to rework the role by improvising that the corpse has come back to life with investigative powers, but is quickly fired. Undeterred, she instead vows to abandon television, and move to Los Angeles to become a movie star, but when she arrives, she discovers that all of the women there are ridiculously young and beautiful, and quickly returns to New York.

Tracy manages to get some time with Kenneth, but surprises him by asking him to ignore all his requests. He explains that when he became famous, a lot of people from his past wanted things from him, and he doesn't want to be that person for Kenneth. He then asks Kenneth to go and fetch his car, which has broken down on the Long Island Expressway, which Kenneth happily obliges, suggesting that their relationship will not change all that much. Elsewhere, Jack decides to launch an attack on his unhappiness by creating the "Six Sigma Wheel of Happiness Domination" and making improvements to every aspect of his life: among them, leading Kabletown to record high shares and organising a threesome with former girlfriends Nancy Donovan and Elisa Pedrera. However, despite all his efforts, he is forced to concede that he remains unfulfilled.

For the sake of staying in work, Liz decides to give Kenneth what he wants: a bad show. She pitches him "Hardly Working", about a man called John Hardly who loves his family and hates the rat race, but he rejects it and tells her that she needs to make another episode of TGS. He elaborates that there is a strange clause in Tracy's contract that states that he must be paid thirty million dollars by the network if TGS produces fewer than 150 episodes, and the current total is 149. Annoyed, Liz goes to Jack for a job, but he tells her that he has quit due to his lack of fulfilment, and blames her for ruining him by making him care about things other than work. She in turn blames him for ruining her, by making her care about work too much. Jack retorts that he only ever called her for one meeting seven years ago, but that she had kept returning and their friendship had got out of hand. The pair conclude that they should only ever have been employer and employee, and nothing more.

Advertisement