He looked like he was wearing a Steve Martin mask over his face- was that deliberate make-up or has Steve had bad plastic surgery or Botox?
I thought he was just getting old.
My favorite line on the show was–as usual–from Tracy:
“Stop patriciding! There’s nothing to freak out about–that’s just a Japanese sex doll in Daddy’s bed!”
Wow. This was one of the best episodes they ever had and that’s all the love it gets?
The writing was just brilliant. (By John Riggi, BTW.) They threw away a half-dozen lines that other shows would build whole episodes around. The acting was perfect. Even Tina Fey got all her expressions just right, and her expressions were jokes of their own a half dozen times.
Who cares how Steve Martin looks? I didn’t even notice.
?Best? Must have seen a different cut than the one I saw. Really crappy. Very typical, predictable sitcom crap. You knew it was a con, Kenneth was going to lose his money, etc.
Tracy Jordan as usual is a show killer. What is going on with avoiding the writers? They are the heart and soul of the show. (At least Pete got a line in this episode.)
The last 3 celeb based shows have all been bad. Definitely going downhill and then some.
I enjoyed it, as it’s still better than most sitcoms on today, but I am getting tired of the gimmicky guest stars. They’ve gone away from the actual “show” the show is about. If they must use guest stars that frequently it would work better to have them doing cameos as part of the show, IMO.
I think it’s consistently the best of the NBC Thursday night line-up. Steve Martin has been aging and that’s his natural look, as far as I can tell.
I agree with Exapno - this, like many episodes, was a perfectly-constructed haiku of sitcom-ness. It adhered to all the right rules, and played with the other ones.
I loved the cameo by John McEnroe as well. “Come on! Where’s all the art!”
I agree with a lot of this. I recently went on a 30 Rock binge (thanks, Netflix!), and really think the writing this season suffers in comparison to most of the episodes in seasons one and two. At its best, this show transcends bland typicality because the writing and the characterization are so dense, interesting, and chewy. In its most wonderful episodes (Greenzo, Cougars, Subway Hero stand out to me), every scene has multiple throw-away lines that are inspired, random, and do nothing to move the plot forward. This is in stark contrast to three out of the four episodes this season (the Oprah one was a little better), which seem to be trying to get from point A to point B to point C in as workmanlike way as possible, without glorying in each small moment.
The stuntcasting is annoying, but it’s the writing that’s the let-down to me.
I thought this was one of the best eps of the show. And while Oprah and Aniston certainly qualify, can you really call a Steve Martin appearance on a show that’s so much the offspring of SNL a stunt?
–Cliffy
When the plot revolves around his character for the sake of his character? Absolutely, yes.