This week on 30 Rock, Liz gives up and Jack becomes his own nanny.
First, Liz. Liz and Carol have broken up, and Liz decides she will never get married. She buys a cat and names it Emily Dickinson (because when you think about it, giving up = reading). She puts a chip clip in her hair. She takes the money she was saving for her honeymoon and buys herself a cemetery plot.
Jack needs to save Liz! But first, he needs to save himself. He has to negotiate a deal with NBC/for NBC/within NBC (how does business lingo work?), and he is scared, because he is having trouble negotiating with his nanny. I can see why, because she never talks. She only eats oranges so slowly! But he thinks it is because she has leverage—she is friends with his vulnerable, expensive baby. How can he get leverage like that over whoever he is negotiating with about the thing? But then he realizes that he has the perfect “baby” for his negotiation—NBC! Jack ends up acting exactly like his nanny, adopting her accent and eating literally the same orange she ate moments ago. His negotiations go fine.
Meanwhile, Jenna can’t let Liz give up. She takes her to a bar. Liz is not a fan of “nightclub malarkey,” but Jenna somehow finds what Liz considers The Perfect Bar, where Liz meets The Perfect Man. He has an interest in droids—not the phones, but the Star Wars things. He also likes drinking “funky juice,” Liz’s favorite drink—a mix of Sprite, white wine, and ice cubes that she keeps in a thermos by her toilet. He tells her it’s “never too late for now,” the name of a song Frank and Pete have cowritten because they have way too much free times. They have sex!
But actually, the sex guy is (strongly implied to be) a Swedish prostitute that Liz’s coworkers hired to convince her not to be a spinster. And the Perfect Bar was actually built by Tracy Jordan in one day, specifically for Liz (or something). Liz is so touched by her friends’ dishonest and complicated gesture, though, that she ends up not giving up and getting rid of her cat (by feeding it to a hawk).