A Statement About Liz Lemon

I didn't "get" Sex and the City.  And I gave it a damn good try.  I watched the first season, and have probably seen a season's worth of reruns on TBS (I know they're watered down, but the idea is there) and I just... don't get it.  It might be my age, it might be that I don't live in a city (although I have, several times over the past few years), it might be that I would rather buy 15 DVDs than spend $300 on a pair of shoes.  But I digress.

The biggest problem I have with Sex and the City is that none of those women represented ME.  I know there was a brainy/cynical one and a romantic one, and I probably fall somewhere between the two.  But I never looked at any of them and saw myself.  I could relate to their problems occasionally, but that was about it.

Which is why I nominate Liz Lemon as my female representative to the Pop Culture Congress.  Liz Lemon, 3o Rock's own Mary Tyler Moore (although I have to confess, I don't know what that means) is ME.  And that's all there is to it.

First of all, Liz Lemon is gloriously weak.  Weak in ways that I (and girls like me) are weak.  She eats.  Constantly.  In fact, there is a rather spectacular cutaway in the season 2 episode called "Sandwich Day" in which she flips over a table, screeching "WHERE'S MY MAC AND CHEESE??" when the male writers under her employ have presumably stolen it and eaten it for themselves. (For those curious, I have that Mac and Cheese moment about once a week).  

Liz steps in to save her staff from the Head Honcho, Jack Donaghy, on a regular basis.  But when she herself makes a rather large error in judgement, she is happy enough to let her entire staff be questioned and accused and to turn on each other before finally confessing to Jack.  Of course, he knew it was her the whole time.

Another thing that makes Liz Lemon stand apart the complete lack of romance in her life.  This is not to say that she does not have boyfriends, or that she doesn't have sex (we know it usually involves being bribed with food and Uno foreplay).  Liz does not base her life around finding a romantic love interest.  When Floyd, the season 1 boyfriend, elected to stay in Cleveland without her, Liz returned for season 2, not depressed and bedridden, but ready for action (with the exception of the whole wedding-dress-buying incident).  30 Rock is not about Liz finding a boyfriend or love or any of that.  It's about Liz, her crazy job, and trying to live her life around it.

This is further emphasized by the 4 males immediately surrounding Liz on a regular basis, all of whom have zero romantic prospects with our heroine.  Nor, it should be mentioned, do they want them.  Jack is her boss and wants to help "better" her life and self-esteem; Pete is her loser producer who moves in with her after his wife finds out he didn't have a vasectomy; Tracy is the insane (actually insane) star of her show; and Kenneth is the quasi-adolescent NBC page who follows her around like a puppy hungry not for Liz herself but for the opportunities her presence can bring.

The final reason Liz Lemon is my kind of character is that she is absolutely, without question, unhesitatingly nerdy.  This is a girl who has no time to pay attention to what she's wearing (as Jack often points out).  Star Wars references abound (especially when Jenna, the other star of Liz's show, tries to tell her that "Men don't like girls who watch Star TREK," "WARS!!" Liz corrects vehemently.)  Liz is also the fearless propagator of exclamations like "Nerds!" and "Blerg!" and "Monsters!" and, on several occasions, tells people they can "eat my poo."

In long, I adore Liz Lemon.  On the television landscape she is the character who represents me, the way I think, and the way I do things.  Enough said.