I love 30 Rock. Despite her politics, I love Tina Fey. She’s so dang clever, and freakin’ hilarious. She gets a ton of mileage out of the ugly duckling writer thing–even though everyone knows she cleans up nice.
Well, I was watching 30 Rock a couple weeks ago, and low and behold, one of the main themes was vasectomies. The Big Snip. Here we go again, I think. Nothing is sacred any more, and nothing promotes family and the beauty of children. Bugger. Stupid 30 Rock, and stupid culture of death. This is particularly poignant for me because someone I know is considering a vasectomy, despite the moral and physical dangers (please pray for this person). He just doesn’t know. Little did I know the way the story would develop…
There were too many killer lines in the episode to note them here, but I’ll say that the real highlight of the show is when Tracy Morgan (playing a caricature of himself, “Tracy Jordan”) is about to go under the knife when the anesthetic–which causes him to hallucinate–induces a alternative universe for him in the form of a Cosby Show life featuring Tracy. In the scene Tracy walks in the the back door to a replica of the the famous Cosby kitchen, and his 30 Rock son, playing Theo, throws a his stuff onto a pile of garbage. Dialogue is initiated, and the place is a mess. Bill (Tracy) inquires about Sondra, Vanessa and Rudi, and the 30 Rock version of Theo reveals that there’s no Sondra, no Vanessa, no Rudy. There’s no girls. They were never born. Enter vasectomy, stage right!
Essentially, Bill/ Tracy realizes how women civilize and balance out the family, and he comes out of the hallucination saying, “I need a baby girl, I need a baby girl….” You can guess (or watch) the rest.
The bottom line is that the writers of 30 Rock portrayed the utterly selfish motivations for getting a vasectomy (or any birth control in general, actually), and the life-changing potential for children, not to mention the semi-subtle fact that women and men are different, and that women compliment men for the better.
Can you imagine the comic potential if they’d actually introduced the dangers of vasectomies, not the least of which is spiritual alienation from God forbidding one from receiving Holy Communion (for Catholics) and an increase in auto-immune diseases and cancer?
Thinking about the big snip? Do a little research here:
- The Hurtful Consequences
- General overview, Q&A on Vasectomies (oops, not 100% effective, btw)
- What Sterilization did to us, and Sterilization Reversal: an act of healing: the awesome testimony of a retired Naval officer who regretted his vasectomy from the beginning, and his resulting journey to cure his inexplicable depression. For them, it wasn’t about having more children, but simply restoring his manhood and obeying God. I loved this story. Hearing a military man–someone of inherent vigor, virtue and quality–tell his story and regret brought me to tears.
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I saw this episode and definitely thought the same thing you did! “Wow, promotion of more children? On PRIMETIME?” Awesome! That’s what I love about 30 Rock though, you can’t put it in a box. Thanks for your comments on my blog by the way!
I know, Alison! It’s amazing that our standards are so low that when something like this comes up, we’re like “Crazy!!! Woo! Everyone, check it out!!” Yup. Still, it’s cool, and I think it represents a shadow of a conscience in H’Wood and Network TV. There’s hope, though we both know the real Hope.
I saw this episode and was definitely surprised. Unfortunately, I also watched the episode of Private Practice, which aired on December 3rd. I’ve often been upset by certain pro-abortion, pro-contraception, etc. storylines on this show and on Grey’s Anatomy–so much so that I don’t even know why I watch them, really. On this episode, there was a devout Jewish couple who had about 8 kids are so. The wife confided in one of the doctors that she was overwhelmed and didn’t really want to have more kids right away, but it was against her and her husband’s beliefs to use any kind of contraception. After putting their heads together, all the doctors could come up with (brushing off any kind of abstinence as if it were a dirty word) was to give the wife birth control pills and explain that they were also prescribed for some sort of iron deficiency (wink, wink). The gave them to her out of sight of her husband, with the “moral” of the story being “Sometimes you must keep secrets from the person you love in order to protect him.” I was so angry and insulted. I wish these writers would do some kind of research and stop trying to push their own agenda on everyone. They tend to portray any devout religious person as severely misled and easily redirected to their “correct” way of thinking. Sorry, didn’t mean to ramble on, but I knew you would understand my frustration.
I’ll have to check out the Dec 3rd episode of Private Practice. I started watching it this season, and have been mildly entertained and intrigued. The plot line you described doesn’t surprise me. Perhaps we should write some emails?? Let’s do it. Letter writing to media is a past time for pro-fertility, pro-family peops. It’s really kind of a form letter these days.