Chris Parnel News

Hottest Articles on BroadwayWorld.com from this weekend Sunday, May 20, 2012 - Sunday, May 20, 2012.

THE COMEDY AWARDS (#comedyawards) are back and better than, well, last year, when the second annual event airs on COMEDY CENTRAL on Sunday, May 6 at 9:00 p.m. ET/PT.

Part 12 ANGRY MEN homage, part surrealistic NBC retrospective fever dream and 100% 30 ROCK absurd brilliance at its best, night's live episode of the gold standard NBC comedy series 30 ROCK was precisely that - pure gold. Not only did Tina Fey and the impossibly creative team of writers give the motley assortment of players that comprise the cast a chance to seriously show off their live sketch show skills and theatrical training, but provided Broadway and Hollywood crossover star Alec Baldwin with some of his strongest material to date - with the charismatic erstwhile comedian absolutely killing in his moments portraying a host of wacky and weird characters besides the usual stone-faced Jack Donaghy, a role which has brought him a copious amount of well-deserved statuettes over the six seasons so far. Speaking of hosts, the Dean Martin parody, THE JOEY MONTERO SHOW, stands out as being perhaps the most memorable and guffaw-inducing of all the night's trove of treasures, which is certainly saying something significant - Baldwin owned. Besides the ingenuous conceit of paying tribute to the landmark original live television drama 12 ANGRY MEN acting as a fresh and amusing framing device for the episode, the opportunity afforded by Kenneth (Jack MacBrayer)'s hallucinatory flashbacks of fictional former lesser glories of NBC's long and storied history gave rise to the fabulous fodder allowing for some of the funniest sequences on the series in recent memory - moments that will linger in the mind and funny bone long after this episode or season. Yes, once again, 30 ROCK proved why it is the finest comedy on TV and why Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin have a special sort of chemistry that can only be compared to the finest pairs in the rich history of the form - Mary & Mr. Grant included.

Sterling Archer, the world's most dangerous spy, and his snarky ISIS cohorts are back for another outrageously raunchy season when ARCHER The Complete Second Season comes to Blu-ray and DVD on December 27th from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Sterling Archer, the world's most dangerous spy, and his snarky ISIS cohorts are back for another outrageously raunchy season when ARCHER The Complete Second Season comes to Blu-ray and DVD on December 27th from Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment.

Today we are taking a look at both versions of last night's live episode of the every-award-winning NBC comedy 30 ROCK starring Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan and Jane Krakowski with a special emphasis on the theatrical elements - such as a newly written (or at least lyric-ized) theme song performed by two of Broadway's best, a musical montage infomercial, and some shrewdly-placed stage tricks - and the many memorable moments from the slightly different, but equally effectively excellent, episodes aired on either coast. It was an event quite unlike any other before or since and even guest stars Jon Hamm, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Matt Damon, Chris Parnell and Rachel Dratch got in on the game-changing nature of the live television event and hammed it up for the live studio audience. Surely, if absolutely nothing else, the two versions of the theme song - one sung by Jane Krakowski for the East Coast feed, the other sung by Cheyenne Jackson for the West Coast - are more than enough to generate some interest and excitement from the Broadway babies out there who are destined find a lot to love in this unprecedented live show and the overall allure of 30 ROCK itself! In addition to a thorough discussion of the two shows and side-by-side clip comparisons, also included in this article are links to the complete episodes so you may compare and contrast them yourself in their entirety. Without further ado, let the live hilarity ensue!