For some, enjoyment of any TV series is inherently tied to the main characters getting romantic. Everyone in the TV biz knows this, which is why the most popular series hinge on “will they?/won’t they?” storylines at some point, many more blatant than others. Some fans of NBC’s 30 Rock really wanted Liz Lemon and Jack Donaghy to end up together by the time the series ended, but they didn’t, and according to star Alec Baldwin, it’s because everyone knew better.
Baldwin recent took part in a Reddit AMA, in which he was asked why Jack and Tina Fey’s Liz didn’t end up together, and here’s how he put it.
Well, I think...they could never end up together you know? That's the way those shows were made. They're smart enough to know that it would be a bad idea. So they avoid it. They like each other, and it works perfectly, so long as you keep that aspect out of it. A lot of television shows are built around that, where you have people wondering and guessing when they're going to get together that way. And I'm not saying that always ruins everything, but it ruins it enough of the time to give you pause.
Creator Tina Fey is as smart as they come, so it didn’t seem likely that she or her writing staff would ever actually allow Liz and Jack to overstep their professional boundaries for something more personally permanent. However, they were also smart enough to lay enough clues and groundwork for Jack and Liz’s strange fascination with one another that can be detected through mere glances. It seems weird that Liz had more sexual chemistry with her boss than with many of her boyfriends, but that’s the genius of it.
If they ever actually would have ended up together, it would had to have been at the very last second of the last episode, so that viewers wouldn’t have to experience their relationship. That’s usually when things get super-awkward and when the chemistry fades. Of course, let’s not forget that Jack and Liz actually got married at one point, although it wasn’t inspired by love and happiness. Baldwin brings that up when asked what his favorite episode and/or bits in 30 Rock were.
Well… I don’t think I could pick one, but among the many that I liked, I liked when Tina and I got married inadvertently because the French yacht captain married us by mistake, and I could never quite understand what he was saying. I thought that was funny. And probably anything with Elaine Stritch, who played my mom.
Everything Elaine Stritch did was amazing. I’m certain that Colleen Donaghy and Tracy Jordan would have had a better romance than Jack and Liz. But I guess we’ll never know.
