Watching the 30 Rock Porn Parody as a Parody, and as a Porn

The 30 Rock porn parody starts, inexplicably, with a pitch-perfect parody of an entirely different show, as “Trey Jordan” of  “The Chick Show with Trey Jordan” gives us a Cribs-style tour of his mansion for no reason whatsoever. I’m assuming one of the producers wanted to show off his house? Needless to say, this odd parody within a parody successfully set the tone for my first foray into the weirdest genre in existence: comedy parody porn.

First of all, what? Why do these films exist? Who watches them? And how did they find a porn actor with such a strangely inspired Tracy Morgan impression? This column will aggressively avoid answering any of these questions. It will, however, offer an unnecessarily graphic (my choice) review of the films, critiquing them as both comedy parodies and as porn.

The plot of the 30 Rock porn is revolutionary, and when I say revolutionary here I am being sarcastic. Network head “Jake Donaghy” wants “Liz Limon” (if you can’t figure out who’s who, email me personally so I can yell at you) to add more sex to TCS. I should also mention that the premise of this film is not revealed until after the first sex scene. Thumbs down for the comedy parody review, a million thumbs up for the porn review.

This first sex scene, which starts almost immediately, is between Jake Donaghy (a solid impression by fantastically-named porn star Herschel Savage) and a vague nurse/assistant character that I eventually decided was loosely based on Salma Hayek’s character. Despite a few character-based one-liners at the top (“How about I stroke your ratings until they grow?”, the far less inspired “Suck my executive dick”), once the sex starts all character choices are immediately dropped. Oh, except for the character choice of Jake Donaghy having exceptionally saggy balls, to which Herschel committed fully. The best part of this scene was that it ended with a whip pan.

After Jake drains his surprisingly full balls, we jump to the hallway and meet the rest of the TCS gang. And I must say, the casting in this porn parody is exquisite. In addition to Bishop (Trey Jordan) and Herschel, Paul Woodcrest offers a great “Ken” and Ashlynn Brooke deadpans (probably not on purpose) a passable “Jenny Maroney.” The gang spends a few minutes naming Trey Jordan projects, including “Caddyblack,” “I’m A Black Cowboy, Bitch” and “Black to the Future.” I was going to say I was impressed by the pun titles, but then I remembered that these are porn writers, and that’s literally their only job.

Then, quite suddenly, Jenny Maroney corners “Fred” (Frank) in the writer’s room with the supremely subtle line “I’m gonna fuck the shit out of you, and you’re gonna write me a good sketch.” That made me laugh very hard, which is not a good sign at the start of a sex scene.

Now, I don’t have a problem with the fact that there’s been approximately 3 minutes of dialogue since the last sex scene. The problem I have is that no one ever wants to watch Frank Rossitano have well-lit sex, and we are now watching Frank Rossitano have well-lit sex. I will say that the actor playing Fred has an impressively enormous penis, which Judah Friedlander should 100% take as a direct compliment. Other than that, yuck. I actually yawned during this sex scene. The great news is, it also ended with a whip pan, which brought us, no joke, directly into the next sex scene.

“Peter” (Pete Hornsberger) approaches “Cherry” (an excellently parodied Cerie, although to be fair, porn star Amy Ried was presumably told to act normal) and proceeds to have sex with her IN A FANTASY. I must say, the writers really nailed the Pete character here. So pathetic that even in a porn he couldn’t have real sex. Sadly, the actor playing Pete is outfitted with the cheapest bald cap they could find at Halloween Adventure. Luckily, the scene ends with another whip pan! It’s not a good sign that I am starting to look forward to the whip pans.

As the next scene starts, I am so relieved to see porn parody regular James Deen after those last two scenes that I could literally weep. As expected, his “Danny” is a perfect impression of Dennis (his come-on is “Does that mean we can bone?”). Unfortunately, his scene is with Lisa Ann, whose butthole always looks like it just sucked a lemon. James Deen completely carries this scene to success, which is saying a lot, because the giant “Welcome Black Cotter” written on a blackboard behind them is extremely distracting. (These writers are killing it!)

The conclusion of this scene leads to the “All Is Lost” Moment of the plot, which the producers of this film undoubtedly did not call it. This is also the second scene (total) to not lead to a sex scene. Ken the Page unwittingly gets his hands on a tape of Limon and Danny having sex and, mistaking it for a pre-taped sketch (I guess?) puts the tape on air. Oh no! Luckily, this is exactly what Jake Donaghy was looking for, and everything is resolved literally instantly with absolutely no repercussions. Thank god, because it’s been like 2 whole minutes since I’ve watched people have sex and I’m starting to get bored.

Enter Ken, who starts daydreaming about becoming a senior page. Obviously, in his daydream, two random women want to have a three-way with him. HOWEVER, in Ken’s daydream, he’s NOT PLAYED BY PAUL WOODCREST! He’s played by a different, buffer, manlier porn actor! Which is either an oddly specific homage to the live episode of 30 Rock (where Julia Louis-Dreyfus plays Liz Lemon in a flashback), or a blatant insult to Paul Woodcrest. Or a scheduling issue. Either way, it’s hilarious. And then, the film’s over. Hooray!

Despite a sex scene to normal scene ratio of about 6:1 (I’m being generous), I have to say that the 30 Rock parody porn was a better parody than it was a porn. Bishop, Herschel, Paul Woodcrest and my boy J Deen all offered surprisingly great impressions, and some of the specifics were dead-on (Trey Jordan’s movies, Ken’s dopey missteps, THE WHIP PANS). Plus, the sex scenes were mostly bad, hindered by ridiculous looking characters and weird match-ups. I mean, come on — they found and hired a porn actor with a perfect Tracy Jordan impression and didn’t have him bone Jenny Maroney! What?! Shame on you, New Sensations. Shame on you, and certainly not on the writer of this column.

Sarah Schneider has written for Saturday Night Live and CollegeHumor. She enjoys comedy and porn, not necessarily in that order (in that order).

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