Everyone knows that Alec Baldwin is amazing as Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock. He's won 3 Golden Globes and 2 Emmy's for the role. You may even know that Alec Baldwin has appeared in may films over the years, from older films like Beetlejuice and Glengarry Glen Ross to more recent films such as My Best Friend's Girl and It's Complicated. But, did you know that before 30 Rock he guest starred on many popular TV shows? Here's a few of our favorites:
Will & Grace
On Will & Grace, Alec Baldwin appeared as the character of Malcolm. Malcolm hires Will to work for his charity, but Will soon finds out that Malcolm is actually a secret government agent protecting the identity of Karen's dead husband Stanley, who is actually alive. Malcolm appeared in the last few episodes of Season 7 and the first few of Season 8. Here is a clip from the Season 8 live premier episode:
Friends
Alec Baldwin appears in two back-to-back episodes of Friends as Parker, Phoebe's overly positive and very enthusiastic boyfriend. In his first episode, he appears very briefly at the end of the episode, when he first meets Phoebe. But it is in the next episode, The One with Massapequa, where he truly shines. Unfortunately, it is very hard to find a clip from Friends on the internet (unless you want one that is either not in English or very bad quality) so this brief clip of the episode is the best I could find. I encourage you to go out and watch the whole episode, because he's really quite funny throughout the episode.
Saturday Night Live
Alec Baldwin has hosted SNL a total of 14 times, second only to Steve Martin who hosted 15 times (be sure to watch the Academy Awards next Sunday, March 7 when the two of them co-host together). It's hard to pick just one clip from all of Alec's SNL appearances, but I chose "The Tony Bennett Show" because Baldwin's Tony Bennett impression is just amazing. And in this particular clip, the real Tony Bennett pops in and the two Tony Bennetts sing together. Enjoy!
Happy Thanksgiving everyone! Since it's Thanksgiving (or at least it was when I started writing this), I thought it was appropriate to give thanks for all the great Thanksgiving episodes of TV! Here's a sample of a few of my favorite Thanksgiving episodes (limited to 1 episode per show, and limited to whatever clips I could find posted online).
Will & Grace: "Queens for a Day"
While the earlier Thanksgiving episodes such as the one where they spend Thanksgiving for 10 minutes with each person's family, or the one where Jack's mom comes to dinner and she doesn't know Jack is gay (they sound like Friends episodes when I describe them) might be more classic, one of my favorite Thanksgiving Will & Grace episode is "Queens for a Day" from Season 7. In this episode, the gang all goes to Queens for the day (as you might have guessed) to spend Thanksgiving with Will's boyfriend Vince's family. Will spends the day trying to impress Vince's mom with the perfect Thanksgiving dinner, while Grace and Karen both hook up with Vince's teenage cousin and Jack discovers that Vince's engaged sister is secretly a lesbian. This is how the big Thanksgiving dinner goes down:
Boy Meets World: "Turkey Day"
Cory is from a middle class family, and his best friend Shawn lives in a trailer park. Shawn decides it would be fun if Cory's family came over to the trailer park for Thanksgiving. But even though their difference in social class was never much of an issue for Cory and Shawn as friends, they'll soon learn that it'll be more difficult than they thought for their parents to get along. Here's what happens:
South Park: "Helen Keller! The Musical"
While most TV shows have Thanksgiving episodes about families coming together at a Thanksgiving dinner, this episode of South Park features the boys putting on a Thanksgiving musical about Helen Keller. The boys all want the show to feature a great turkey in honor of Thanksgiving, but Timmy, the handicapped kid who plays Helen Keller in the show, insists on using Gobbles, a handicapped turkey.
After Timmy realizes that the Broadway turkey trainer tricked him and sent Gobbles away to be slaughtered, Timmy leaves the show to save Gobbles. The play's director, the guy who starred in Les Miz on Broadway, steps in to save the show. It's a Thanksgiving miracle!
Everybody Loves Raymond: "The Bird"
My favorite Thanksgiving episode of Everybody Loves Raymond is called "The Bird", and involves the Barones having Thanksgiving with Amy's family. They're all getting along fine, until a bird flies into the window, and instead of trying to help save the bird, Amy's mother kills it to put it out of its misery, much to the shock of the Barones. A classic Thanksgiving episode ensues. Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a clip of that episode anywhere on the Internet, nor can I find a clip from any of of the other classic Thanksgiving episodes (The one where Debra decides to serve fish instead of turkey, the one where Marie decides to make a tofu turkey instead of a real one, etc.). The only Thanksgiving clip I could find online is the one that follows. Still funny, but not the one I wanted to show. If anyone can find a better Everybody Loves Raymond Thanksgiving clip, please comment here and let us know!
Friends: "The One with all the Thanksgivings"
Friends has kind of been known for their Thanksgiving episodes, as it's a great opportunity to have all 6 characters in one room for one crazy meal. While there has been a great Thanksgiving episode nearly each of the 10 seasons the show was on the air, (including the ones where Underdog escapes, they play football, and Brad Pitt shows up to Thanksgiving and confesses he and Ross had an "I Hate Rachel Club" in high school), my favorite would have to be "The One with all the Thanksgivings". This episode had the friends sitting around and reminiscing about all the worst Thanksgivings that they've had, and is filled with tons of flashbacks to various Thanksgivings throughout their lives. Here are some of my favorite clips from that episode:
Our favorite new show of the season is a sitcom called Community. It airs at 8:00, the perfect start to the best 2 hours television (8-10 on Thursdays on NBC). While the show boasts a great ensemble cast of actors (including Joel McHale from The Soup, comedy legend Chevy Chase, and recent break-out star Ken Jeong [the naked Asian guy who jumped out of the car in The Hangover]) there's another actor who I didn't really know on the show, but looked very familiar. His name is Jim Rash, and on Community he plays the hilarious Dean Pelton, who is always trying to gain publicity for the school. Here's a clip of him from the most recent episode of Community (You can stop watching after the first minute and 15 seconds if you want, it's a really long clip. Or if you're enjoying it, keep watching!):
That guy looked very familiar to me, but I didn't know where I had seen him before. So naturally, I turned to the greatest website on the Internet (except for this one of course), www.imdb.com! I looked him up, and he has appeared in two of our favorite shows: Friends and Will & Grace! Even more interesting, in both shows, he appeared as a guy on a plane! In Friends, he was in the series finale as the guy who afraid of the plane's lack of "phalange" and in Will & Grace he played a steward who wouldn't let Grace into first class (until Will flirted with him). Don't believe me? See for yourself!
Marlo Thomas played Rachel's mother on the hit sitcom Friends, however Marlo Thomas was famous long before the show. Back in the 60's Marlo Thomas starred on her own popular sitcom called That Girl, which ran for 5 successful seasons (yes, she played the girl who the title refers to). The show was the first show to focus on a single woman who wasn't domestic or living at home, paving the way for such classics as The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Murphy Brown, and more recently, Sex and the City and 30 Rock. So now, enjoy an episode of That Girl starring Rachel's mom, Marlo Thomas!
Elliot Gould played the sitcom parent of Jack Geller, Ross and Monica's dad on the hit sitcom Friends. Younger audiences might also recognize him from his role as Reuben in the Oceans 11 films. However, Elliot Gould was famous long before these recent supporting roles. Elliot Gould is an Academy Award nominated actor, most famous for starring in the 1970 film M*A*S*H (which inspired the long running sitcom). The film made him a huge star, landing him on the cover of Time Magazine. He also starred in hit films such as Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (which earned him his Academy Award nomination), A Bridge Too Far, Capricorn One, and The Devil and Max Devlin opposite Bill Cosby. Gould also starred on Broadway in Irma La Douce, Say, Darling, I Can Get It for You Wholesale, Drat! The Cat!, and Little Murders. Gould was also famously married to Barbra Streisand, who he met while performing in I Can Get It for you Wholesale on Broadway. Later in his life he appeared in supporting characters in Bugsy, American History X, and the Oceans 11 films. His success in the 1970's led him to host SNL 6 times in the show's first 5 years. Below are some clips from one of the sketches that he starred in back in 1975, as well as various other clips of Elliot Gould in film and on televsion:
Saturday Night Live Season 1, Episode 9 (1975): Interior Demolitionists:
Godfather Therapy:
Killer Bees:
From the film Move (1970)
From the film Little Murders (1971)
From Friends Season 9 Episode 1-The One Where No One Proposes:
Everyone knows that Alec Baldwin is amazing as Jack Donaghy on 30 Rock. He's won 3 Golden Globes and 2 Emmy's for the role. You may even know that Alec Baldwin has appeared in may films over the years, from older films like Beetlejuice and Glengarry Glen Ross to more recent films such as My Best Friend's Girl and It's Complicated. But, did you know that before 30 Rock he guest starred on many popular TV shows? Here's a few of our favorites:
