Liz starts to worry if she's too mean after Lutz calls her a very rude word; meanwhile, Jack brings Tracy to a Connecticut country club in order to impress his boss, Don Geiss.
This episode contains the following tropes:
- Chekhov's Gun: Frank mentions a Designing Women marathon at the start of the episode, and by the end Liz watches the same show to reach an epiphany.
- Country Matters: What Lutz calls Liz, although it's censored creatively.Liz: It rhymes with your favorite Todd Rundgren album.
- Extreme Doormat: What Liz becomes when she tries to be "nice". She bakes cupcakes for everyone, lends money freely, and accepts any old excuse to duck out of work early.
- Failed Attempt at Drama: Liz angrily demands the writing team watch a tape of a Designing Women episode in order to understand her...only to fail at getting the tape to play. She recovers by saying what she thinks on her own, but she lapses into a Sugarbaker-esque Southern accent at the end before collapsing into exhausted tears.
- Funny Background Event: While Jack and Tracy have an angry discussion on the golf course, we see Kenneth try and utterly fail to golf in Jack's place.
- I Have to Go Iron My Dog: Some of the excuses to leave work early get lazy, like the guy who has to leave because of a "sinus thing" that he refuses to elaborate on.
- Mean Boss: Liz worries, not unreasonably, that she's become this. However, Liz being Liz, she overcorrects and goes too far in the other direction.
- Modern Minstrelsy: To protest what he sees as Jack making him perform for the amusement of other rich white people, Tracy begins to act and talk like a stereotypical performer in a minstrel show.Tracy: "I studied fried chicken at the School of Hard Knocks, ain't that right, Mister Jack?"
- Motivational Lie: Tracy gives a heartfelt speech about his diabetic daughter at the fundraiser, bringing in loads of money and putting himself (and Jack) back in Don Geiss' good graces. Later, he admits to Jack:Tracy: I don't have a daughter.Jack: Let's have a casting session on Monday.
- Noodle Incident: Whatever happened to Lutz in Alaska, he's terrified by the idea of going back.
- The Quiet One: Grace, the NBC page that Kenneth has a history with, only speaks one line in the whole episode.
- Perverted Sniffing: Kenneth does this to Grace's hair towards the end of the episode.
- Transparent Closet: Ted, who Jack golfs with when Tracy ruins his chance to golf with Don Geiss. When Jack lets slip that Ted was caught using a corporate credit card at a gay strip club with Ted's wife in earshot, he says:Jack: I'm sorry, Amanda. You were bound to find out eventually.
