Liz meets her comedy writing idol, Rosemary Howard, who pushes Liz to not be a sell-out...which comes at the cost of Liz's job. Meanwhile, Jenna burns Kenneth's page jacket, and Tracy tries to take up dogfighting after being told that he's not allowed to do it.
This episode contains the following tropes:
- Actor Allusion: Rosemary (played by Carrie Fisher) begs Liz to stay by saying "Help me, Liz Lemon! You're my only hope!"
- The Alcoholic: Rosemary carries around a giant thermos filled with wine.
- Broken Pedestal: Liz learns that Rosemary, despite her importance to comedy, is an out-of-touch, unemployable alcoholic who lives in a crime-infested neighborhood.
- Celebrity Paradox: Liz is a massive Star Wars fan who regularly dresses up as Princess Leia, yet she doesn't notice that Rosemary looks exactly like Carrie Fisher.
- Dingy Trainside Apartment: Liz discovers that her role model Rosemary lives in a rat-infested apartment in "Little Chechnya", and when she looks at the window, a train goes by.
- Everyone Has Standards: Tracy finds dogfighting abhorrent. He only wants to do it because he was told that he can't.
- Forbidden Fruit: The only reason Tracy wants to do dogfighting, despite his hatred of it, is because he was told he couldn't.
- Formerly Fat: Jenna has lost all the weight she put on at the start of the season.
- Freudian Excuse: The lack of a father figure in Tracy's life led to his knee-jerk contrarianism.
- George Jetson Job Security: Both Jonathan and Liz are fired in this episode, but both return to work without incident later (though Liz actually went to Jack to get her job back, calling it "Proud begging like those kids who dance on the subway").
- Giant Novelty Check: Liz gets one for her Followship Award.
- I'm Having Soul Pains: When Jenna accidentally burns Kenneth's page jacket, Kenneth howls out in pain even though he wasn't wearing it at the time.Kenneth: OH GOD, IT HURTS!
- The Knights Who Say "Squee!": Liz absolutely idolizes Rosemary Howard, a comedy pioneer.
- The Last DJ: Rosemary has this attitude, believing that comedy should push boundaries and challenge the status quo. Unfortunately for her, she hasn't updated for the times, leaving her with
jokes that come off as too controversial for modern audiences. - Man of a Thousand Voices: In-Universe, Jack helps Tracy get over his daddy issues by pretending to be his father, mother, stepfather, and Tracy in a therapy session.
- Nice to the Waiter: Jack pays the therapist even though she didn’t do anything to help Tracy.
- Noodle Incident: After hearing Tracy's dogfighting idea, Dotcom laments "this is just like Phil Spector's entourage all over again."
- There's also this exchange:
Rosemary: ...and his foot lingered.Liz: Ugh, that is such an upsetting story! I'll never watch Happy Days the same way again. - Shout-Out: Jack's impression of Tracy's father sounds suspiciously like Redd Foxx, "You big dummy!"
- Smug Snake: Donny is a deeply smug, creepy little man.
- Stylistic Suck: Tracy's terrible rendition of "The Star-Spangled Banner" at a baseball game, resulting in a hail of boos.
- Surprisingly Realistic Outcome: After Kenneth’s page jacket is destroyed by Jenna, he gets roped into a competition with the head page, Donnie, in order to get a new page jacket or lose everything. However, just before the competition is about to start, Pete walks in and yells at all the pages scattered around Kenneth and Donnie that the phones are going off the hook because no one is there and tells Kenneth that this whole thing is ridiculous because since NBC is a billion dollar company, they can afford to pay for a replacement jacket for Kenneth.
- What Do You Mean, It's Not Political?: In-Universe. A sketch from back in Rosemary's day, involving a talking mailbox tipping over onto its side, was apparently supposed to satirize Nixon's chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman
. Although it's not at all obvious to the audience, the characters all agree once it's pointed out. And later, even though he wasn't present during the description of the sketch, Jack immediately "assumes that was a Haldeman reference" when Liz calls him a mailbox.
