Supernanny, Hairspray, Scrooge

Supernanny, 8 p.m., ABC
"A 3-year-old boy, prone to tantrums and disrespect, refuses to be potty-trained." I love my kids, but if we had hit 3, and they weren't potty-trained, I would've left them off at the local fire station.

Hairspray, 8 p.m., Bravo
Here's the thing. You have to do Christmas cards. But you don't want to do Christmas cards. Because let's face it, we all actually hate doing Christmas cards. To make it easier, pour a vat of margaritas, set yourself up on your "lap desk" that you bought at Target two years ago and have never used, and turn on Hairspray. Your cards will be done before Zac Efron does jazz hands.

Scrooge, 9:30 p.m., TCM
This is the 1970 one, starring Albert Finney. Best one ever, as far as I'm concerned.

Daily Recap: 30 Rock

There's no way to start this recap without addressing Jane Krakowski's blackface.

After four seasons, it's hard to accuse the 30 Rock writers of being racist.  They've taken their jabs at black culture, but never maliciously and never to excess.  Still, call me crazy: I don't think it was appropriate.  But I'm not one to censor for the sake of taste; a larger issue was how it was ineffective joke-telling.

I think the blackface ruined what was originally a great joke. That Paul and Jenna both fixated on such a horrific idea is hilarious.  But it made me really uncomfortable to actually see the Lynn Swan costume.  Too uncomfortable to even laugh at the scene.

I was actually surprised.  I've laughed to tears at way more outrageous bits on The Boondocks, and being made uncomfortable is why I love Tim and Eric.

What specifically baffled me was how hard I laughed at the blackface in It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia a few weeks ago.  That episode starts off with the gang arguing whether Mac's blackface in their unofficial Lethal Weapon sequel was appropriate or not (he played the Danny Glover character for part of the film) and when they finally show him, it's uproarious.

I think gravitas was the main difference in why that instance was effective and 30 Rock's wasn't.  They way that Sunny addressed the issue prominently in the episode and held off on the reveal built tension and introduced the concept well.  When Jenna showed up; it came out of nowhere.  A move I'm sure was meant to be a non-sequiteur and surprising but came off feeling a little too casual instead.

I could examine this further, but at the end of the day I just wasn't able to laugh at the scene.  And I don't know if that makes the writing racist or not, but it certainly doesn't make it good.

Beyond that it was a pretty standard Christmas episode.  Jack doesn't like his family but learns to accept them, yadda yadda yadda.  Tracy's b-story about his angst over being angsty was a novel enough distraction though, especially since it would have been difficult to understand a sincere Tracy for much longer, given his past behavior.

Ultimately we've seen better from the show though.  Colleen and Milton are fun characters, but they were depressingly one-note here.  Milton's liberalism seems to have been jacked up significantly since his last appearance, and I got a strangely malevolent vibe from Jack's mother — who has usually been able to muster a clearly affectionate undertone to her character but failed here.

I blame the fact that the supporting characters saw almost no screen time.  I don't want to make the case that the primary players are beginning to feel tired, but there's a breezy, fun quality when Liz plays straight man to the writers, and some zanier asides might have helped take the load off a mediocre A-plot.