“The Source Awards” spoilers below:

Things that happened

Liz follows Tracy to the following parties post-show: the after party, the after-after party, the after-after-after party and the after-after-after-after party. There could have been more, but I lost count. Why would Liz do such a thing? Because Wayne Brady is hitting on her! Who wouldn’t go to six consecutive parties for that? He is Tracy’s new manager, and happens to manage several successful rap stars and rap producers.

During one of these parties, one of these rap producers, Ridickolus (not a typo), played by LL Cool J, is not let in by Kenneth. Ridickolus responds to this by threatening to “eat Tracy’s family”. Tracy fears for his life, which only gets worse when Jack decides to pawn off his awful wine on Ridickolus and the rap industry because they need a signature drink, and the interactions between Tracy and Ridickolus become more frequent.

This does give us a promotional music video, which gives us the priceless line: “And Donaghy kinda rhymes with party which is cool.”

Meanwhile, Liz’s date with Wayne blows. When she refuses a second date, he says she is doing so because she’s racist. Not wanting be racist, they go on another date which is equally terrible, but ends with Liz asking Wayne to the Source Awards.

Not to be outdone, Jack convinces Ridickolus to let Tracy host the Source Awards. Tracy doesn’t want to, because over the span of his eighteen year career (which apparently began on Nickelodeon) he has managed to piss over every single person in the rap industry who isn’t dead yet. To protect him and make him feel better, Jack gives him a gun, and Liz convinces him to channel Oprah. This feels like a conflict of interest here. I mean, would Oprah ever carry a gun? What would Oprah do?

At the Source Awards, Tracy makes nice, Liz makes mean, Liz finds out about Tracy’s gun and accidentally shoots Wayne Brady. Maybe she’s a racist bitch after all.

Things that were good

• Wayne Brady ‘doesn’t own a tv,’ ‘participates in Vietnam War re-enactments,’ ‘takes pictures of interesting doors,’ ‘blogs about Star Wars- not the fictitious fantasy films’ and ‘collects tote bags’!
• Did you know that ‘nothing’s impossible except dinosaurs?’
• I own a leather pumpkin too! Liz Lemon is soooo smooth!
• What would Oprah do?

Things that were not so good

• The annoying music whenever there was supposed to be a hilarious but pseudo-meaningful message scene. Let the dialogue speak for itself!
• The scene transitions in this episode were awkward and it ended strangely and rather abruptly.
• Wayne Brady, while given some great lines, could have been better used. This man is so talented when he is not participating in hoe-downs with Colin Mochrie, Ryan Stiles and (occasionally!) Greg Proops.
• Tina Fey, while great at playing herself, has no acting range. This is not always a bad thing, but Tina needs to learn to never write herself outside this range.

Worth Watching If…..

…..You appreciate good writing and the ability to extract multiple quotes from a single episode! There were zingers in this one, covering everything from dinosaurs to Star Wars and god know what else (Alec Baldwin talks so fast sometimes) but the plots and sub-plots really needed some work. While this episode had some priceless lines, as a whole it was ‘meh’.

In Five Words

Oprah is Better Than Jesus