“The Fighting Irish” spoilers below:

Things that happened

Liz needs to fire 10% of her staff. She runs into flower dude at a hip-hop class (Jenna’s idea!), finds out his girlfriend works for her, and concocts an elaborate but crazy plan to fire her! Pete is against this, but since he lied to his wife about having a vasectomy (for reasons I’m not completely sure on….who would lie about these things? There are men out there who actually want children?) we don’t listen to him. During other Liz’s performance evaluation, our Liz flips and fires her. She then goes and fires the entire accounting staff. She’s such a girl sometimes. Firing people over a boy. Jack fixes it though. He hires other Liz back and promotes her to a job that involves moving to Connecticut!

Jack’s brother, in the form of Nathan Lane, shows up after seventeen years of neglect by Jack. Jack’s dad died (tears. not by Jack, though), but they manage to rekindle their brotherhood over violent bonding and memories of even more violent bonding. Ah, brotherly love. Jack is so touched he organizes a family reunion, which consisted of the always-annoying Molly Shannon as their sister. However, tt turns out Nathan Lane was scamming Jack- gasp!- and the entire TGS staff! Bad Eddie. No wonder Jack doesn’t like you. Family drama ensues, and Eddie flees New York, possibly never to be heard from again.

Tracy’s lawyer suggests he finds religion. Apparently loving Jesus helps mitigate legal troubles. In his quest to find religion, Kenneth takes him to his cult-like-in-a-basement church and Jenna attempts to convert him to Kabbalah, but he decides it’s “expensive and gay.” However, it’s Nathan Lane and his Irish Catholic-ness which wins because Tracy can get away with anything as long as he goes to confession. I do think that Catholicism might be a little more complicated with that, but I won’t argue. Jack fixes it though (he fixes everything!) and tells Tracy about the “crushing guilt” that comes with being a Catholic. Poor Tracy will never find Jesus now.

Things that were good

• Jack! Jack! Jack! Jack!
• How Jack, Eddie and their dad all have their fists named. It seems like a very elementary school thing to do, but made an excellent fight scene.
• The sucking up to Liz when the firing was occurring was not overdone and made for enjoyably tidbits.
• How Liz, even though she is the head of a tv show, doesn’t have it all together. She’s crazy. In a good way!
• Pete is underused, but is just great.
• Jack! Jack! Jack! Jack!

Things that were not so good

• Eddie being a skeeze. While the Donaghy family subplot had one hilarious scene, it took way too long to get going.
• Too much Liz. This show has a lot of great supporting characters, but they aren’t adequately used. I like Liz, but feel this show would be stronger if was more ensemble-like and less The Liz Lemon Show..
• Again, there were some zinging lines, but the plots were weak. I enjoyed the Liz-likes-a-boy and even Jack’s-family-reunion to an extent, but it felt like something was missing.

Worth watching if…….

you want to see Alec Baldwin attack someone. That was by far and away the best part. And Alec threatening to kick the shit out of his dad. Oh, and most of the scenes Pete was in. This episode was another slight disappointment from a show that had showed so much improvement, but it’s still enjoyable. Especially with The Office currently on reruns.

In Five Words

Make It Out to C.A.S.H.

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