It is a bleak morning for one Jack Donaghy – barely ten in the morning, and already TGS with Tracy Jordan presents more problems than his Republican temperament can permit. But Jack doesn't care… he thrives on stress. He lives for it.
The previous day wreaked havoc for Jack Donaghy and company. An executive decision from Don Geiss demanded, under new corporate policy drawn up on the golf course, that shows not under the domain of NBC never be mentioned in the studio. This was to be a strict rule, enforced under penalty of death if necessary. Jack did not think it would come to that, although it would synergize backward energy overflow.
He walks by the page desk. Sleekly attired and his hair trimmed for the first time in two days (just like Ronnie Reagan), Jack owns the room. He turns to the front desk and gently wags his finger.
"Kenneth, could you meet me over in your conference room?"
Kenneth Parcells, always the chipper one, bobs over from his NBC desk to greet Jack at the food counter. Jack has already begun his stress eating, lobbing mounds of cream cheese onto a bagel no normal man could eat. Then again, he is Jack Donaghy.
"Good morning, sir, how are you today?
"Kenneth, if Tommy Lee Jones and Al Gore roomed together in the White House, I couldn't be in a worse mood." He chomps down on his snack, rifling macadamia nuts into his suit pocket with his free hand. "Are you aware that you made an illegal allusion to a hit reality TV show not under the GE umbrella?"
"Mr. Donaghy, I would never disappoint the peacock!" Kenneth seems genuinely offended, stroking his NBC peacock lapel pin as a sign of dedication to the network. "Mr. Jordan and I had our Flavor of Love marathon before that rule went into place. That man is so silly, at least he'll always know the time. Flaaaaavor Flaaaaav…"
Jack is at his boiling point and interrupts the mediocre imitation. "I'm going to ignore the fact that you just now made a shameless plug for a wannabe network that absolutely no one watches save for yuppies not even alive to love the decades they so claim to love..."
A kind-hearted Kenneth: "Okay…"
"To tell you that you mentioned the most blasphemous television this side of Deutsche Television."
Kenneth looks vacantly at his superior, processing not one word from Jack's fuming tirade. Donaghy then informs his page, in an enlightening manner.
"Survivor, Kenneth."
Kenneth takes a split second to register this information before gasping in hillbilly fashion. "Gee whilikers, Mr. Donaghy!"
"Gee whilikers, indeed, Mr. Parcells. And do you realize that all those twenty homespun, backwater rednecks are going to remember from their trip to New York is your goof-up? Not the daily suicide attempts at the Empire State Building, I assure you."
"Do you think so?" Kenneth gazes upward, to no one in particular, as he imagines the gravity of his mistake. Cut to:
A quaint family home, a nearsighted grandmother knitting some indistinguishable item of clothing. Suddenly the door opens, and a husband and wife barge in with luggage up to their chins. They displace their cumbersome baggage as the grandmother, focused on the task at hand, throws them a courtesy hello.
"So how was your trip?" she asks in spinster fashion.
The husband speaks first, anxious to tell of his trip, while the wife travels off into another unseen room. "Oh, Granny, it was wonderful, although there was this guy at the NBC studios who promoted a competition show from a rival network right in front of the tour group! What a riot! I bet he'll lose his job."
His wife's voice from the other room: "And the Lionel Ritchie concert! Don't forget the concert!"
"Oh yeah, that shit was tight, dancing on the ceiling!" he continues, poorly dancing and having forgotten all about the page's verbal faux pas.
The whole scene is surreal, as the grandmother has not once looked up during this conversation. Everything comes back into reality as Kenneth jars himself back to the present moment. Jack looks mystified.
"What am I going to do, Mr. Donaghy?" Kenneth squeals.
"There's nothing I can do, Kenneth," Jack says, all the while grabbing sandwiches off the countertop and sliding them into open receptacles within his suit. "I'm left with two choices. One is to can your ass and hire an overqualified woman to the same position for same pay, and I don't think Lemon will take the job."
"What's the other option? What's number two, sir?" Jack sighs heavily, weightily, an indicator that #2 might be worse than #1 (at this moment, Liz's snarky humor would chime in and say, "Isn't it always worse than #1? Booyah!").
"We have to have standards, my boy. We have to clear what's left of your brain, and I'm afraid for your sanity." Jack takes the last, dramatic bite of his bagel.
"You don't mean…"
"I do. The Page Academy."
"Not the Page Academy!" Kenneth looks close to tears. "You can't make me go, sir."
"I'm afraid there isn't a choice. I've already made arrangements with the Pagemaster. With any luck, Christopher Lloyd will be reprising his role." Jack extends a hand solemnly, a trace of genuine compassion for Kenneth's plight. "Your jacket."
Kenneth gathers his resolve and nods, removing his page jacket and placing it on Jack's arm with pride. Before Jack can walk off, Kenneth bends over to his peacock lapel pin. "Don't worry, Penny. I'll be back for you as soon as possible. Never forget me." And then with an impromptu peacock coo, Kenneth stands erect and nods.
Jack, ever the pragmatist, cocks his head and shakes it, without the slightest clue as to what has happened. "You'll report to the Page Academy first thing tomorrow morning." He turns and begins to leave before Kenneth's high-pitched "Sir!" calls to him from across the lobby.
"What about the front desk?"
Jack smiles. "Don't worry, Kenneth, your post is safe with me. I'll just hire a set of rotating temporary replacements, a Murphy Brown arrangement, if you will."
Kenneth gasps and covers his mouth with his palm, offended by Jack's blatant disregard for the corporate policy. Jack chuckles boisterously as Kenneth regains composure, rubbing his arms as if naked and longing for his jacket.
"Oh, for God's sake, Kenneth, calm down. We've all had Candy Bergen before." Jack saunters over suavely to Kenneth, leaning against the food counter without a place to go. "Law & Order, that show with the squatty Star Trek guy on ABC, the Gloria Steinems and Betty Friedans that run the freakshow of CBS. That's what I love about her… she is owned by no man."
Jack smiles, then slaps Kenneth's back. "It's for your own good. A week's time, that desk will be all yours again." Jack chuckles slightly, then glances down at the snack table. He snatches the bucket of cream cheese and, realizing he has filled his own suit pockets, stuffs it into Kenneth's page jacket. Jack walks away confidant, a man with no sort of inclination that he smells of mixed nuts and bagels.
Kenneth stares on despondently, a Georgia boy without a home.