Colleen thinks that love is doing what you think is best for (or to) someone, even if they don't agree about what that is.
Jack has been married for six months and Liz for six months and a day when Colleen gets in touch with her son's favorite quack, Leo Spaceman (she hesitates to call him a doctor). After a series of seemingly unrelated questions, he jovially provides her with the drugs she needs to convincingly fake a heart attack. (After she did the old clutch-the-shoulder-and-fall-down maneuver at Jack's first wedding, he's wise to any half-cocked tricks she might try to play. It's got to be realistic.)
(What Spaceman didn't tell her was that the drugs don't fake a heart attack; they cause one. Imbecile. It's a good thing she has the constitution of an ox, as well as some black market metal implants guaranteed to make her live forever.)
The hospital calls Jack, her emergency contact, and, though he probably waits another eight minutes to decide how to react, he does catch the next flight from New York to Florida and is by her side in less than a day. He looks tired, her Jack, and he's forgotten to dye his hair recently (always a sign that he's unhappy).
(She's entirely unsurprised that Buddy failed to accompany him.)
"Mother, how are you?" he says, taking her hand.
She frowns and makes a show of looking around. "Where's Liz?"
His forehead furrows. "I don't understand."
"Why would you come to me in my time of need and not bring Liz?" she demands. "You know that I like her better."
He tries to extract his hand but she has an iron grip on it, which she tightens even further to emphasize her point. He winces as her nails dig into his skin.
"Colleen, Liz is married and living in Seattle now, as you're well aware. You were at her wedding, remember?"
His tone makes it clear that he's still bitter about her failure to attend his wedding. Well, of course she didn't go to his. She knew that his marriage was going to go bad in a matter of months, if not weeks. What she didn't know was whether Liz's marriage was similarly doomed. (After seeing Ray and noting his similarities to Jack—his size, occupation, voice, smile, even his hair—she was certain that it was.)
"I want Liz," Colleen says, trying to sound weak and pathetic. (She comes across as brash and intimidating instead.) "She'll come if you ask, Jack. Or will you deny your dying mother this one favor?"
He looks at her for a moment as if he wishes he'd hit her harder that time he ran her over with his car. Then his eyes widen in comprehension and she thinks he's finally caught on to what she's doing. (Jack's the smartest of her children, but sometimes she thinks that isn't saying much.)
"Well, Colleen," he says slowly, with a dawning smile, "if you insist."
Jenna thinks that love is being the female best man at someone's (AKA your boss's) wedding.
"I don't see why I have to be your best man but you don't have to be my maid of honor."
"Really, Lemon?" Jack says, with that hint of sourness in his tone that never used to be there before this whole engagement fiasco. "You really don't see why?"
Liz rolls her eyes. "You realize that I'm not actually a man, don't you?"
"Trust me, you're much closer to being a man than I'll ever be to being a woman."
"He's right, Liz," Jenna says brightly, wilting a little when they both turn their glares on her. "I mean, you can wear a tux, but can you imagine Jack in a dress?"
Liz cocks her head and squints at Jack, a smile unwittingly twitching at her lips. Their eyes meet and then the two of them are laughing. (Jenna has always been jealous of the way they sometimes seem to read each other's minds. She's never had anyone understand her so completely as those two understand each other.)
"Good God, can you imagine?" Jack wheezes.
"We'd put you in a tight orange number," Liz says, waving her hands around Jack's body in the vague outline of a dress. "What do you say about wearing a tulip in your hair?"
Jack runs his hand through his amazing hair. "Would I have to dance with the best man? Because I always lead."
"Yeah?" Liz challenges with a grin. "I bet you'd follow me."
Something about Liz's words—Jenna's not sure exactly what—seems to suck all the joy from the room, and in an instant Liz and Jack are back to standing awkwardly in Jack's office, looking everywhere but at each other as the tailor measures Liz's legs for her tux.
Jenna still isn't clear on exactly how Liz and Jack ended up engaged at the same time—well, she'd understand it if they were engaged to each other, but sadly that's not the case—or how they decided that having Liz's wedding the day after Jack's would be a good idea.
Later, Jenna corners Liz in the women's restroom.
"Okay, what's going on?" she demands.
Liz continues to brush her teeth with her finger. (Jenna doesn't point out that there's spaghetti sauce on Liz's shirt.) "What do you mean?"
"What's happening with you and Jack? You two are being all…weird. It's making me uncomfortable and when I'm uncomfortable it's difficult for me to be as amazing a star as I usually am."
"What are you talking about?" Liz says, too loudly. She's always been a terrible actor. (Though Jenna knows that Liz's failure as a performer was largely a result of the fact that she's a brunette.) "Jack and I are fine."
"You and Jack aren't fine. Come on, Liz," she wheedles, "I'm your best friend. You can tell me anything."
Liz frowns, sighs, huffs. Takes a deep breath. "I thought Jack would be happy for me. Ever since he found out I was engaged, though, he's been acting like I betrayed him or something."
"Well, yeah. That's because he's totally in love with you."
"What?" Liz scoffs. "No he isn't."
Jenna nods sagely. "Head over heels."
Liz sighs. "Listen, Jenna, in all the years he's known me, Jack's never once missed an opportunity to tell me how repulsive he finds me. Trust me when I say that his feelings for me are strictly platonic."
Jenna thinks that Liz should pay more attention to the way Jack looks at her and less attention to the things he says. Also, does Liz really think Jack would give an all expenses paid honeymoon to a country whose name Jenna isn't even allowed to know if he didn't love her as more than a friend?
Jenna isn't part of the wedding party at Jack's wedding, so she doesn't know what kind of shenanigans go on behind the scenes. She does know that Liz's posture up at the altar is a surprising combination of tense and slumped. She knows that Jack keeps sneaking glances at Liz right up until Bunny has joined them at the altar. And when it turns out that Liz forgot the rings back in a dressing room—back in Jack's dressing room—Jenna wonders whether something more happened between them.
She gets a better view of things at Liz's wedding, since she's the maid of honor opposite Jack as best man. She sees the pain in his eyes as Liz walks down the aisle, looking beautiful in her ham napkin, her smile more reserved than one would expect from a woman on her wedding day. Ray stares worshipfully at her, too, a grin on his strikingly handsome face, and Jenna reflects that Liz could have made a worse choice than Jack Donaghy Lite.
When it turns out that Jack has forgotten the rings back in Liz's dressing room, Jenna's not surprised. At the reception, when Jack stabs his fork into the table while watching Liz and Ray dance, Jenna's not surprised. Later, when she overhears Ray say to Jack, "I always thought you two might be just a little bit in love, you know," and Jack doesn't disagree, she's not surprised.
She is surprised when she comes upon Jack and Liz outside, standing a little too close together.
"I can't go on like this any more," Liz says. "I can't stand us being friends and enemies and coworkers at the same time."
"I understand," Jack says. Jenna realizes that his hand is on Liz's arm.
"Can we go back to the way things were?" Liz begs. "Please, Jack. I miss you. I want my friend back."
"I want that too," he murmurs.
Liz smiles with relief. "So we're agreed? Friends?"
"Friends," he agrees, then cups her face in his hands and kisses her.