Good Ol’ Liz Lemon. Nothing ever seems to go quite right for her on 30 Rock. But the reality is that a lot of those issues are her own creations since she’s not a great person. Liz can be neurotic, selfish, and very focused on her own problems to the detriment of others. It’s almost like she’s a TV writer or something. To reach her end goal of having it all, she made some impressively dubious choices along the way, and not just continuing to eat Sabor De Soledad despite the many health issues it causes. Good Ol’ Liz Lemon might not be so good after all.
Called Homeland Security On Her Neighbor
Being paranoid for no reason and jumping to conclusions quickly is one of Lemon’s less endearing qualities. Unfortunately, it’s a quality that her neighbor had to deal with first hand. She erroneously believed that her neighbor, Raheem Haddad, was a terrorist planning an attack of some sort. The evidence for this was barely even circumstantial. In reality, Raheem was training for The Amazing Race. If only Liz had known that before she reported him to Homeland Security. Raheem was taken, aggressively interrogated, and released with a newfound dislike of America.
Stole A Baby
Lemon’s desire to have kids was an ongoing issue throughout the series. In the end, she adopted two kids with her husband but there were a lot of false starts on the path to getting there. One such false start was when the TGS makeup artist brought her baby to work as she had no one to watch her.
Liz held the baby and played with it, lulling Lemon into a trance-like state of euphoria. When Liz came out of it, she was at home with the baby. She immediately returned to the studio and gave the baby back but Liz did, for all intents and purposes, kidnap the child.
Stalked Drew Baird
Jon Hamm’s Drew Baird was a man of incredible looks and little intelligence. But that didn’t stop Liz from outright stalking Drew in her efforts to go out with him. It started with stealing and opening his mail to learn more about him, then she created a persona that would trick Drew into falling for her. Liz followed all of that up by faking a party as a way of getting him into her apartment. Naturally, everything unraveled at that point and the relationship fell apart. For some reason, Drew agreed to a restart and they ended up dating for a while.
Ruined Her High School Reunion By Going
Liz was incredibly nervous about going to her high school reunion. She was a social outcast, bullied and alone. Or so she thought. After Jack convinced her to go, Liz discovered that she was unknowingly a bully, tormenting her class with her trademarked sarcasm and wit.
No one in her class found any of her comments funny, and they were all sad to see her there. Liz didn’t even do anything bad at the event but she still managed to ruin it for everyone there. That included Jack, who was posing as one of Lemon’s classmates.
Tussled Tyrion Lannister’s Hair
Once again, Lemon’s baby crazy leanings struck at the most awkward moment possible. When walking down the street in New York, Liz paused to tussle the hair of a young boy. This was already a ridiculous thing to do as she didn’t know the child or his parents. No mother or father would be happy with this. To make matters worse, the boy turned out to be a man played by Peter Dinklage. Liz covered her butt by pretending she was coming on to him but the relationship fizzled out. Shockingly, Dinklage’s character wasn’t into a woman who thought he was a child.
Tried To Fire Her Crush’s Girlfriend
One of Lemon’s greatest loves was Floyd DeBarber, the former NBC lawyer who almost convinced her to move to Cleveland with him. But before they dated, Floyd was in a relationship with a young accountant named Liz Lemmler who also worked at NBC. Specifically, she worked on Lemon’s show, TGS.
Lemon perceived Lemmler as the only thing blocking her from getting Floyd so she did the most sensible thing possible and fired her. Fortunately, Jack stepped in and smoothed the situation over, promoting Lemmler out of the city and giving Lemon a clear shot at Floyd.
Manipulated A Concussion
At one point in her adoption journey, a representative of from an adoption agency wanted to look deeper into Lemon’s work life. Since it played such a huge role in her world, the agent wanted to make sure everything was good. It wasn’t, of course, as TGS was staffed by crazy people doing crazy things. One such thing was Frank accidentally knocking the agent out with a pair of solid gold nunchuks Tracy gave him for helping with a porn video game. Instead of taking the injured person to the hospital, Liz treated the agent’s altered state as a second chance to make a first impression. Not cool, Liz.
Assumed Tracy Jordan Couldn’t Read
To paraphrase Tracy Jordan, Liz is frequently guilty of the subtle racism of lowered expectations. When Tracy refused to learn his lines, Liz assumed it was because he couldn’t read so she set traps to prove her point.
When she finally realized Tracy was playing her, she then had to set traps to prove he could read. Liz was willing to accept the idea that Tracy couldn’t read primarily because of the color of his skin and the way he talked, which is pretty racist when you stop and think about it.
Abandoning Wesley Snipes
After a root canal, Liz starts encountering a pale British man named Wesley Snipes. Despite hating each other, Wesley believed they were “settling soulmates” because they kept running into each other and should get married. More importantly, Wesley had lost his job and needed to get married to an American to stay in the country before his work visa expired. Liz agreed, then met Carol Burnett, a handsome pilot played by Matt Damon, and immediately fell for him. She broke off the marriage, leaving Wesley in the lurch and most likely deported.
Taking An Old Man Hostage
Like many of Lemon’s relationships, her time with Carol Burnett came to a spectacular end. Liz took a flight Carol was the pilot of, only to have it get stuck on the runway due to airport nonsense. As the tension increased between Liz and Carol, a mutiny almost broke out among the passengers, which was instigated by Liz. This ended with Carol drawing the Air Marshall’s gun on her and Liz using an old man as a human shield, essentially taking him hostage to win an argument.
