Winter Madness

TGS head writer Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), along with producer Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit), decides to take the show's staff to Miami for a week, due to Liz's hate of the cold weather and the staff's case of "winter madness". Her boss, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), decides to take them to Boston instead, so he can see Nancy Donovan (Julianne Moore), a woman Jack ponders having a possible romance with. He learns that Nancy's husband has left her as a way of getting her to ask for a divorce, but Nancy refuses to do so, fearing what others might think. Jack admits his true feelings to Nancy and insists that the two talk. She suggests that they should say four words to each other as a way of putting their relationship on hold; Jack says to her "I'll wait. Not forever", while Nancy tells him "I'll try. Wicked hard."

Meanwhile, the TGS staff—Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski), Frank Rossitano (Judah Friedlander), James "Toofer" Spurlock (Keith Powell), J. D. Lutz (John Lutz), Sue Laroche-Van der Hout (Sue Galloway), Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer), Cerie Xerox (Katrina Bowden), and Danny Baker (Cheyenne Jackson)—vent their anger at Liz; they complain that Boston is colder than New York, and they do not like sharing an office with the all-male staff of Boston Bruins fans who write for the Bruins Beat. Liz gets a tip from Jack to find a common enemy in the Boston affiliate of NBC. Liz comes up with the name "Dale Snitterman", and tells the staff that Snitterman is causing all of their problems, not realizing until later that she had seen the name somewhere and did not make it up. At that point, the staff finds Snitterman (Ray Bokhour) and harass him.

At the same time, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) goes on Boston's Freedom Trail. He tells the actor playing John Hancock (Kevin Meaney) that his character did not actually set all Americans free. When he tells him "Patriots suck!", he inadvertently says it near a group of New England Patriots fans. At the end of the episode, Hancock brings in the Crispus Attucks character and tells Tracy he does have black friends. When Hancock says he met Attucks in 1775, Tracy is able to one up him as he knows that Attucks was killed in the Boston Massacre in 1770.

"Winter Madness" was written by script co-coordinator Tom Ceraulo and co-producer Vali Chandrasekaran, and directed by Beth McCarthy-Miller.^[1] This episode was Ceraulo's second writing credit, having co-written season three episode "The Funcooker,^[2] and the first written episode by Chandrasekaran. This was McCarthy-Miller's tenth directed episode. "Winter Madness" originally aired in the United States on January 21, 2010, on NBC as the eleventh episode of the show's fourth season and the 69th overall episode of the series.

In November 2009, it was announced that actress Julianne Moore would guest star on 30 Rock as a love interest for Jack Donaghy, Alec Baldwin's character.^[3] She made her debut as the character Nancy Donovan in the December 10, 2009, episode "Secret Santa".^[4] This episode was Moore's second appearance on the show. "Winter Madness" was filmed on November 17, 2009.^[5] Comedian Kevin Meaney guest starred as the actor portraying John Hancock.^[1][6] This was actor Cheyenne Jackson's fourth appearance as Danny Baker in the series. He made his debut in the November 12, 2009, episode "The Problem Solvers",^[7] and would later guest star on the episodes "Secret Santa",^[8] "Black Light Attack!",^[9] "Floyd",^[10] and "The Moms".^[11] In "Winter Madness", while venting their anger towards Liz, Danny admits his refusal to hit on Jenna.^[12]

In the beginning of the episode, Liz complains about the cold weather saying that she has been stuck inside her apartment playing online Boggle, a word game designed by using a plastic grid of lettered dice, in which players attempt to find words in sequences of adjacent letters.^[13] Later, Jack tells Liz that she is the female version of former Boston Celtics basketball player Kevin McHale.^[6] Jack's Boston office is a duplication of his New York one. When Liz enters, Jack asks her if she can tell which seven items are different, prompting the two to look into the camera and smile and thus breaking the fourth wall, a term used when a character in a television show, film or on stage directly addresses the audience.^[14] In one scene, Jack says that a Boston family named its daughter "Belichick", after New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick.^[14]

During one scene of "Winter Madness", Toofer tells the writing staff that he went to college in Boston, "Well, not in Boston, but nearby", mocking a common stereotype of Harvard students that they will not mention that they attend the University, for fear of intimidating anyone, but will still strongly hint to it.^[13] Later, Jack and Nancy imitate former Boston newscasters Chet Curtis and Natalie Jacobson, who were the most-watched news team in Boston for twenty years.^[13][15] Nancy tells Jack that her husband moved to New Orleans to rebuild houses that were affected by Hurricane Katrina to repair the shoddy craftsmanship of actor Brad Pitt's Make It Right Foundation, an organization building affordable housing to help those families most in need following the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.^[6][16]