If it takes three instances to make a trend, then Admission, the romantic comedy starring Tina Fey and Paul Rudd that opened this weekend, makes it official: Fey may take on a great many subjects in her movies and television work, but her great emerging theme is what happens when professional women in their late thirties are confronted with their own maternal urges. Admission, which flips the script on efforts concerned with fertility like Baby Mama and 30 Rock, could have been a fresh take for Fey, a look at a character who genuinely doesn’t want to have children. But unfortunately, it’s her weakest stab at the subject yet, a movie that’s unwilling to grapple with the reasons other than simply being busy that a woman might have put off childbearing—or why a woman might not want children at all.

In Admission, unlike her previous characters, who have had trouble conceiving, Portia Nathan, Fey’s rigid Princeton admissions officer character, got pregnant in college. Rather than raise the child, Portia gave up the baby for adoption, and buried all thoughts of having a family so deep that they don’t resurface until 16 years later, when they’re forcibly unearthed by a classmate, John Pressman (Paul Rudd), who believes one of the students at the alternative school that he runs is Portia’s son. What follows is Portia’s quest to get the boy, Jeremiah (Nat Wolff) into Princeton, hoping that his love of learning and exceptionally high test scores will offset his extremely poor grades and lack of activities.

But while all of her efforts, including getting Jeremiah a chance to stay on campus, setting up an interview with an eccentric professor of philosophy, and trying to juice his ventriloquism hobby into a legitimate side pursuit, are mildly amusing, they also serve to allow Admission to avoid larger, and much more interesting, questions. We learn that Portia’s college boyfriend broke up with her before she found out she was pregnant, but the movie never asks whether she would have kept her child had they stayed together. When, before Portia meets Jeremiah, her long-term boyfriend Mark (Michael Sheen, who played one of Liz Lemon’s most irritating boyfriends on 30 Rock), an English professor, leaves her for a Virginia Woolf scholar he’s gotten pregnant with twins, Admission focuses more on the fact that the other woman is more glamorous than Portia, rather than interrogating the idea that Portia’s stated lack of interest in children might have made her less desirable to a man who feels the pull of a more conventional family structure, even though he hates kids. And while Portia clearly feels that she didn’t do right by Jeremiah, Admission never makes remotely clear what, other than getting him into Princeton, she wants to do with her adopted son. Does she want to support him financially? Have a friendship with him? Of course the discovery of a specific child raises specific questions, but Admission spends more time poking fun at Portia’s fiercely feminist mother Susannah (Lily Tomlin) than it does at actually exploring what Portia would do differently in raising her own child, or why she might genuinely not have wanted children at all, given her upbringing. And the movie never even really resolves the question of whether Portia doesn’t want to be a parent, or whether the trauma of her unwanted pregnancy caused her to bury her maternal urges, preferring instead to throw in a silly montage in place of character development.
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It’s always amazing to watch Tina Fey get her dander up, but I think she hits on something particularly important at the Center for Reproductive Rights Inaugural Gala in calling out “grey-faced men with $2 haircuts” who display an unnerving confidence in telling women what does and doesn’t count as rape and what happens to them, or should happen to them, physically and psychologically, when it happens:

The important line is actually one before the catchy burn on older, male, Republican legislators who don’t trust women: “I wish we could have an honest and respectful dialogue about these complicated issues, but it seems like we can’t, right now.” For me, that’s part of what’s been frustrating and frightening about this latest round of statements by politicians on women’s bodily autonomy and functions. This isn’t a conversation, and the people on both sides of it have wildly different assumptions. The idea that I’m supposed to trust someone who doesn’t even understand how my body functions, much less how I might react intellectually or emotionally to trauma, to make decisions on my behalf is so frightening and rage-inducing it’s an immobilizing experience. As someone who is inclined to niceness, to sticking with reason even against all odds, Fey’s issuing permission slip to abandon courtesies that aren’t being extended to women, to call crazy crazy, and standing up for the idea that being driven nuts by this stuff isn’t a sign of oversensitivity. It’s a rational reaction to being treated with condescension and threatened with a substantive deprival of rights that are dear to me, whether it’s my ability to have an abortion if necessary or to get easy, affordable coverage to contraception. Waves like the recent one of anti-woman we’ve been caught in can be immobilizing. Fey’s speech is a reminder that to save yourself, you have to keep swimming.

On Mondays, progressive leaders from all parts of the movement, from the blogosphere to the Hill, take a break out of their schedules to tell us what they’re watching, reading, and listening to. Suggestions or requests? Email AlyssaObserves (at) gmail (dot) com.

As AFL-CIO Secretary-Treasurer, Liz Shuler’s the second-highest ranking person in the American labor movement — and she’s just 40. She helped lead the coalition that blocked an Enron-lead push to deregulate the electricity industry in 1997, trained election observers during the 2000 presidential election recount, and was elected secretary-treasurer in 2009. Last week, Shuler took lessons in assertiveness away from Tina Fey’s memoir Bossypants, saw analogies to state-level fights over collective bargaining in a performance of Wicked at the Kennedy Center, and considered the plight of freelance artists, most of whom don’t have benefits, as she met with members of the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists.

Monday, July 18

I started my week by finding advice from a somewhat unlikely source: Tina Fey. Little did I know that when I was looking for some “escape” reading on my Monday flight to Albany, New York, I would end up finding some truly insightful guidance from a woman who made it in the cut-throat business of stand-up comedy.

I laughed all the way through the first chapter of Bossypants. And as I read through Ms. Fey’s early years, and how she got her start in Chicago with Second City, I stumbled upon what was a rather profound insight for me: The rules of improv can help you in life. She talks about the importance of “respecting what your partner has created, and to start from an open-minded place;” saying “yes, and…” so no one is afraid to contribute; and sharing in the responsibility to find solutions by “making statements instead of just asking questions,” especially for women.

Sticky situation in the workplace? Draw on the rules of improv to lighten the tension. Forget your membership card at the gym? Don’t hesitate at the front desk — make a proactive, and perhaps offbeat statement, and move on to the kickboxing! Co-worker making some risky suggestions for the annual conference? Say, “yes, and… let’s talk about how that will double attendance,” and stay in that open-minded place (at least until you get burned). Great perspective to start the week.
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My friend Tyler and I have talked a couple of times about how he feels uncomfortable watching 30 Rock because of the extent to which the show relies on Tracy Morgan’s real-world issues for humor. I was reminded of that today when a man named Kevin Rogers reported that at a club show, Morgan went off on an anti-gay tirade:

What I can’t take is when Mr. Morgan took it upon himself to mention about how he feels all this gay shit was crazy and that women are a gift from God and that “Born this Way” is bullshit, gay is a choice, and the reason he knows this is exactly because “God don’t make no mistakes” (referring to God not making someone gay cause that would be a mistake). He said that there is no way a woman could love and have sexual desire for another woman, that’s just a woman pretending because she hates a fucking man. He took time to visit the bullshit of this bullying stuff and informed us that the gays needed to quit being pussies and not be whining about something as insignificant as bullying. He mentioned that gay was something kids learn from the media and programming, and that bullied kids should just bust some ass and beat those other little fuckers that bully them, not whine about it. He said if his son that was gay he better come home and talk to him like a man and not [he mimicked a gay, high pitched voice] or he would pull out a knife and stab that little N (one word I refuse to use) to death.

It’s worth noting that it’s not like Morgan suddenly revealed new political opinions here. In 2009, he said sexual orientation is a choice in a performance that got him applauded by Spike Lee and Jane Krakowski.

This is the Charlie Sheen problem all over again, right? You can’t hire someone for their crazy*, and then expect to only get the crazy that’s beneficial to you, that’s harmlessly funny, the stuff of “I am a Jedi” skits, the falling asleep on your neighbor’s roof jokes, and an episode based on pretending you own someone else’s boat. Morgan’s latest rant is a very inconvenient form of crazy, especially since Tina Fey accepted an award from the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation this spring for her work on 30 Rock (which in some way is sort of weird, since the show doesn’t have an out gay character in the main cast and the show doesn’t have any long-term engagement with gay issues other than running jokes about whether Liz dresses like a lesbian). I doubt he’ll get fired for this since the Hollywood apology machine is very efficient at helping people keep their jobs, and there’s a lot of leeway for comedians. Morgan’s already issued this apology through his reps:

I want to apologize to my fans and the gay & lesbian community for my choice of words at my recent stand-up act in Nashville. I’m not a hateful person and don’t condone any kind of violence against others. While I am an equal opportunity jokester, and my friends know what is in my heart, even in a comedy club this clearly went too far and was not funny in any context.

But 30 Rock‘s in need of a refresh anyway. The wacky-Tracy bits were getting old even before this added an ugly overtone to them.

*A couple of folks on Twitter have, I think fairly, questioned the use of the term “crazy” to refer to Mr. Morgan. I meant the term more in the sense of a “wild and crazy” guy kind of way, though Morgan’s character is meant to have diagnosable mental health issues, and to the extent that Morgan behaves eccentrically in real life (and my understanding is that he is a recovering alcoholic), I think that sense of unpredictability if not outright instability was one of the things that make him an appealing hire for the role.