Floyd (30 Rock)
Cheyenne Jackson, Kristin McGee, and Jason Sudeikis guest star in this episode, and there are cameo appearances by Kathie Lee Gifford, Lester Holt, Hoda Kotb, and Meredith Vieira.
According to the Nielsen ratings system, the episode was watched by 6.252 million households during its original broadcast, and received a 2.9 rating/8 share among viewers in the 18–49 demographic.
Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) gets a surprise phone call from her ex-boyfriend, Floyd DeBarber (Jason Sudeikis), who says he will be coming to New York and wants to have dinner with her.
Her boss, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), warns her not to attempt revenge; nevertheless, Liz invites Floyd to a seafood restaurant where she had food poisoning on three separate occasions.
At the same time, jealous of the publicity that Danny Baker (Cheyenne Jackson) is getting after receiving a Juno Award nomination, Frank Rossitano (Judah Friedlander), James "Toofer" Spurlock (Keith Powell), and J. D. Lutz (John Lutz), the staff writers from TGS with Tracy Jordan, print a fake, embarrassing New York Times interview with him and circulate it throughout the 30 Rock building.
To get back at them, Jack and Danny trick them into thinking the building has been invaded by a "Cloverfield-type monster" and stripping in front of the TGS dancers.
Finally, to keep Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) and Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) distracted from Danny's fanfare, TGS producer, Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit) sends them to the makeup department to have plaster face-prints made while NBC page Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer) talks to them.
Witnessing this, Pete tells them they are wide awake, and that it is morning, which prompts Jenna and Tracy to realize that they slept through the night without having any dreams of Kenneth.
[6] Comedian actor Jason Sudeikis, who played Floyd DeBarber in this episode, has appeared in the main cast of Saturday Night Live (SNL),[7] a weekly sketch comedy series which airs on NBC in the United States.
[14] "Floyd" featured cameo appearances from The Today Show correspondents Meredith Vieira, Lester Holt, Kathie Lee Gifford, and Hoda Kotb.
In the episode, Vieira introduces Floyd and his fiancée, Kaitlin, as finalists competing to have their wedding featured on The Today Show.
"[16] Jack calls Liz into his office and shows her that Floyd, drunk from his dinner with her, is still in the 30 Rock building, where he is shown interrupting a segment featuring Gifford and Kotb.
[17] In the beginning of the episode, Liz tells Jenna about a bad date that she had with someone she met on the personals section of the Kraft Foods web site, K-date.
[18] Pete congratulates Danny on his Juno Award nomination for his Canadian pump-up song for the National Hockey League team, the Ottawa Senators.
"There are episodes of 30 Rock that manage to blend quasi-human plots about Liz or Jack with the zany antics of everyone else at TGS and make them all feel like part of the same show, but 'Floyd' never quite pulled it off."
In regards to Jason Sudeikis, Rabin commented that he is a "gifted comic actor" but this episode "found him at his hammy, embarrassing worst.
"[27] Meredith Blake, writing for the Los Angeles Times, remarked that the episode "may have been the worst one yet", and said that when Floyd called Liz a "badger", her heart broke into smithereens, "There's mean-funny, and then there's plain old mean.
[...] Liz's love life has become the central butt of the joke on 30 Rock ... and it's starting to feel like the writers have run out of ways to be funny without being sadistic.
Further in his recap, Poniewozik was "a little disappointed" that the episode brought him back "to get sloppy drunk, to tell off Liz ... and to get engaged to a vapid-seeming 'ab model.
