Every Pete Hornberger Subplot On 30 Rock, Ranked: Season Three

Previously: Every Pete Hornberger subplot on 30 Rock’s Season Two.

It’s in season two that we see the beginning of Pete’s desperate hope of total personal transformation via hat, in fact. In “Rosemary’s Baby” he accompanies Liz to a book signing by her comedy icon Rosemary Howard, and is perfectly content to play the straight man until Liz agrees to get lunch with Rosemary. At this point he gasps in genuine distress: “But you’re supposed to take me hat shopping!”²

We see what happens in the next episode where Pete’s unaided taste has guided him: he wears what Jenna calls “a sexy Justin Timberlake hat” and what Liz recoils from in horror. The less time Liz spends with Pete in favor of Jack, the more unmoored Pete comes from reality, taste, reason, and good judgment and the more squarely he drifts over the loser line.

Every Pete Hornberger subplot on 30 Rock’s Season One.

But the seeds of greatness are there, I think. Scott Adsit has the winning, poignant smile of an urchin who doesn’t realize he’s dying, and the shamelessness of Gene Hackman in The Royal Tenenbaums. He’s always losing, but he’s always looking for way to game the system, too, and you can’t keep a downed man down for long.

Season Three of 30 Rock is a tough one for old Pete Hornberger.¹ There are no highs like “MILF Island” or “College.” I had to scrape the bottom of the barrel just to reach ten episodes to rank.² The only real subplot he gets is in “Larry King,” which is terrific, but he spends most of the season either offscreen or just getting a line or two in. The tenth entry in today’s ranking barely qualifies as a subplot. It’s bad!

We do learn a few more details about Pete’s backstory, though. In addition to being a former Olympian archer, we find out he used to teach high school math, that he has experience breeding cows, that his father was a congressman.

The really interesting element of season three is that just as we learn that Tracy Jordan is secretly wholesome in episode 15 (“Don Geiss, America and Hope”) Pete becomes increasingly venal and degraded. He’s always been a little crude, but it’s hard to imagine the guy who cheerfully decides to go home to his wife in “Black Tie” saying, as he does in cutbacks, that his former students “pretend they’re not women, but they are.” It’s a line delivered with as much fear as licentiousness, and he tosses it off perfectly. 30 Rock never quite seems to know what it wants from Pete vis-a-vis infidelity.³ No one wants to see him cheat successfully, but they never want to see him stop trying, either.

He still plays the voice of reason with some regularity, especially with Tracy and Jenna, but now with an additional layer of self-loathing (“We told him he had to be blindfolded before launch to prevent space madness…As a child, I dreamed of being a congressman like my father. Now I do this”) that will eventually lead to the unhinged, nothing-to-lose Pete of later seasons, who feverishly, frequently plans to fake his own death. In season three (notably “Jackie Jormp-Jomp”) that’s still a strictly-Jenna plotline.

---

#10.

Episode: “Do-Over”
Subplot: Helps Liz temporarily transform the studio into a baby-friendly workplace to trick an adoption agency; receives a chinchilla coat from the proceeds of Tracy’s pornographic video game
Best line(s):

Liz [Impressed at the speed with which he’s turned the green room into a nursery]:Nice work, Hornberger. Are these dolls?

Pete [tossing one to Liz]: Are they?

Doll: Mommy!

Pete: They’re called ‘Little Creepers.’

---

#9.

Episode: “Jackie Jormp-Jomp”
Subplot: Creates an on-air tribute to Jenna after she fakes her own death
Best line(s):

Jack: Pete. A word. Jenna’s dead.

Pete: I don’t feel anything. What’s wrong with me?

---

#8.

Episode: “Cutbacks”
Subplot: Gets fired
Best line(s):

Pete: Liz, it’s a massacre!

Liz: What is going on?

Pete: Brad came in this morning and started making cuts. I can’t go back to teaching high school math. Those girls pretend they’re not women yet, but they are.

---

#7.

Episode: “Mamma Mia”
Subplot:
Best line(s):

Pete: Liz...hey. This is your job. This is what you signed up for.

Liz: I know. I like it when you use your calm, reasonable dad voice…That’s the voice you should use when you tell Jenna that I’m gonna be in that magazine with her.

---

#6.

Episode: “Goodbye, My Friend”
Subplot: Tries to dissuade Liz from grooming a pregnant teen into giving her her baby
Best line(s):

Liz: No, I’m just gonna go to the 24-hour donut place and go home.

Pete: Donuts and then bed. What are you depressed about? Or celebrating?

---

#5.

Episode: “Kidney Now!”
Subplot: Fights with Liz after she advises his wife to force him to come on a family vacation to her relatives on the strength of the success of her Dealbreaker series
Best line(s):

Pete: Liz Lemon, you dumb bitch.

Liz: What?

Pete: Here’s the reason I don’t want to go on that family vacation: It’s a working farm. And I’m the only one whose hands are big enough to guide the bull during mating.

---

#4.

Episode: “The Natural Order”
Subplot: Resets all of Tracy’s watches and clocks in order to trick him to getting to rehearsal on time
Best line(s):

Liz: I had Grizz call him at 8:00 this morning and pretend it was 11:00.

Pete: I printed up that fake rehearsal schedule for him, saying we were starting at 9:00 instead of noon. Oh, and I set all his watches and clocks to say P.M. when it’s really A.M.

Liz: Oh, boy. We may have overdone it.

Tracy: What the hell time is it? I took my son to his cello recital this morning at what turned out to be midnight yesterday.

---

#3.

Episode: “The Ones”
Subplot: Helps Jenna realize she’s a sociopath while trying to reunite with a paramedic she likes
Best line(s):

Jenna: I called 911. They wouldn’t even connect me to their celebrity service. I don’t know what to do.

Pete: Huh…you know, your dilemma reminds me of a book I read once.

Jenna: Ugh. See you later, Pete.

Pete: No, no, no. Listen, listen, listen. There’s this question psychiatrists use to identify sociopaths. A woman goes to her mother’s funeral, where she meets the perfect man. It’s love at first sight. But he leaves before she finds out who he is. So what does she do to see him again?

Jenna: She kills her father, hoping that the guy will come to that funeral too!

Pete: That’s correct — Oh, boy.

Jenna: Thanks for the advice.

Pete: No, no no — that wasn’t advice.

---

#2.

Episode: “Apollo, Apollo”
Subplot: Creates a fake space launch to convince Tracy he’s fulfilled his childhood dream of going into space without interfering with the show’s shooting schedule
Best line(s):

Pete: Oh, hey. I just wanted to get you to approve the other astronauts we hired.

Liz: Looks good. Where’s Tracy?

Pete: In Cape Canaveral. By which I mean through that door. We told him he had to be blindfolded before launch to prevent space madness.

Liz: Sure.

Pete: And then we put him on the Channel Four traffic copter for a couple hours. And now he’s landed here in sunny Florida.

Liz: Well done, Hornberger.

Pete: Yeah. As a child, I dreamed of being a congressman like my father. Now I do this. One DUI in high school.

---

#1.

Episode: “Larry King”
Subplot: Calls in to Larry King Live to ask Tracy questions that will reveal the location of buried treasure at 30 Rockefeller Plaza
Best line(s):

Larry King: Our next caller is Pete from Manhattan. Pete, what’s your question?

Pete: Hey, Larry. First-time caller. Adore the show.

Tracy: Hey, I’d recognize that voice anywhere, Larry. That’s my friend Peter Frampton on the phone.

Pete: Uh, sure. Listen, Tracy, I love the idea of hiding cash at work. Can you be more specific about where you hid your money?

Tracy: Of course, Pete. I hid my money in the safest place at 30 Rock. Without giving it away, the place I picked is very dry and warm. Its top is hard, but its bottom is soft. And although the location changes all the time, the money stays in the same place.

Larry King: If you are just joining us, we’re with Tracy Jordan, who is giving guitar icon Peter Frampton enigmatic clues about a secret treasure. Stay with us.

1. It’s possibly 30 Rock’s weakest season, although I’m willing to hear arguments for six.

2. My conscience wouldn’t let me include “Flu Shot,” where Pete’s just-about only scene is getting hit on the head with a picture frame while Liz is trying to escape getting sick and shouting, “Why?”

3. As opposed to Tracy, where the show simply changes its mind midstream. At first they like showing it, then they decide it’s funnier if they pretend it never happened, which I think mostly works.