- Major differences between the East Coast and West Coast versions:
- 1. East Coast: When Jack tells Liz to have a good show, Alec Baldwin drops his magic book in the middle of his line. West Coast: This time, Baldwin doesn't pick up anything until he gets the line out first.
- 2. East Coast: In a flashback, Julia Louis-Dreyfus references Slumdog Millionaire (2008) by calling to Jonathan with, "Yeah, Chai Boy, get in here. You'll never be a millionaire." West Coast: Instead, Louis-Dreyfus references Aladdin (1992) by saying, "Hurry up, Aladdin, before Jasmine is forced to marry Jafar!"
- 3. East Coast: Jane Krakowski sings the 30 Rock opening, which has lyrics questioning the wisdom of throwing a live show. West Coast: Cheyenne Jackson sings the 30 Rock opening, incorporating region-specific lines like "Let's talk about sushi" and "Portland, Vegas, Glendale, this is 30 Rock!"
- 4. East Coast: There's a bad boom mic shadow at the end of the Rachel Dratch elevator scene. West Coast: Fixed!
- 5. East Coast: Liz tells Tracy, "Audiences love it when something goes wrong," and the Who Dat Ninja poster swings lazily in the background a beat too late. West Coast: The poster cue gets nailed.
- 6. East Coast: As Liz leaves his dressing room, Tracy tells his entourage, "Gentlemen, tonight I'm gonna laugh harder than I did at Dotcom's play." West Coast: Tracy Morgan totally butchers the line, realizes it, and starts grinning.
- 7. East Coast: Jenna tells Pete about her song, "It's Your Birthday, Slut." West Coast: Jane Krakowski forgets the "slut" part of her line briefly, but recovers.
- 8. East Coast: According to online surveys, Jack "has a drinking problem." West Coast: According to online surveys, Jack "is a problem drinker." The difference is small but profound.
- 9. East Coast: During TGS's Fox News sketch, the chyron for President Obama reads, "Exclusive Interview with Kenyan Liar." West Coast: This time, it reads "Impartial Interview with Barack Obammunist."
- 10. East Coast: In his commercial, Dr. Spaceman's first song includes the line, "Light some candles, draw a bath, and start off with full-on intercourse." West Coast: It's been revised to "Light some candles, draw a bath, and tie me to my radiator and put food just out of reach."
- 11. East Coast: Spaceman's second song goes, "Baby, let's let the dog watch us. Do you think he understands the love that we have? Oops, I'm finished, call yourself a cab." West Coast: Now it's "Girl, I've been knowing you a long time, and I think tonight's the night / This time, you can be the man."
- 12. East Coast: Matt Damon's first appearance in the show gets wild cheers at the beginning and end of his scene. West Coast: Complete silence from the audience.
- 13. East Coast: A paint-sniffing Jack tells Liz, "Men need alcohol. It's the first thing every civilization makes, along with weapons and shelters to enjoy prostitutes." West Coast: This time, Jack says, "Men need alcohol. It gives us the ability to hit on women, and later, when we're married, to tune them out."
- 13b. East Coast: Later in the paint scene, Jack says the grammatically incorrect "this is what happens to people like you and I". West Coast: The line is grammatically correct: "This is what happens to people like you and me".
- 14. East Coast: Flashback Jack Donaghy makes out with one of his three dancing ladies. West Coast: Flashback Jack is much more chaste, though still barechested. Smash Mouth's All-Star plays.
- 15. East Coast: Jon Hamm appears as his hook-handed character Drew Baird, narrating a commercial like so: "Thanks to an idea that started as a pitch for a horror movie and then grew into a charitable organization, hands from executed criminals are now making life better for people all over the world." West Coast: It's been changed to: "Thanks to groundbreaking research at the Yale University for hand frankensteining, hand transplants are a reality."
- 16. East Coast: Drew shows off his transplanted hand, which is a little bit scary-looking and tries to choke him. West Coast: Now, Drew's new hand is from a lady: "Donors are rare. As you can see, I've had to accept a female hand." The hand strokes his face and then goes towards his crotch. "Oh God," he moans. "Please take off your rings!"
- 17. East Coast: In the final scene, Liz is happy with how her birthday went. After all, she even "got to eat the cake off the floor." West Coast: This time, she "ate the Fonz's face." Still off the floor, presumably. (West Coast also: Tina Fey misses her cue to replace Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Julia has to stall for time for a few seconds on "it was the best of both worlds".)
- 18. The thank-yous during the end credits are completely different takes, of course; in the West Coast version, for example, Alec Baldwin holds up a sign with a shamrock.
- The DVD includes the West Coast version as a bonus feature, but not the entire East Coast version. Instead, the primary version of the episode is edited together from both East and West, trimmed for time (some scenes are missing and some transitions and awkward pauses are shortened), and presented with standard cast and crew credits (as opposed to the SNL-style crawl), presumably to fit standard rerun length and format, despite betraying the entire point of a live episode. The mix-and-match episode uses the West Coast version for most of the first seven-and-a-half minutes (except Jenna's East Coast title sequence), cuts Jenna's "It's Your Birthday, Slut" sequence and the second Yadwiga scene ("sit on it") entirely, and uses West for various short parts (including, most likely, part of the Fox News sketch preparation, half a minute before Carol's phone call, a minute from the last few moments of the call to "I will slip a nip", the first twenty seconds of Jack's paint can sniffing scene, Jenna's nip slip threat before the second commercial ("to commercial go!"), possibly Jack's Capital One plug, and the last seventy seconds or so of the birthday cake scene). Interestingly, it doesn't use the West Coast version for the next moments of the paint can scene where Jack's grammar is corrected. As a result, some differences outlined in the other Alternate Versions entry won't be evident to anyone with the DVD, including 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 12 (end), and 13.
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