Revisiting 30 Rock's "Leap Day" episode

Vulture

The February 2012 episode celebrated Leap Day with special guest-stars Jim Carrey and Andie MacDowell. Carrey played Leap Dave Williams, who said things like “I definitely don’t have gills!” and “I saved Leap Day and connected with my son!” Writer Luke Del Tredici says 30 Rock approached "Leap Day" like a Christmas episode. "I should start by saying every single person in the writers’ room had fingerprints all over the episode," he tells Vulture. "That year, we didn’t premiere until January because of (Tina Fey's) pregnancy, so we had missed the opportunity to do a Christmas or Thanksgiving episode, which was a shame. At that point, there had been more than 100 episodes. When you’re that deep into a show, especially a show that just devours narratives, holidays are a huge relief because they give you an easy starting place. We were lamenting not having a Christmas episode, and someone noticed on our airdates that an episode was actually going to air on February 29. We thought it could be funny to do a Leap Day episode. Honestly, it wasn’t that original an idea. I think three other shows, like Modern Family, also had Leap Day episodes that year." ALSO: Modern Family, The Middle and Parks and Rec also have had Leap Day episodes.