Kenneth Parcell

Kenneth Parcell
Kenneth Parcell
First appearance	"Pilot"
Created by	Tina Fey
Portrayed by	Jack McBrayer
In-universe information
Nickname	"Kenneth the Page"
Gender	Male
Occupation	NBC page
Family	Jesse Parcell (cousin) Steven (cousin)
Religion	Christianity ("Eighth Day Resurrected Covenant of the Holy Trinity")

Kenneth Ellen Parcell ("Kenneth the Page") is a fictional character portrayed by Jack McBrayer in the NBC sitcom 30 Rock. A supporting character in the first two episodes, the show's producers see him as an example of a breakout character.

Primary character traits

Kenneth is a perpetually cheerful NBC page who hails from Stone Mountain, Georgia, where his father was a pig farmer. After his father died, his mother's "friend" Ron moved in. It is heavily hinted that she had a sexual relationship with Ron, but Kenneth remains blissfully unaware of this. A graduate of Kentucky Mountain Bible College, he has as his best friend his mother, to whom he credits his persistent optimism, she having taught him that no matter how bad things seem, there is always someone else having a worse day, "like being stung by a bee or getting a splinter or being chained to a wall in someone's sex dungeon." At the end of the episode, it seems as though Kenneth had preserved his mother's corpse à la Psycho, but it shown that his mother is in fact alive (the skeleton was a Halloween decoration and his mother was talking to him on the phone).

Kenneth appears to be in his early- or mid-twenties (McBrayer is actually in his thirties) and he speaks with a distinctly Southern accent. An awkward yet polite rube, he is always smiling, excited and happy to do his menial job, which many people do not understand. He has explained in two episodes ("Pilot" and "The Head and the Hair") that this is because he loves television so much. His love of television and his unending devotion to the NBC network are two of his most defining character traits. For example, he told Pete that he didn't want to "disgrace the peacock" in "The C Word" and, in "Corporate Crush", he was seen knitting a woolen bikini with the NBC Peacock on it for his grandmother. He also named his parakeet after Sonny Crockett.

Kenneth is generally well-liked at NBC, but has a determined nemesis in Head Page Donnie (Paul Scheer), who forced him to go through a humiliating series of tasks to get a new page jacket in "Rosemary's Baby" and worked overtime to subvert Kenneth's application to work at the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. In real life, McBrayer and Scheer are friends who have an acclaimed two-man comedy improv show together.

As seen in "Hiatus", Kenneth has a considerably less friendly and more violent cousin named Jesse Parcell living in Needmore, Pennsylvania.

His character is rather effeminate at times and it is even hinted that he might even be gay, though in the Valentine's Day episode he was shown on a "Cyrano-style" date with a blind girl.

Role on the show

In initial episodes, it appeared as though Kenneth was not very familiar with some of Liz Lemon's staff, or even Liz herself. In the pilot episode, Liz refers to Kenneth only as "that NBC page". As the show progressed beyond its initial episodes, the character became more familiar with other staff of TGS with Tracy Jordan.

Kenneth is often shown creating his own ideas for rather unusual television shows and one (a game show called Gold Case) became a reality in "The Head and the Hair", though it turned out to be very ill-conceived and was promptly shut down. When he pretends to be interviewed by Conan O'Brien on the empty set of Late Night with Conan O'Brien in the episode "Tracy Does Conan", it is shown that Kenneth dreams of making "hit movies" with Zach Braff and that he is skilled at clogging to boot. In real life, McBrayer performed in numerous skits on Conan before being cast on 30 Rock. On the August 10, 2007 episode of Conan, McBrayer made a cameo appearance as Kenneth.

As seen in the episode "Blind Date," Kenneth is a very good poker player due to the fact no one can read his thoughts, since, according to Frank, "he doesn't have any." In a high-stakes game with Jack Donaghy, Kenneth was goaded into betting his job and lost. However, Jack gave him his page jacket back and told him that he wasn't really going to fire him, but just wanted to remind him that he could. Jack then informed Liz that "in five years we'll all either be working for him... or be dead by his hand." Since this episode, Jack seems to have become convinced that the seemingly dim-witted, guileless Kenneth is actually a brilliant mastermind.

Kenneth often acts as Tracy Jordan's personal assistant, even going so far as to get him his nachos from Yankee Stadium. He is sometimes seen trying to impress or emulate Tracy, even wearing Tracy's chains when he wins them in a card game. A running gag with him seems to be someone taking his sandwich, which both Tracy Jordan and Jack Donaghy have done.

"Up All Night" hints at the possibility of romance between Kenneth and Cerie. In "The Aftermath", they are seen dancing together on "Tracy's" yacht. However it is implied he slept with Jenna, as after insulting Jenna to get her to eat, Jenna instead starts to enthusiastically kiss him and Kenneth later tells Jack Donaghy that "I guess we have to get married now." Kenneth hosted occasional parties that no one but Liz ever attended, until a series of lies about music stars and celebrities turned one such party into such a destructive bacchanalia that Kenneth sternly reprimanded the staff for their behavior, and then said he would never host another party for them again.

In "Episode 209" it is revealed that Kenneth had "a 'coke' problem during his "Wall Street days." This is revealed to mean that he used to work at Blockbuster Video and was addicted to Coca Cola around the time that the film Wall Street was popular on home video.

In "Episode 210" Kenneth tries coffee for the first time and is immediately hooked. When he sees himself in a mirror, he becomes depressed because he realizes he has broken a promise to his mother that New York City wouldn't change him. Kenneth leaves to return to his mother's home, but returns during the show-ending musical number, singing that he missed the Midnight Train to Georgia because the train actually left at 11:45PM and he was misinformed about the time.

In the Season 2 finale "Cooter", Kenneth is determined to be a page for NBC's coverage of the 2008 Summer Olympics in Beijing. Head Page Donnie tries to ruin his chances by giving him false information and setting up a phony menial task so that Kenneth will miss the application deadline, while Jenna and Pete help him finish the application and get past Donnie. Kenneth does get his application in and is shown in the episode's last scene, sitting in a Beijing hotel room with an attractive woman. She says something in Chinese that catches him by surprise (it is shown earlier in the episode that Kenneth speaks Mandarin fluently), and then an armed man bursts into the room and Kenneth says something else in Mandarin in a shocked but resigned way, as the episode and season ends.

Religious and political views

Kenneth has been shown to be rather religious, telling Pete to think of God in order to prevent him from cheating on his wife in "Black Tie". It is revealed in "The Fighting Irish" that his religion is "Eighth Day Resurrected Covenant of the Holy Trinity". His church (which was in the basement of a Cuban restaurant) has a fire-and-brimstones preacher, who scared away Tracy when Kenneth brought him there. It is revealed in "The C Word" that he attended Kentucky Mountain Bible College, where he studied television theory. In "Black Tie", Kenneth referred to Footloose as the movie where "those evil kids won in the end." Also he reads the Bible in German, because it is the only way "to get all the versteckte Bedeutungen (hidden meanings)". In "Episode 210," he says he doesn't drink any hot beverages for that's "the Devil's temperature."

In "Subway Hero", Kenneth reveals that he has no political views since "choosing is a sin". Instead, he always submits write-in votes for God. However, according to Jack, those count as Republican.

Critical response

Slate magazine named the character as one of the reasons they were looking forward to the return of the show in fall 2007.