"The Beginning of the End" is the first episode of the seventh season of the American television comedy series 30 Rock, and the 126th overall episode of the series. It was directed by Don Scardino, and written by Jack Burditt. The episode originally aired on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) network in the United States on October 4, 2012.

"The Beginning of the End" received a positive critical response and was watched by 3.46 million viewers. It is the only season premiere episode of the series not to be written by Tina Fey.

Liz (Tina Fey) begins to notice that Jack (Alec Baldwin) is green-lighting an exceptionally terrible lineup of new NBC shows like Homonym (a game show where a contestant must define the homophone of a given word) and God Cop (in which Jack himself plays God). Eventually she discovers that Jack is trying to "tank" NBC so that Kabletown CEO Hank Hooper will sell the network entirely to Paas, an Easter egg dye company that Jack sees as a more promising future. In the end, Liz agrees to work with Jack on "tanking" NBC so that Hank will sell the network and the two work together to make TGS with Tracy Jordan terrible.

Meanwhile, Jenna (Jane Krakowski) asks Liz to be her bridesmaid. Liz decides to employ Jack's "tanking" method to her bridesmaid duties, hoping Jenna will choose someone else after Liz performs the job terribly. After Liz throws Jenna a disastrous bachelorette party, Jenna erupts with anger and begins to destroy Liz's apartment. Liz is eventually able to calm Jenna long enough to convince her that Jenna herself is the only person truly capable of doing the job, inspiring Jenna to literally become her own bridesmaid.

Hazel (Kristen Schaal) and Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) invite Tracy (Tracy Morgan) over for dinner. However, once Kenneth leaves the room to kill their dinner, Hazel begins to make advances towards Tracy. In doing so, Hazel admits that by dating Kenneth she was only using him to get close to Tracy so that he would cast her in a movie and in effect launch her career in show business. This sparks outrage in Tracy, whose genuine friendship for Kenneth will not tolerate Hazel's selfish manipulation. A feud is ensued between the two as they attempt to compete for the love and trust of Kenneth.

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