30 Rock, "Kidney Now!": Steve Earle, Steve Earle, please write a song for me

Spoilers for the "30 Rock" season finale coming up just as soon as I say "opposite"...

"We sure had quite a year." -Liz
"What are you talking about? It's May." -Jack

Seems appropriate that a season of "30 Rock" that was dominated -- and too often overwhelmed -- by guest stars would conclude with an episode featuring not only more Alan Alda, but an all-star cast of musicians (NBC has a list here, which includes a few odd omissions, like Clay Aiken) performing a tribute song for Alda's character.

Fortunately, Sheryl Crow and company didn't dominate "Kidney Now!" to the point where the episode didn't work. It wasn't a classic, but it was funny enough -- which, I suppose, also makes it an appropriate finale for this uneven season.

Alda and Alec Baldwin continue to be a great team. It was great to see a normal, outside person having to deal with Dr. Spaceman's special brand of obliviousness, and I love that Alda was willing to deliver that meta joke about the "M*A*S*H" series finale, where Milton complained to Tracy, "A guy crying about a chicken and a baby? I thought this was a comedy show!"

Even better, though, was the sequence of Liz on "The Vontella Show" turning into the real version of Jenna's relationship guru character. Where the actual catchphrase from "TGS" is deliberately lame (and NBC's real-life attempts to make the catchphrase happen are even lamer), hearing Liz fire off intuitive explanations for why these women should dump their boyfriends ("You have sexually transmitted crazy-mouth" or "Sir, have you ever kissed a gentleman?"), followed by her simply shouting "Dealbreaker," was hilarious, and a fine demonstration of how much confidence Tina Fey has gained as an actress over the years.

The Tracy subplot with his honorary high school diploma didn't have a strong enough payoff, but at least it featured a number of suitably weird moments, like Tracy and the entourage somehow being able to hear Kenneth's voiceover about college, or Kenneth talking about his "science class," which was all Bible stories. Again, like much of the season as a whole, it didn't entirely work, but was funny enough to be worthwhile.

Some other thoughts:

• Not only are Kenneth and Clay Aiken cousins, but Liz went to elementary school with Sheryl Crow, who remembers her as a loser.

• Of course Milton is writing a Jimmy Carter biography ("From Peanut to President")

• Of course Jack calls it "Rainstorm Katrina."

• Speaking of meta, I was intrigued by the frequent references to "TGS" having only two more years left in it, tops. "30 Rock" is considered one of NBC's prestige shows, but the ratings have never been that great, and I could certainly see a scenario where NBC, Fey and Baldwin all decide that five years (or even four) are enough.

• Is this the first Jenna/Mickey Rourke joke? I have a feeling we've heard references before to them trying to date.

• I like that Liz is so uncouth that her idea of a fancy, all-expenses-paid lunch is to find a "sit-down Quizno's."

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "Mamma Mia": It takes two to make a thing go right

Quick spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I point out that I chose not to use a photo of Liz with the rubber chicken...

"Mamma Mia" was a very funny episode, boosted by the ingenious casting of Alan Alda (who played one of TV's most famously liberal characters) as the biological father of arch-conservative Jack Donaghy. (Alda is also kind of a great comic actor, so there was more to the pairing than just zeitgeist-y reasons.) Liz's excitement at being presented with a real-life "Mamma Mia" situation ("Don't push it, Liz... Let it happen...") was equaled only by her and Pete's confusion at the age of black people. (That joke was surprisingly versatile, as you could read Tracy getting Grizz a Happy 18th Birthday card as a continuation of the gag or just a sign of Tracy's usual obliviousness.) And Liz's jealousy of Jenna getting all the credit for her catchphrase worked both as comedy and as its own meta-comment on all the people besides Tina Fey herself who help make this show as funny as it is.

A couple of other points:

• In addition to Alda, it was great to see another '70s TV fixture in Stuart Margolin (Angel from "The Rockford Files") as the potential dad with the genitals that "look like a bowl of Spaghetti-O's" after WWII.

• Loved the immediate cut from Kenneth refusing to give Jack permission to take Milton out of the tour group to Jack and Milton seated in his office.

• "All I'm promising is a madcap musical romp. Dot-dot-dot, fun!
Dot-dot-dot, good! That was on the poster."

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "The Natural Order": Trading places

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I send a gibbon to join the Italian Parliament in my place while I make my own soda(*)...

"1959. Boy, it would've been fun to write back then. You could get away with crazy plot twists, because audiences were so much less sophisticated." -Liz

I've been using the phrase "funny forgives a lot" in my reviews of this very uneven "30 Rock" season. But while "The Natural Order" had a number of funny things in it, what elevated the episode above the "collection of amusing gags that never quite come together" level of so much of this season was the straight dramatic scene between Jack and his mom.

Colleen has never been one of my favorite recurring characters. It always feels like the writers believe Elaine Stritch is so innately funny that they don't have to give her much to do to get a laugh, and I don't share that belief. But that moment with Jack, when she shared her own version of the many departures of Jimmy Donaghy, then realized what her son has been carrying with him all these years, was just impeccably played by both Stritch and Alec Baldwin. When Jack and/or Liz get to occasionally show some humanity and vulnerability inside the otherwise cartoonish "30 Rock" world, it makes everything around them that much more interesting. Plus, her delivery of the line about how you can't say no to a Florida man who can drive after dark was perfect.

As for the rest of the episode, I found Liz and Tracy's rivalry hit-or-miss. For every gag that worked (Pete warning Liz not to accept the Race Card), there were one or two that didn't (I'm a fan of slapstick, but Liz's long battle with the water cooler never clicked for me). The idea of a professional Tracy (complete with Cosby sweater and reading glasses) was terrific, but they never really sold Liz forcing herself to be more like Tracy. (After all, didn't she go with him to a strip club in the pilot without being nearly as horrified? Still, I liked Tina Fey's delivery of "Let's go see some naked daughters and moms!")

And Jenna and the gibbon? Well, monkeys are inherently funny, as David Letterman proved in the one shining moment of his Oscar hosting stint. (Go watch that clip, not only for the young and svelte Alec Baldwin, but for how Paul Newman owns everybody with his audition. Seriously. I can wait.) Still, the best part of that entire subplot was a throwaway line, when we heard Kenneth tell a tour group that they were "standing on the very spot where Gracie Allen took Jack Paar's virginity."

Good to see Steve Buscemi back, even briefly (and wearing an unseen costume under his clothes), and to see Pete getting more to do the last few weeks. Not a classic episode, but solid enough, in the end.

What did everybody else think?

(*) Sorry. I couldn't pick just one "as soon as" this week. Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "The Ones": Puerto Rican!

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I put a feather in my fedora...

"The Ones" wasn't a classic "30 Rock" episode, and it definitely suffered in comparison to the amazing half-hour of "The Office" that preceded it, but it had more than enough funny things in it to keep me satisfied.

Start with the running gag about Liz's love of the Slanket, that horrific imitation precursor to the Snuggie(*) and her constant excuses for why she was wearing it. (In particular, the very meta, "It's not product placement! I just like it!") Liz wearing a Slanket, eating a plate of cheese and singing a song about it to the tune of "Night Moves," followed by Elisa derisively asking, "Lemon, isn't there a Slanket somewhere you should be filling with your farts?" is just funny. It just is.

(*) Two Snuggie-related points. First, you absolutely must read Joe Posnanski's scene-by-scene breakdown of the original Snuggie commercial if you haven't already, and not just because I shamelessly lifted the footnote format from him. Second, when our daughter was born, my wife was steadfast that, while we'd let her watch TV, we'd try to keep her away from commercials at all costs. And for a long time, we succeeded, sticking primarily to either PBS or Disney Channel (where the only ads are for other Disney shows/movies, which we can deal with). A while back, we stumbled across a few shows on other channels that we liked, including "The Magic School Bus," and we let her watch them in spite of the commercials. Then a few months ago, it's a cold morning and my daughter asks for a blanket. I get it for her, and she says, quote, "This blanket isn't comfortable. I can't move my arms around in it. What if I have to answer the phone?" She had memorized the Snuggie commercial. So, basically, she'll be watching PBS and nothing but from now until she's 18.

Beyond that, while Salma Hayek wasn't used quite as well as in her last few appearances, they did put her in a "What the Frak?!" t-shirt, which, coupled with a poisoned Kenneth blurting out, "My real name is... Dick Whitman!!!," made the episode a kind of paradise for snooty fans of quality TV (like me!).

The Jenna subplot didn't really work for me, other than gags on the side like Kenneth, or the idea of the marginalized male writers banding together as The Pranksmen, which seems the sort of thing a bunch of Harvard-educated comedy writers might think was really cool. Jenna stories need to always have Liz or Jack featured prominently, and/or to put her together with Pete more than they did here, as her insanity's only amusing when contrasted against a relatively normal character. (Though the final scene did mock the infamous "I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy..." scene from "Notting Hill.") Didn't love Tracy's story either, but at least it had Dotcom ranting about Moroccan soccer.

Definitely a "funny forgives a lot" kind of episode. What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "Jackie Jormp-Jomp": I want to Tupac you!

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I spend an evening with Isiah Thomas...

"Heavy is the head that eats the crayons." -Tracy

"Jackie Jormp-Jomp" wasn't deep, but it was deeply satisfying, one of the better "30 Rock"s of late. It was packed, as even the weaker episodes are, with great throwaway gags (like the kid reporter on the red carpet asking Backpack, "Is Map in you tonight?"), but it also featured a good character arc for Liz, a too-rare pairing between Jenna and Jack (who automatically makes her more interesting because he's relatively realistic, as opposed to Jenna-Tracy stories), and a great tie-it-all-together climax where a giddy and bruised Liz terrified Jenna and Tracy upon her return.

It also featured the show's first use in a while of the device of a character (in this case, Liz) delivering a running monologue that spans many hours and locations. I loved it the first time they did this, with Jack getting progressively drunker on Valentine's Day in season one's "Up All Night," and think it's one of those gags that works brilliantly if used sparingly.

And, in general, I'm in favor of any episode that allows Liz to be more aggressive, either explicitly (her harassing Weinerslav) or implicitly (the black eye she got after escaping the Rich Divorcee Fight Club), as it's one of the colors Tina Fey plays best.

Some other thoughts:

• Loved the idea that the Kids' Choice Awards would have their own necrology, and that the "dead" cartoon got a much bigger round of applause than its elderly creator. Also, can anyone identify which entry from early in Jane Krakowski's filmography was playing during Tracy's tribute to her? It definitely wasn't "Vacation," but it was from that era.

• If Meredith Viera asked you to eat an unripe banana, what would you do?

• Alec Baldwin has this gift for making mundane things sound funny, and silly things sound really funny. His delivery of "Jackie Jormp-Jomp" still has me laughing.

• If those weren't actual Indigo Girls' song and album titles that Liz and Jack were using, then dammit, they should be.

• Were the replacement dancers supposed to be all trannies?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "Cutbacks": It is a far, far better thing I do than I have ever done

Quick spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I identify my best quadrant...

Two weeks ago, we got an episode that represented how brilliant "30 Rock" can be at its best. "Cutbacks" unfortunately, was an example of a different type of "30 Rock" -- and one we've been getting all too often this season -- where there are a number of funny individual moments and quotable lines, but it never adds up to much of anything. There's enough solid comedy to make me glad I watched, but I tend to come out of these episodes feeling very unsatisfied.

I thought there was potential in Liz trying to save her co-workers from budget cutbacks (some of essential people and things, some of complete indulgences). But after her opening presentation to the Roger Bart character -- which may have been funnier to me than to you, since it was a dead-on recreation of dozens of similar "NBC is more powerful than you could possibly imagine" speeches I've heard from Jeff Zucker and/or Ben Silverman -- it ran out of steam. Liz literally whoring herself out to save the staff's straws (and Don Pardo's job) seemed like too thin a joke to hang a whole episode on.

That was much better, though, than the Tracy/Kenneth/Jenna storyline, which is exactly the kind of dumb sitcom plot that "30 Rock" usually either makes fun of or does such a warped version of that the material doesn't feel lame anymore. This was just lame.

Again, there were enough good jokes peppered in that I'm not completely disappointed, including:

• Jack getting impatient through Jonathan's farewell serenade;

• Jack cutting the head of the boom box division;

• Pete: "I can't go back to teaching high school math! Those girls pretend they're not women yet, but they are!"

• "Top front? Good lord, Lemon, that's your worst quadrant!"

• Roger Bart weeping as he asks his assistant to add a therapy appointment to his "skedj."

Overall, meh.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "Apollo, Apollo": Most sensational, celebrational, Muppetational

Spoilers for tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I Liz...

"If that kid could see you today, he would... throw up." -Liz

Every now and then, I'll go back over old blog reviews of "30 Rock" and look with dismay at the ones where I did nothing but list the jokes I liked -- not because my opinion of those episodes has changed, but because I feel like I've in some way fallen down on the job. If I can't do more than just list what was great -- if I can't explain why it was great, or what the larger meaning of its greatness is -- then what good am I as a TV critic, right?

Then I watch an episode like "Apollo, Apollo" -- easily the best "30 Rock" of the season, and one of the series' best episodes to date, one that required me to make liberal use of the DVR rewind function to go back and catch jokes I had missed because I was laughing so hard at the ones before them -- and I'll be damned if I don't want to do anything but rattle off the many, many, many jokes I loved. If anything, there's a part of me that feels that, where my deconstruction of a show like "Mad Men" or "Battlestar Galactica" -- or even another comedy like "The Office" (which was also great tonight, and which I'll get to in the morning) -- might enhance the experience, when "30 Rock" is this good, there's a magical quality to it that I feel I can only take away from by trying to explain its genius.

Still, I wanna try -- before going to the inevitable bullet point list -- because I do feel like this one was special, and a significant cut above even some of this season's stronger entries like "Believe in the Stars", and I think I can get at why without ruining the magic trick.

So, some of the reasons why:

It had Muppets. Okay, this is an obvious one. The Muppets rule, and singing Muppet Jack (pictured above) was only topped by the transition from Muppet Liz to flesh-and-blood Liz moving in a very Muppet-like fashion. But Muppets alone aren't enough. What else?

It had Dennis. Dennis also rules, and I would argue is a stronger occasional character than Dr. Spaceman (who's usually awesome but occasionally misses the target). The writers (in this case, Robert Carlock) have completely zoomed in on the narcissistic worldview of that kind of That Guy, then cranked those qualities up to appropriately absurd "30 Rock" proportions. So much nonsense spews out of his mouth that it's easy to miss it all, but a line like him explaining that he was upset to watch Hurricane Katrina coverage and see "what those people were doing to the Super Dome" sums up his idiocy within the "30 Rock" universe -- and his genius to us viewers at home -- quite neatly.

It had heart. It's easy for a show with this many talented writers and actors to just turn into an amalgam of zany gags. And, certainly, those episodes can be awfully satisfying on their own. But the ones that allow Jack and/or Liz to have some human emotions in the midst of the chaos are even moreso. Jack feeling so much joy as a kid that he had to vomit is a good joke on its own, but the way Alec Baldwin played Jack's sadness at reaching 50 and no longer feeling happy enough to puke made the final payoff that much richer. And speaking of which...

It all came together. This, more than anything else, is the thing that's been separating some of this season's better episodes from the truly classic "30 Rock"s like "Rosemary's Baby" or "The Fighting Irish." Even the episodes that are filled with very strong jokes and/or brief moments of pathos from one of the characters don't quite end as well as they could. Either the jokes tail off, or they fail to cross over, or both. Here, each joke built on top of each other -- say, the way Kenneth's Muppet-vision was followed by Tracy's Tracy-vision and then Jack's $-vision -- and then they all collided at the end, as Liz and Jenna's feud, Jack's need for a moment of happiness, and the practice of turning your own name into a gerund to describe a gross bodily function all blended into a hilarious climax. (And even there, the script kept adding more jokes, like Frank's horrified "He's mortal!" reaction to seeing Jack vomit.)

This was just genius all around, and Carlock, director Millicent Shelton and the whole gang deserve an extra attaboy, followed by the traditional lazy bullet-point list of other stuff I loved, including:

• Jack has a Google News alert for "Tracy Jordan ridiculous disaster"

• Jack's list of things he wanted to (and did) accomplish by 50 included "Beat up a Russian"

• Grizz is Adam West's agent

• Liz's Jenna impression has a British accent, and Jenna is both happy about that and eager to explain why

• Tracy's childhood dream of going into space includes "killing the Ewok"

• Tracy is totally on his game in the meeting with Liz, with the clever wordplay and the quoting of Robert Browning

• Jack threatens to "Benjamin Button myself" if he can't find out what was in the box

• Pete once dreamed of following his dad into Congress, if not for that one DUI in high school...

• Jack assumes from watching "24" that video technicians can analyze anything from any image

• For that matter, the mere fact that Jack watches "24"

• Everyone Jack brings in to solve the mystery thinks they're there for a job interview

• As Tracy and company do their own version of the "Right Stuff" slo-mo walk (the second NBC comedy of the week to do so), Kenneth makes perfect "Star Wars" creature noises (do any of you want to try to identify exactly what creature that was?)

• Tracy in the simulator: "I'm Lizzing! Hah hah! Lizzing! I'm Lizzing!"

• In Jack-vision, Kenneth is only worth seven bucks

• Every single damn thing about Liz's Chicago phone sex commercial, from the hairstyle to the teeth to the random eating of pizza halfway through

• In addition to Frank, Lutz's horrified reaction to the Jacking -- "What just happened?!?!?!" -- was pretty great.

Feel free to add your own favorites if I've left any out.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "The Bubble": Pretty, dumb

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I enjoy my complimentary app sampler...

"Careful, Lemon. You wake a sleepwalker, you risk getting urinated on." -Jack

Finally! It took three episodes (plus a gap between the second and the third), but Tina Fey (who wrote this one) let Jon Hamm be funny on his way out the door.

The idea that attractive people get away with things that the more average-looking can't is an old joke, even on "30 Rock" (with Cerie), but the particular variations of that joke were well-conceived, and well-played by Hamm. In particular, I think I could spend all day today watching the scene where Drew shakes Liz to stop her from choking and it make me laugh every single time.

What made the whole bubble joke work was Drew's complete ignorance of it. He has no idea that the world is cutting him so much slack because of his appearance, which makes him confused when Liz tries to make him move outside the bubble, but which also makes him such a nice guy. Where Cerie has just enough awareness of her own bubble to make her awful, Drew just thinks the world is an extremely friendly and generous place, and tries to act in kind. So Liz is trying to "fix" Drew in a way that might only make him worse.

(One possible issue with the story: wouldn't Liz have noticed before now that Drew is bad in bed? And wouldn't that be enough to puncture the bubble for the other women he's been with?)

"30 Rock" stories don't always work in parallel to one another, but I did like the moment in the Tracy subplot where he didn't understand why no one was being in charge of his thirst. His is a different kind of bubble, but it's still a bubble, and working on "TGS" -- and with Kenneth -- makes the bubble even harder to pierce. Tracy stories often work well when he's acting relatively low-key but clearly operating on a different frequency than the other characters, so it was nice to see one where the laughs just came out of the way the world tends to bend itself to him without him noticing. (Even his new level of wealth comes from him randomly investing his video game money in "a company that dismantles bank signs.")

That subplot also was a nice Jack McBrayer showcase, as Kenneth struggled to contain his native accent (Cajun?) and eventually got so absorbed in the Cockney character that he started to "dream as Cranston."

The Jenna subplot was a miss -- that's a well they've gone to too often, without enough variation -- but outside of that, this was one of the funniest "30 Rock"s of the season.

Some other thoughts:

• Though I prefer episodes where Jack gets to be Jack, this week's brief role reversal with Liz did give Fey the opportunity to do her Alec Baldwin impression -- which, as she admitted, very easily morphed into a Christian Bale Batman impression. And while we're talking about impressions, rank these in order of best-to-worst: 1)Liz as Jack, 2)Rick from accounting as Bill Cosby, 3)Jack as Billy Dee Williams.

• Is there an actual alternate definition for "BFF"? And, if so, do I want to know it, or is it one of those things like "lemon party" that will forever scar me?

• I remember a "30 Rock" promo a few years back where Baldwin and Fey were looking at a photo of Baldwin in the '80s, but is this the first time the show itself acknowledged that he used to look like this? And why oh why couldn't they have included a photo? Or would it have turned into a chest hair joke?

• I always love opportunities for other characters to interact with Grizz and Dotcom, particularly when we get to see how much smarter Tracy's entourage is than him. "Tracy's is a tactile/kinesthetic learning style." Heh.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "The Funcooker": Leadership vacuum

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" just as soon as I tell you what Ernest Borgnine whispered to me...

"No 'TGS,' I see you self-publishing your novel and moving back in with your parents." -Jack Donaghy

An episode like "The Funcooker" is really instructive about why a lot of other shows this year haven't quite worked. Even when they have lots of funny things in them, they never really build to a climax in the way that this one did, as everything went wrong at once, and the bam-bam-bam effect of Dr. Spaceman trying to knock Jenna unconscious, Tracy dropping trou, Jack realizing why The Funcooker isn't a usable name, and then the abrupt cut to a TracyCo commercial -- with Tracy dropping trou again -- reminded me of how brilliant "30 Rock" can be when it's at top form. Last week's "Harry and the Hendersons" homage might have had more individually funny moments, but it didn't came together as well as this one did, and therefore felt much less satisfying.

Some of you have complained in recent episodes that Liz has been acting too crazy, and that the show gets off-balance when she isn't being the voice of reason. I think it'd be too big a waste of Tina Fey's talents if she had to play straight woman all the time, but it worked very well here because there was a contrast between her and all the idiots. The problem is that when Liz goes crazy, there's nobody sane for her to push against. Pete could be that person, but Scott Adsit's either doing a movie or has angered the writers or something, because he's rarely around, and those long absences make it hard to then have him play an important role when he turns up again. So they either have to give us more Pete, or else Liz has to be normal for a long stretch before we get her next breakdown.

Some other thoughts:

• By design, Liz reprising her Princess Leia juror persona wasn't as funny as it was in the Oprah episode, but it did nicely set up the joke about how much more deranged the New York jury pool is than Chicago's. (By the way, was I supposed to recognize anybody on the jury other than Radio Man/Moon Vest?

• Spuh-che-men was in fine form tonight, between his instructions for Jenna to "Take 25 of these a day for the rest of your life," and him explaining that he's swamped, "Between my medical practice and this job."

• I loved Jack randomly drawing offensive Scrabble words.

• Jonathan's story pitch -- "My first idea is a movie that combines action and romance!" -- sounds more like something Kenneth might say, and it didn't help that Kenneth was standing next to him.

• Have we seen that French/Dutch writer before? I thought "TGS" had only one female staffer other than Liz, and I remember her looking different.

• Getting back to Borgnine, who at NBC is a big fan of his? He gets name-checked here and then guest stars on "ER" (not that anyone would have noticed, what with the higher-profile folks wandering about that show).

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "Good-Bye, My Friend": Malarkey! Malarkey!

Quick spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I go to Burning Man...

Because "30 Rock" always has so much going on, and because the punchlines fly by so fast, I never feel like I completely wasted my time watching an episode. But a few good punchlines (Jack's recollection about why his dad would occasionally come back, Tracy talking about being born in Yankee Stadium, Liz chewing out Tim the baby daddy) aside, this one felt really flat.

I think the ideas behind two of the stories (Liz/Becca and Jack/Frank) were fine, but they needed to be taken further. Liz needed to become more monstrous and manipulative before being guilted back to reality by John Lithgow, and I think the writers could have taken Jack and Frank's new friendship, and Jack recreating the "Harry and the Hendersons" climax, to more ridiculous extremes than they did. It felt like both stories were almost there, but needed one more pass through the script.

I'm not sure the Tracy/Jenna plot would have worked no matter how many rewrites it got. With a few exceptions like the weight-gain arc from last season, Jenna's such a one-note character that she only works in small doses, popping in to comment on other people's stories. Watching her pout about other people stealing focus from her gets tiresome, quickly.

Ah, well. Can't win 'em all, and at least Josh appeared (briefly) for the first time in a long time.

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "Larry King": Quiet riot

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I avoid the Noid...

"Tracy Jordan, saying three serious things and then a joke!" -Larry King

Better. Much, much better. Maybe the first episode of 2009 I enjoyed unreservedly.

Other than Jenna, they used the entire cast (even Pete, who's been MIA for weeks and weeks) and used them well, gave us a Jack story that balanced comedy with some genuine emotion, got some good mileage out of a rare Liz/Kenneth story (Kenneth usually rolls with Tracy or Jack), and employed the guest stars as well as they have all season. They cracked the code on Salma Hayek a few episodes back (enough that I'll be disappointed if this was her swan song), and Larry King was a delight being his usual oblivious self as a foil to Tracy's increasingly tenuous connection to reality.

I'm coming to this one relatively late in the day because of my movie-going adventures last night, so let's do some bullet points and open it up to you:

• My friend Mike swung by this morning to watch the episode with me (and so I could introduce him to this NSFW Flight of the Conchords video about a dance floor containing too many of something), and he made a good point about Jack and Elisa's post-coital scene: total missed opportunity to give us a glimpse of the legendary Alec Baldwin chest hair (which Matt Seitz likes to compare to a catcher's protective gear).

• Baldwin's Elisa impression was funny, but also very reminiscent of his work as Mrs. Rodriguez in the classic Tracy/Jack therapy scene. Perhaps Jack is, like Baldwin's "SNL" character The Mimic, very limited in the number of voices he can do.

• The cabbie was played by Ajay Naidu, best known as Samir Nagheenanajar from "Office Space."

• By now, you probably don't need me to point out the incredible resemblance between the Republican response by Lousiana Governor Bobby Jindal earlier this week and Jack McBrayer as Kenneth, or even to point you to McBrayer responding to all the comparisons in one of Jimmy Fallon's test shows. But if you somehow missed all that earlier in the week, enjoy. It's amazing.

• Love that Kenneth believes "99 Luftballoons" was "Nina's famous anti-balloon protest song."

• Did you catch that the Zorgonia Ave. station had a billboard for the Janice Jimplin biopic? So Jenna did sort of appear this week.

• Not only did the episode bring back Pete, but we got our first concentrated dose of Jonathan since early in the season, complete with shirtless flute-playing video.

• Liz's celebratory moments are funny in this one because they're so lame: she's had sex two more times this year than Jack (which means things with Drew are going okay), and she took the naked photo because it was a rare moment when her boobs were pointing in the same direction. (Also loved Kenneth's interpretation of "adult photo" to mean a shot of Liz driving a car or wearing a suit.)

• Tracy summarizing the plot of "Teen Wolf" was just the writers' blatant attempt to get Bill Simmons to write about "30 Rock," right?

What did everybody else think? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "St. Valentine's Day": My mother! My sister! My mother! My sister!

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I make a stew...

"I once claimed 'I am God' during a deposition." -Jack

"St. Valentine's Day" was, structurally and tonally, not dissimilar from last week's "The Generalissimo, which I was in the minority in really disliking. I liked a lot of this one, though, which means I expect to read a whole lot of comments about how stupid I was and how I must be uder the influence of some good flu meds.

Both episodes featured Liz and Jack in cliched, silly romantic entanglements, but the difference this time was that I believed most of the behavior within the farce. Nothing felt even vaguely real about the existence of Jack's gay Mexican telenovela doppleganger, whereas Jack and the poor priest who had to suffer his confession were recognizably human. When there's some grounding at the center, you can then do/say ridiculous things like Jack admitting to accidentally violating Dick Cheney while under the influence of the Gay Bomb, or Jack randomly inserting himself into the plot of "Malice," or Elisa ranting that Jack has offended "the patron saint of judgmental statues." (They've gotten progressively better and better at knowing how to use Salma Hayek, haven't they?)

Similarly, there was a nice logical progression to Liz and Drew's fiasco of a first date, starting with the innocent mistake about doing it on Valentine's Day and escalating it from there, bit by bit. I still don't feel like they're giving Jon Hamm enough to do besides being handsome, and I don't think they knew how to end that storyline (the jump from Liz about to tell Drew the truth about his mom to Liz and Drew happily walking arm-in-arm on the street didn't really track), but overall, I thought this was a much better effort than last week's Liz/Drew story, which really only had Hamm's delivery of "I don't know what that means!" to recommend it.

The Kenneth/Tracy subplot had the most tenuous connection to reality, but that's the way those characters normally roll, and there were enough amusing flourishes on the margins (the Grizz/Dotcom love triangle, Jenna's awful Michael McDonald) to mostly carry it.

One question: if it turns out that McDonald's paid for all the McFlurry references, would that make you like the episode less, or would it impress you even more that Tina Fey and Jack Burditt were able to make such an extended bit of product integration funny?

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30 Rock, "Generalissimo": Vegetarian Hamm

Brief spoilers for tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I take an immortality potion...

There are episodes of "30 Rock" where they take old sitcom cliches and find a demented new take on them. "Generalissimo," unfortunately, felt like they came up with the cliches they wanted to mock -- goofy/evil twins, a character spinning a ridiculous web of lies to land a new crush -- and never moved to the next step. I was cringing frequently throughout this one, and I should never be cringing at an episode that brings together "30 Rock" and the awesome, funny, super-manliness that is Jon Hamm. (No, I'm not ashamed to have written that last part. Really, I'm not. It's Jon Hamm.)

There were a few scattered good jokes in the Jack and Liz storylines -- like Elisa trying to explain to Jack that MetroCards are real, or Liz saying, "And then I will put my mouth on his mouth" (in much the same vein as Alice Fey's "I want to go to there," making a return appearance) -- and Tracy's subplot was pretty funny, but too much of this one was groan-worthy.

Hamm's sheer terror at realizing what Liz had done to him -- particularly his delivery of "I don't know what that means!" -- lived up to the promise he showed with his "SNL" hosting stint, so I'm holding out hope that he won't be the latest guest star to derail the show this year. (Heck, Salma Hayek wasn't the problem tonight.) But this? This was not good.

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30 Rock, "Retreat To Move Forward": Camp value

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I badmouth synergy...

"Make Mommy proud of you because you're the best!" -Jack

"Retreat To Move Forward" petered out near the end (even with the use of C&C Music Factory, I expected Liz's self-sacrificing humiliation to be something much grander), and the Tracy/Kenneth plot didn't work at all until it intersected with the Jenna/Frank story, but overall, this was one of the best, funniest episodes of what's been a distressingly uneven season of "30 Rock."

With all the guest stars gone for now, this one made good use of virtually the entire cast(*), including our first trip into the writers' room in a while. Jack and Liz's story, with or without the camp metaphor, was a funny commentary on how close they've become since the pilot, and on how the more traditional, Six Sigma-revering GE execs might react to that. Plus, it had Jack name-checking Judy Blume, and Liz using a robot voice to discuss her "robot penis," so even if the entire episode had been a wasteland, I probably would have loved it.

(*) The one exception, as usual: Pete, who didn't appear at all that I can remember. What has Scott Adsit done to tick off the writing staff? Is he off doing a movie? I need my weekly taste of Hornberger!

Meanwhile, you knew that Jenna and Frank were going to hook up sooner or later, and that there would be an unexpected twist to it. I wasn't that surprised by Frank turning out to be more embarrassed by the whole thing than Jenna, but I was by all the fringe-y office women (Jenna's hairdresser, the elderly Russian cleaning lady) coming out of the woodwork as past Frank conquests. Between that and his and Twofer's obvious pleasure at the Wikipedia prank was a nice use of the outer rims of the show's cast.

I have some interviews to do in a few minutes, so no time to run through the usual list of other things I found funny (Dr. Spaceman not knowing how to say "diabetes," Frank telling Jenna "Your hands are weird," to name two), so go to town.

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The Office, "Duel" & 30 Rock, "Flu Shot": Silent but deadly

I realize I not only buried the lead in my earlier post, I left it out altogether by neglecting to mention that NBC renewed "The Office" and "30 Rock" (and, for that matter, "Biggest Loser") for next season. In the spirit of the joint renewal -- and because I'm in the late stages of press tour brain melt -- I'm going to review both of last night's episodes quickly in the same post, just as soon as I get my compound bow...

Jen Celotta, who runs "The Office" these days with Paul Lieberstein, brings the Dwight/Angela/Andy triangle to an effective close with an episode that's part farce, part dark pathos. Despite Andy being a tool, Angela becoming pure evil and Dwight being Dwight, I really did feel for them all by the end. Okay, maybe not Angela, but the other two for sure. And along the way, we got some big laughs, most notably Oscar's horrified demand (complete with breaking voice) to know exactly where in the office Dwight and Angela had sex, followed by Dwight smugly telling him, "Seems ike you already know where."

If there was a disappointment, it's that the idea of David Wallace trying to learn from Michael seemed underdeveloped. That could have been an entire episode right there, or at least the A-story in an episode with a less important story for the supporting cast, and instead it didn't get enough time to really work. Michael's stream of consciousness "improversation" about his management philosophy was funny, but I wanted to see a lot more of David trying his darndest to take Michael seriously.

"30 Rock," on the other hand, was another disappointment. Even the long-awaited return of Dr. Spaceman wasn't as funny or ridiculous as it could have been, and the Jack/Salma Hayek story felt like something out of a bad '80s sitcom -- and not even the "30 Rock" take on a bad '80s sitcom episode.

"30 Rock" always has great throwaway moments -- my favorite here was Kenneth suggesting that Tracy get the soup himself, and Tracy retorting, "With what? My arms?" -- but there weren't enough to compensate for a couple of lame stories.

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30 Rock, "Senor Macho Solo": This is not a drill, so shut it down!

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I use the subjunctive...

I'm still waiting for them to hit another one out of the park the way they did with the Oprah episode, but if "Senor Macho Solo" didn't feel especially cohesive, at least it had a lot of funny things in it. And funny covers a lot of sins.

Start with Tracy and his wife repeatedly clearing rooms to have sex, which was good enough the first time but hilarious the second, with a horrified Kenneth trying not to abandon his post while also not watching, while pervy Frank gazed on in awe. Or the randomness of Tracy dispensing romantic advice while dressed as a "Lord of the Rings" elf.

Peter Dinklage is a stud, and that story was a nice mix of expected jokes about Liz's baby neuroses and unexpected ones about the UN. (Dinklage's friend with the African click-sound name was almost as good a throwaway joke as Tracy having starred in "A Blaffair to Rememblack.") I suffered through the "Sex and the City" movie a few weeks ago (I should have had a clause about that put into my pre-nup), and of course Liz would try to recreate that Steve/Miranda moment.

Jenna's subplot was the first really work-centric one in a while, which was appreciated -- especially since it gave us a chance to hear Kenneth do the rap from "Teen Witch" (here's the original) only a few episodes after the Teen Witch herself guest-starred as one of Liz's high school classmates -- and Jack's "Janet Jopler" lyrics were about what I'd expect from the comic mind of the guy who tried to give us "Beep! Beep! Ribby! Ribby!"

On the other hand, I didn't love Jack with Salma Hayek, who for whatever reason I didn't buy in that role. But there were enough good asides in that one (like Jack ordering basically nothing for his Fox News anchorwoman date) to cover. Again, funny forgives a lot.

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30 Rock, "Christmas Special": Back-up plan

Brief spoilers for tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I ring for my other bell...

I dunno. Elaine Stritch is a showbiz legend, and a force of nature, and all those other superlatives I can truck out, but I haven't really liked any of her "30 Rock" appearances. Jack's fear and loathing of his mother just feels claustrophobic and uncomfortable instead of funny, and I'm as eager to see the end of her visits as Jackie-boy usually is.

And where the two previous Colleen episodes had other characters and subplots (Emily Mortimer and her hollow bones, Ludachristmas) that compensated to a degree, I feel like very little of "Christmas Special" worked, other than the throwaway jokes, like Dotcom reminding Grizz about boundaries, or Jack having a fall-out with the Postmaster General over the Jerry Garcia stamp ("If I want to lick a hippie, I'll just return Joan Baez's phone calls.").

I want to be in the holiday spirit, but this is two Christmas duds in a row from "30 Rock," and we can't even blame the looming writers strike this time around.

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30 Rock, "Reunion": Mean, mean, mean girl

Spoilers for tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I buy your mulch...

"I want to go to there." -Liz Lemon

There hasn't been a new "30 Rock" episode in a couple of weeks, but there also hasn't been a lack of reading material about its star, Tina Fey. Maureen Dowd profiled her in Vanity Fair, Sarah Hepola at Salon pondered all the Fey cheesecake shots that accompanied Dowd's story, blogs started digging up photos of the pre-glam, pre-fame Fey, and Nancy Franklin even suggested that "30 Rock" succeeds in spite of Fey's performance, rather than because of it.

Though it certainly wasn't intended that way, "Reunion" comes along just in time to serve as a running commentary on all the Fey analysis. It features flashbacks to her as an ugly duckling, has Jack discuss how she's transformed into "a vaguely ethnic swan," shows Liz to be so ruthless that she deserves the "Herman the German" nickname Colin Quinn gave to Fey, and makes it clear that the show's two Emmy winners for acting are just as deserving, and just as funny.

With all the high-profile guest stars out of the way for now (see the bullet points for notes on a few of Liz's old classmates), we got to bask in a half-hour of concentrated Liz-and-Jack time, as each tried and eventually failed to reinvent themselves at Liz's high school reunion. The idea that Liz the geek with bad hair was unwittingly the nastiest girl in school was an unexpected and brilliant twist -- never seen that one in a high school reunion story, have you? -- and Jack's decision to embrace his inner Larry Braverman gave Baldwin a chance to play a delightfully goofy strain of those occasional glimpses we get of a happy Jack.

Plus, we got two hysterical variations on Liz Lemon running gags: her tendency to binge on bad food (the private jet had popcorn!) and to blurt out embarrassing confessions ("I saw my grandparents making love once and I didn't leave right away!!!" is one of the funniest things Fey has ever uttered).

God, I love this show, and an episode like "Reunion" was a good reminder of why.

Some other thoughts on "Reunion":

• The Tracy/Kenneth/Jenna subplot didn't really work, and is now the second time in a couple of weeks where Jenna's solution to a problem with a co-worker is to dress up as him. Will we see her in a bald cap next week after she has an argument with Pete? Come to think of it, if you throw in the Twofer/Frank dispute from last season, there's an awful lot of role-reversed dress-up going on backstage at "TGS."

• Until I saw the credits, I had absolutely no idea that Kelsey was played by Robyn Lively, co-star of such semi-classic '80s flicks as "Wildcats," "Teen Witch" and "The Karate Kid, Part III." Last time I saw her, she still had red hair and was starring on early WB soap "Savannah."

• Much more recognizable: Janel Moloney as Larry Braverman's baby mama. Always good to see Donnatella Moss working.

• One of the episode's better runners was the hotel desk clerk trying to warn Jack about all the bad parts of town (telling him not to follow the detour sign because "It's a trap"), but I don't understand how you could have a wet bar in a dry county. Surely there was an easier and still in-character way to get Jack to attend the reunion, no?

• And yet another running joke that never gets old: the childlike, or possibly animal-like, behavior of Kathy Geiss, who needs the sound of jingling keys to look at the photographer's camera. With Don Geiss awake and basking in his beam of light, I hope this isn't the last we've seen of Kathy.

• Between this episode and the "Office" episode where Meredith was having sex in exchange for steak certificates, exactly how much money do you think a certain Aussie steakhouse chain has paid to NBC for product integration? And is their commercial message supposed to be "Our steak will make smart women make foolish choices"?

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30 Rock, "Gavin Volure": He hates those sex dolls! Stay away from the sex dolls!

Is it just my cold infecting my funny bone, or was that one of the weakest "30 Rock" episodes ever? I'm flummoxed that an episode featuring Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin and Steve Martin together only made me laugh once, and not at any of them. (It was at Pete's per diem gambit with Jack.) Do I need some higher-dose NyQuil, or was something way off with this one? Click here to read the full post

30 Rock, "The One With the Cast of 'Night Court'": With Friends like this...

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I do "mannequin comes to life"...

When all the big-name guest stars for this season of "30 Rock" were announced, there was a lot of concern that Oprah, Steve Martin and company would start to dominate the show in the same way that all those latter-era guest stars did for "Will & Grace." Having seen how gracefully Tina Fey and company incorporated guest stars in seasons past -- including another former "Friends" star -- I wasn't too worried, and certainly Megan Mullally and Oprah didn't take over the show the past two weeks.

Jennifer Aniston, on the other hand, almost did. I thought she was very funny and un-Rachel-like, but it felt her presence turned Liz Lemon into a bystander in her own show, in the same way that Tracy Jordan's arrival turned "The Girlie Show" into "TGS with Tracy Jordan." (Would this be "3R with Jennifer Aniston"?)

Again, I thought Aniston gave a good comic performance. So I can't decide whether it's a screentime issue (she was in this one a lot more than Oprah was in last week's episode), or simply a matter of her personal life and the tabs creating this impenetrable halo of celebrity around her to the point where it's impossible to watch her in anything -- particularly something this relatively small-scale -- without seeing imaginary flashing neon letters spelling out "JENNIFER ANISTON! OMFG!" in every scene. That's not her fault, nor is it her ex-husband's new wife's, or Bennifer 1.0, or any of the other celebs who get consumed by the tabloids like that, but there can unfortunately be something as becoming too famous.

That said, the Claire story did provide writer Jack Burditt the opportunity to dip into one of the show's deepest comedy wells: Jack Donaghy talking about sex. Alec Baldwin get this wonderfully juvenile gleam in his eye whenever Jack's getting lucky or using phrases like "emotionally unstable women are fantastic in the sack," and it's always delightful.

(Liz uncomfortably pretending to talk about sex is also funny: see her story about the guy from Chili's who "gave me the business.")

But is it wrong that I got a much bigger kick out of the episode's other Ghosts of NBC Thursdays Past? If John Larroquette wasn't going to do it, they got the right collection of "Night Court" alums (I always thought Charles Robinson should have had a better career after that show ended), and it was fun to watch Kenneth be horrified to discover that even his past idols could bicker the way Jenna and Tracy always do. (Maybe the funniest thing in the entire episode: the ashamed look on Kenneth's face when he admits to Jenna that he did know she played the were-lawyer for three episodes in the final season of "Night Court.")

The storyline also gave plenty of opportunity for patented Tracy lines like, "Court? At night? I'm laughing already!" and, in response to Liz's complaints about copyright infringement and broken union rules, "I want a different answer!," plus the weird meta moment when Tracy notes that if this were an actual episode of "Night Court," we'd get a joke right now, followed by a long pause. And the subplot also gave the Claire story a good conclusion by having Jack complain about how the real night court compares to the show, followed by a snippet of the "Night Court" theme music as Jack and Liz walked out of the courthouse.

Some other thoughts:

• Is this the first episode to feature Pete's new bit in the opening credits? I watched the first two episodes on screeners, which often don't bother to update the main title sequence.

• "TGS" itself has basically become an afterthought, but I like that we're continually told it's not supposed to be very good. Here, Liz is giddy when Variety gives them a "shout out" by calling it "a comedy show."

• One of my favorite small moments of the episode: Liz, Jenna and Claire start jumping up and down giddily at their reunion, and Kenneth joins in for a moment, only to start sobbing over the hated new page uniform.

• I know Fey has made it clear that Liz and Jack will never hook up -- and agree 100% with that decision -- but does someone want to analyze the looks on their faces as they're deciding what to say in response to Claire's threesome suggestion?

• Funnier name: Mi Yao, or Esmerelda Fitzmonster?

• Can any hardcore "Night Court" fanboys or girls (if such a thing exists) remember if the series did, in fact, end with Harry and Christine on the verge of marriage? I lost track of how many times those two hooked up and then broke up. And if Tracy's playing Mac in a "Night Court" movie, who should play the other parts?

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