30 Rock: Damn good coffee! And hot!

Spoilers for the last "30 Rock" we're going to get until the strike ends (sigh...) coming up just as soon as I get on my treadmill...

What an unexpected treat. When the Christmas episode aired, there was some confusion about whether that was the last completed episode or not, and the general consensus was it was kind of a mess because they were rushing to finish it and couldn't do polishes. Then this one turns out to not only be done, but significantly better. Maybe it wasn't tops of the season, and maybe I'm grading on a curve because it's been so long since I've seen a new episode of any of my favorite comedies, but I was so happy (and yet sad) throughout this untitled one.

Germans and their language are just inherently funny -- as "The Simpsons" has repeatedly proved (think "Worker and Parasite") -- and so there were guaranteed laughs coming from hearing those words come out of Jack, Liz and eventually Kenneth's mouths, not to mention the bizarre shows ("Interrogation Bear!"). The co-op board as blind date was a great opportunity for Fey to play that note of romantic desperation she does so well -- if the repeated drunk dialing wasn't as painful as the brilliant sequence with Mikey from "Swingers," it was still pretty damn funny. The Jack/CC storyline was the usual right balance of creepy Too Much Information (they both view sex as a competition) and absurdity (CC missing the vote on the bill to legalize recreational whale torture), and while Kenneth getting hooked on coffee was predictable and silly, Jack McBrayer's deranged face and the "Midnight Train to Georgia" musical payoff made it totally worth it.

I'm so not objective on this one that I'm going straight to the bullet points listing the other stuff I liked:

• Jack hears that Liz wants to wait for marriage before buying property; "Sure. Wait for that, your first home will be in the floating city of New Chicago."
• Tracy's very Homer Simpson-esque memory of what happened the night before
• Liz's hairstyle in the college flashback (What do you call that, anyway? A femullet?)
• "Boundaries are made to be tested! That's why my wife and I stopped using a safe word!"
• "We're all white!"
• Liz back in the Laura Bush suit she wore to meet Tracy in the pilot
• "Love. A urine mirage in a desert of fear."
• As part of the drunk dialing sequence, Liz singing "You Oughta Know," and her boasting that "I bought a black apartment!"
  
• "Blurgh!" "Yes, blurgh."
  
• The moment when Jack and CC, and then Liz join in on the song, particularly Liz being the one to sing "I've got to go, I've got to go!"
  
• Also, "There's an 11:45. I was misinformed about the time."

What did everybody else think?