30 Rock, "Succession": Too many notes

"30 Rock" spoilers coming up just as soon as I hit the vending machine...

Okay, they're back.

Aside from the ongoing one-note-ness of Will Arnett as Devin Banks (and it pains me to speak ill of Gob), "Succession" was a fabulous episode, at once a great showcase for Tina Fey as an actress, an inspired riff on "Amadeus," and maybe the funniest Dr. Spaceman appearance ever.

After once more having fun with Liz's low self-esteem (she wants to go live with gorillas) and expectations for her future (she thinks she'll be teaching improv on cruise ships in five years), then helping Jack by kissing Devin ("I pretended he was a sandwich!"), we had her wholeheartedly embracing the world of the suits, with their slap-worthy salaries (a fever that Pete also caught), their Business Drunkenness, scapegoating, etc. And then she gets too Business Drunk to remember to keep Don Geiss out of his coma and... Blergh.

Meanwhile, Tracy as Amadeus and Frank as Salieri, on the subject of pornographic video games and The Uncanny Valley, was brilliant in its combination of high and low culture. If it had just been Frank's growing jealousy of Tracy, that would have been enough, but to then have Dr. Spaceman arrive with a billowing black cape? I had to pause the show for a good two minutes to regain control of my senses after that.

The rest of Spaceman's house call was amazing as well, as the guy continues to be Jack's biggest blind spot. He gives a placebo injection to a coma patient to see if he's faking, doesn't know where the heart is ("It's different on every person"), and can't remember the difference between 411 and 911. (Based on his phone request for "Diabetes repair, I guess," I'm assuming he wound up calling 411.) And yet Jack still trusts the guy. I love it.

Again, I wish that Jack's adversary was a more complex individual, but beyond that, "Succession" was so superb that I'm once again reduced to just listing other things I liked:

• "Eureka!" "What is it, Tracy?" "We should call Eureka! She always has good ideas!"
  
• Jack is uncomfortable with hugging, because "It's so ethnic."
• Liz offers to give up Kenneth to get Devin to stop attacking Jack
• "Hey nerds, who has two thumbs, speaks limited French and didn't cry once today? This moi!"
  
• Both Business Drunk and Rich Drunk mean it's legal to drive a car
• "My genius has come alive, like toys when your back is turned!"
  
• "You've got the charm and spark of a young Leona Helmsley."
• Liz hands Jack a tampon after he's too sympathetic towards Devin

Oh, one other complaint. This is the first post-strike episode I watched live, and now I understand the overwhelming hatred people had towards last week's "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" promo. Because when the "Baby Mama" ad took over a third of the screen -- in the middle of the otherwise genius Mozart montage of Spaceman's arrival and Frank's descent into madness -- I wanted to drive to NBC/Universal corporate headquarters and start slapping everyone there out of existence.

What did everybody else think?