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.
What did everybody else think?
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