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.

What did everybody else think?