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?
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