Thursday, October 22, 2009

30 Rock, "Into the Crevasse": Werewolf bat mitzvah?

Quick spoilers for tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I become ambassador to the world's gayest country...

Though I'll always love Will Arnett for playing Gob Bluth, I've never much liked him as Devon on "30 Rock." On a show that manages to make a lot of one-note characters very funny (see Dr. Spaceman, who doesn't even appear in this episode but gets a laugh from the appearance of his Cigarette Diet book), Devon just comes across as one-note. And while he occasionally brings out a funny, juvenile side of Jack (the headlines will be "Donaghy saves company, marries your mom"), an episode with this much Devon isn't gonna be one of my favorites.

And speaking of one-note characters, they either need to find something new to do with Jenna or have her quit "TGS" like Josh did last week. I've been trying to think of the last Jenna storyline I enjoyed unreservedly, and at the moment I'm going all the way back to the start of season two when she gained too much weight from eating all that Mystic Pizza. Untalented, oblivious narcissism can be funny in spots, but not for three-plus seasons.

Jack, Frank and Twofer trying to build a better microwave and instead re-inventing the Pontiak Aztek might have been funny if I'd never watched Homer Simpson destroy his half-brother's car company, and they've done better iterations of the "Tracy's mad at Liz" plot.

It's "30 Rock," so there will always be amusing moments in isolation - Pete shoving Liz, Jack's book jacket blurb ("Lemon numbers among my employees"), Liz foolishly popping her retainer back in - but there weren't even enough in this one to qualify for my Funny Forgives a Lot theory.

What did everybody else think?

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