30 Rock, "Lee Marvin vs. Derek Jeter" & "Khonani": Nerds!

A quick review of last night's "30 Rock" double-feature - and why I may be taking a break from reviews for a while - coming up just as soon as Santa Claus takes a shower...

There was a time when getting two episodes of "30 Rock" in one night would have been the highlight of my TV week. The way this season has gone, though, seeing those two episodes on my DVR's list of scheduled recordings only filled me with dread. Watching only one "30 Rock" has felt like a chore lately, and two in short order - both featuring plots where Jack tries and fails to choose between Avery and Nancy - was even moreso.

And where I was able to say earlier this season that even the weak episodes had enough funny jokes on the side to make the viewing time worth it, I mostly spent this combined hour saying to myself, "Okay, I recognize what joke they're going for here" - case in point, both Jack's situation and the janitor spat as Conan/Leno parody(*) - but never actually laughing.

(*) A few weeks back, some of you convincingly argued that the Tracy-as-Bizarro-Tiger-Woods story worked independently of the ripped-from-the-headlines aspect, since it was also a nice role reversal for Tracy (and since plenty of other celebrities have also gotten in trouble for stepping out on their wives). With Khonani, there was no way to view it as anything but Conan, and yet it already felt dated, since the actual mess happened months ago, and since Conan ultimately chose TBS over Fox. The speed with which "South Park," "The Daily Show" and some other series can respond to events in the news like this has made it a lot tougher on shows like "30 Rock" that work on a more elongated schedule.

I don't want to be the crank making the same complaints about episodes week after week, and it's entirely possible that if I can step away from having to write about each episode - a process that requires me to figure out what worked and what didn't, and why - I might start to enjoy "30 Rock" again. (That plan worked wonders for me and "Grey's Anatomy," where I still watch it most weeks and can focus on the parts I like, since I don't have to write about the parts I don't.) So until we get a "30 Rock" episode or two that makes me laugh early and often the way the show used to, I think I'm hiatus'ing it from the blog rotation. Happier for everyone that way.

But for this week, what did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Floyd": Look at the truth you're trying to avoid, Floyd

A quick review of last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I'm no stranger to the art of japery...

There are episodes of "30 Rock" that manage to blend quasi-human plots about Liz or Jack with the zany antics of everyone else at "TGS" and make them all feel like part of the same show, but "Floyd" never quite pulled it off. The return of Jason Sudeikis as Floyd gave Liz one of her more down-to-earth and relatable stories in a while, but it felt like a complete tonal mismatch from the war between The Pranksmen and The Silver Panthers, and especially from one of the weirder (and dumber) Tracy/Jenna plots I can remember.

With "30 Rock," there will usually be enough good throwaway jokes to carry the day (Floyd's last name is DeBarber, Dave Coulier has been knighted in Canada, Liz can do a Christopher Cross impression), and I did quite enjoy the Pranksmen/Silver Panthers feud, as well as Pete's part of the Tracy/Jenna stuff. But overall, "Floyd" didn't really hang together for me.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Don Geiss, America and Hope": Always bet on Jack

A review of "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I smell like Icy Hot...

"Don Geiss, America and Hope" wasn't as strong as last week's "Future Husband", mainly because I didn't think the Tracy story entirely worked (more on that in a minute). But like a lot of second-tier "30 Rock" episodes, there were so many funny moments scattered throughout that I was satisfied.

The uncomfortable relationship between Liz and Wesley Snipes (and, yes, it does sound like a name more suited to a pasty English dude than to the star of "Passenger 57") worked better here than last week. The awkwardness between them was greater, Liz's frustration with Wesley's fake English names for things ("film pod," "foot cycle") was a good running gag, and I liked the angle of their disagreement over "Hot Tub Time Machine." (Plus, "Hot Tub Time Machine" remains one of those titles that's just fun to say, which is no doubt at least 80% of why it got greenlit.)

Jack's horror at winding up with a company lacking ambition (because who needs ambition when you've had a consumer monopoly for decades?) was a good story for him, and it's nice to see that the show is just as fearless about mocking their future Comcast overlords as they are at making fun of NBC (Kable Town bought NBC as a "charitable donation"). And I laughed a very long time at Jack quoting the line about Alexander the Great weeping, and then attributing it to Hans Gruber rather than Plutarch. (Though I'll admit that's where I first heard it, too.)

Both Jack's story and Tracy's were taken from current events, but it felt like Tracy's was such an on-the-nose role reversal of the Tiger Woods situation that a lot of it fell flat. I liked the Bed, Bath and Beyond voicemail, and throwaways like Jenna talking about the time she ate the pig that played Babe, but I spent too much of that subplot just nodding and saying, "Okay, I get it. Uh-huh. Yes, this is the opposite of what Tiger did."

(Stories like these - and, for that matter, jokes about "Hot Tub Time Machine" - also raise the question of how well "30 Rock" is going to age, which ties into one of the questions Ken Levine answered on his blog today. "30 Rock" is a much, much better show than "Murphy Brown" was on its best day, but so much of "Murphy Brown" was built around references to politicians and media types who were in the news back then that the episodes became unwatchable within a few years. Moments like the honkies shooting Jack or Liz filming the "Dealbreakers" opening titles should be fairly timeless, but how's an episode like this going to play in, say, 2015?)

Still, any episode that opens with Jack citing Rob Mariano as a reason why Boston is better than Philadelphia, closes with the porn-for-women guy telling Liz what button to push (because of course the people at Kable Town assume the women don't know how to work the remote) and in the middle gives us Don Geiss frozen in carbonite like Han Solo, was amusing enough for right now.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Future Husband": Rip Torn from the headlines

A review of last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as the pervert community gets wind of morning jogging...

Better. Not great (and still suffering in comparison to "Community" and "Parks and Recreation"), but better.

"Future Husband" had the show dealing with a couple of unavoidable real-life events: Comcast's pending acquisition of NBC/Universal, and Rip Torn's ongoing problems with substance abuse and the law. So in "30 Rock" world, Don Geiss is now dead, and GE is selling the network(*) to the Philadelphia-based "Kable Town," much to Jack's horror.

(*) Somebody want to remind me where Sheinhardt wigs fits into the corporate hierarchy? Do they own NBC outright, or do they own GE outright? I always forget.

The comic highlights were, as they often are, on the margins of the episode: Tracy never giving the same take twice on the set of "A Blaffair to Rememblack," Kenneth's donkey spells, the Jamaican dental hygienist living up to Liz's stereotypical impersonation by using "bobsled" in casual conversation.

But I thought the storytelling was better than it's been in recent weeks, particularly Jack's struggle to accept the Kable Town deal and Geiss's irrelevance (and, then, death), and the way his spirits returned after Avery created the rumor about Jack being the leading candidate to run the new company. I watch "30 Rock" to laugh, but I also need to feel at least vaguely invested in what's happening with the plot and characters, and Alec Baldwin and Elizabeth Banks had a nice moment at the end there (even while not in the same room).

On the other hand, Liz's meeting with the titular Future Husband, played by Michael Sheen(*), fell a little flatter. I couldn't tell if they were aiming for "catastrophe" and instead landed on "slightly uncomfortable," or if Sheen's just too charming to be believable as a guy who wouldn't in any way click with Liz. But it seemed like things should have gone much worse than they actually did.

(*) If you like sports movies at all, I cannot recommend Sheen's turn in "The Damned United" highly enough. I neither know nor care about English football, but I loved every minute of this, thanks largely to Sheen's cocky performance as overly-ambitious coach Brian Clough.

Glad to see Tracy's EGOT quest hasn't been abandoned like so many "30 Rock" running plots before it (wherefore art thou, Liz's baby fever?), and to see someone finally act out the old "I would watch him read the telephone book" cliche.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Anna Howard Shaw Day": Laughing gas

A very quick review of last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I get an extra gender-neutralizing hood...

Like "The Office," "30 Rock" has not been having a great season (though, as with "The Office," there have been some occasional highlight episodes, like Liz doing the "Dealbreakers" pilot and the appearance by Dave Franco's Brother James Franco), and "Anna Howard Shaw" was another pretty lifeless outing. There were the usual laughs in the margins - Jack mouthing "Lifetime original movie" as Liz said the words, our glimpse of the fast-paced but pointless CNBC show, Jack and Avery bonding over the terrible things they've done to gorillas, and doped-up Liz constantly mistaking plants for Jon Bon Jovi(*) - but there were a lot of long, flat, deadly stretches, and entire subplots like Jenna with her stalker that just lay there.

(*) So if you're a Monmouth University student, how you feeling about the JBJ "I have an honorary degree" joke? Happy that you got namechecked, or irked that it was in a mocking way? It reminded me of a time I saw Springsteen in concert play a song called "Freehold," which was a blistering assault on the town he grew up in and how the townspeople treated his dad. Yet because the song's lyrics constantly mentioned the name of a town in New Jersey, half the Meadowlands crowd cheered loudly every time it came up.

Tina Fey and company made the decision a while back to embrace the lunatic side of their show, and that's fine when the jokes are as perfectly executed as they used to be on a more regular basis. But when you're just a joke machine and the jokes aren't landing (as they haven't for a lot of this season), it can be really rough to sit through. Especially when NBC's scheduling shenanigans meant that the final scene - with Jon Hamm, Dean Winters and Jason Sudeikis playing Drew, Dennis and Floyd as immigrant dental hygenists - wasn't recorded. (I had to wait till the episode was posted this morning on Hulu to see it.)

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Verna": Clang, clang, clang went the mommy

A quick review of tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I pre-apologize for clogging your tub, sink and toilet...

There's a generational thing with "Saturday Night Live" where the cast from your formative years is the cast you have the fondest memories of, making it the one period where you'll forgive all the sins (sketches that go on too long, recurring characters who recur too often, etc.) you can find in the show later on. For me, that was the Phil Hartman/Dana Carvey/Jon Lovitz cast - or, I should say, the Hartman/Carvey/Lovitz/Jan Hooks cast. For all that people talked about "SNL" as being a horrible showcase for women before Tina Fey and company showed up in the late '90s, Hooks was just as important a part of the late '80s/early '90s cast as Hartman, able to be just as strong playing the comic center of a sketch as she was being the straight woman.

So I was excited to hear that Hooks would become the latest "SNL" alum to pop by "30 Rock," in what IMDb tells me is her first credited acting gig since 2004's "Jiminy Glick in Lalawood." (Sigh...)

Unfortunately, Hooks wound up in another disappointing episode of what's been an up-and-mostly-down season of "30 Rock."

"Verna" was an episode combining two of my least favorite parts of the show: Jenna, and Jack's mommy issues. (Though Elaine Stritch didn't appear, it was a Colleen episode by proxy.) I understand the desire to make Jenna be less of a cartoon on occasion - and I've certainly complained plenty about Jenna subplots that are too far removed from reality to work - but the only parts of the Jenna/Verna/Jack story I found funny were on the margins, like Alec Baldwin evoking his "Glengarry Glen Ross" character with his "Always. Speak. Quieter." mantra, or Jenna conveniently having a hand mic in her purse.

Liz's story, meanwhile, was at least the third time she's had a "TGS" staffer crash at her pad (following Pete a few years back and Tracy earlier this season) and led to another one of those climaxes where the whole gang watches a horrifying video of Liz, only not as horrifying (or funny) as her phone sex ad from "Apollo, Apollo."

It's "30 Rock," which means there will always be funny lines and weird gags, but it was pretty weak overall.

What did everybody else think? And did the outtakes of Kenneth talking to Pete (including renaming this show "You-Know-What and the Bear"), which were tacked onto the end of my screener, survive to the air version?

30 Rock, "Winter Madness": Get Dale Snitterman!

A quick review of last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I figure out whether the Subway joke in the teaser was supposed to be a dig at "Chuck"...

There are, to my mind, three types of "30 Rock" episodes: the ones like the Steve Martin episode that don't really work at all, the ones that feature a lot of funny gags but aren't wholly satisfying, and then the ones like "Apollo, Apollo" where everything clicks and all the stories, jokes and character beats come together to create a perfect whole.

"Winter Madness" falls into that middle category. I enjoyed a lot of the jokes about the staff's anger at having to go to Boston and share rooms (Grizz/Dotcom tension is always funny), Tracy's road rage coming to fruition, and Kenneth and Cerie's horrible playacting with Nancy Donovan. But it felt like the episode just stopped, rather than building to a real conclusion, particularly in the Liz/Dale Snitterman story, and I enjoyed Alec Baldwin and Julianne Moore(*) in the Christmas episode much more than here.

(*) Because everyone vented his or her spleen about Moore's (intentionally?) horrid Boston accent when we talked about "Secret Santa," can we please table that discussion here?

I'll take uneven-but-funny "30 Rock" over a lot of television, but when "Parks and Recreation" and "Community" have been as strong as they've been this season, it becomes harder to wave away this show's weak spots.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Klaus and Greta" & "Black Light Attack!": A fish called Jenna

Because "30 Rock" began its season so much later than the other NBC comedies, while NBC wants it to end its season at roughly the same time as the rest, "The Office" got a week off and we got a "30 Rock" double feature. A quick review of the two episodes coming up just as soon as I find the Joey Russo button...

Neither of tonight's episode was as emotionally rich as the Christmas episode, nor did they feature a moment as insanely funny as Pete coaching Liz through the "Dealbreakers" opening credits. But each was filled with enough good gags that, together, they made for a very satisfying hour of comedy.

James Franco(*) was as funny in "Klaus and Greta" as I was expecting, playing a perverted version of himself, even if the plot was stolen from a classic "Simpsons" episode with Troy McClure and Selma. Franco's obsession with body pillows (and other objects), and then Liz's willingness to go along with the disturbing fantasy in the end made me laugh a lot. And the first episode also offered Jack being disgusted with Jonathan's lack of lithe-ness, Kenneth unhitching his pelvis, the staff's "Today Show" drinking game, and Tracy declaring Kenneth's haircut an insult to lesbians. And if the Nancy story didn't really work without the presence of Julianne Moore (with or without the controversial accent), the rest was amusing enough to compensate.

(*) Random digression: the first episode of Franco's weird performance art stint on "General Hospital" aired around the same time the new season of "Scrubs" was about to begin. At one point during that episode (which Fienberg and I both watched out of morbid fascination), ABC ran a chyron promoting the fact that "Scrubs" would now feature "James Franco's brother Dave Franco." Ever since, we have been referring to him as "James Franco's Brother Dave Franco" in conversation. Tonight, though, I'm switching it up, and saying that "30 Rock" featured a guest appearance by Dave Franco's Brother James Franco. End digression.

"Black Light Attack!," meanwhile, made the best use yet of Cheyenne Jackson's Danny, less for what Jackson got to do then for the way he unleashed Liz's Dirty Thirties (the callback to her Larry Wilcox fixation from the Christmas episode was hilarious). And hearing Jack try to feign attraction for Lemon played right into Alec Baldwin's strengths. And for once I really enjoyed a subplot built around Jenna's narcissism and self-delusion, particularly Pete's terrified sprint out of the building and Jenna's lame attempts to seem young. ("Uh! Facebook!") Also, any joke that sets up a situation where multiple characters have to shout without realizing they're doing it will make me laugh. Every time.

Plus, while Tina Fey technically wasn't at press tour, I did watch the episode from my press tour hotel room, so the mustache trend has a third member and is therefore an official trend. Woo-hoo!

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Secret Santa": Moore holiday spirit

A review of last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I tell you that I'm really blonde and have a urinary tract infection...

It didn't offer anything as hiccup-inducingly hilarious as last week's filming of the "Dealbreakers" opening credits. But "Secret Santa" offered, like the identically-titled "Office" episode that preceded it, a showcase for virtually the entire cast, and some more tender holiday spirit.

With the exception of the absent Grizz and Dotcom, all the usually minor characters had their moment: Pete's delight at getting holiday vengeance on Jenna, the writers trying to get out of Kenneth's horrible Secret Santa scheme, Danny finally learning sarcasm (and Cheyenne Jackson getting to show off his Broadway leading man pipes), Cerie schooling Liz and Jack on social media, and Jonathan getting territorial about Liz's place in the Jack Donaghy gift-giving circle.

But what really carried the show - more than those little grace notes for the second bananas, or sight gags like Kenneth as Godzilla stomping on the Christmas village, or meta jokes like Liz pointing out the continuity problems with Jack's high school theater career versus the crippling stage fright he demonstrated in season one's "Jack-Tor" - was Alec Baldwin's performance opposite Julianne Moore(*) as Jack's old high school crush Nancy Donovan.

(*) Okay, New Englanders past and present: thoughts on Moore's accent? And on Baldwin's during the brief Rockefeller Center scene where Jack slipped it back on?

Though "30 Rock" is, for the most part, content to be a live-action cartoon where the characters' feelings matter much less than their role in some ridiculous plot, the show does on occasion (usually at holiday time) take Jack and/or Liz's feelings seriously. And Baldwin was great at showing a hopeful, smitten but still cautious Jack Donaghy. There were plenty of jokes hung on this story (most of them involving Liz, Cerie and Jonathan), but sometimes it's just nice to watch Jack try to be happy.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Dealbreakers Talk Show #0001": Being human

A review of last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I get your business sext...

"She's just a writer with zero performing experience!" -Devin

These words were no doubt said by a nervous executive when Lorne Michaels wanted to put Tina Fey behind the Weekend Update desk, and I'm sure some variation was uttered even when "30 Rock" was being developed. But we know by now that Fey is as talented and fearless an actress as she is a writer, and in by far the funniest "30 Rock" this season(*), we got an astonishing reminder of that.

(*) I spent most of yesterday struggling with a review of the first two episodes of "Better Off Ted" season two, which had some funny moments but overall didn't live up to what that show was doing last spring. Those kinds of columns - writing about a show in the context of episodes that aren't representative of what makes it special - are always a bear to get through. Ultimately, I settled on the idea that joke-driven shows like "Ted" and "30 Rock" have much farther to fall when the jokes aren't quite there than character-driven shows like "The Office" do. So of course I file that column, come home and watch a "30 Rock" that made me laugh until my jaw ached. It doesn't exactly disprove my thesis - this was just an episode that was executed better than "Season Four" - but I do feel like I need to go back into that story before it's published to include an allusion to this episode.

The whole "Dealbreakers" storyline was a funny take on the neuroses of being an actor versus being a writer, and the standout scene was Liz's disastrous attempt to film an opening credits sequence for the show. The combination of Scott Adsit's despair as Pete tries to coach her ("Smile... with your mouth!") and Fey moving as if Liz were an alien not understanding what humans look like led to the single-funniest moment on the show since the honkies shot Jack during therapy with Tracy. And the high-def camera gag - with Liz looking like a crone, Pete like a naked old man, Kenneth (again) like a Muppet and Jack like Alec Baldwin circa "The Hunt For Red October" - was the perfect capper. There were times when I watched that scene last night (and you know I watched it many, many times) where I was struggling to breathe, and yet I had to go back and do it again and again and again.

The show's attempts to lean on role reversal sometimes feel strained - here, Frank turning into Liz felt a little too predictable, albeit well-played by Judah Friedlander - but Liz turning into Jenna was both hilarious and an important moment in the ongoing struggle between the sensible writer and her narcissistic, neurotic actors. A great story, and a much better closing point to the "Dealbreakers" plot (which I'm assuming this was) than Liz's baby fever ever got.

Some other thoughts:

• Speaking of characters wanting young'uns, the Tracy subplot certainly had its moments, from the visit to Yakov's Nubian Bling Explosion to the various awful lyrics to Tracy's cynical songwriting ("You're the product of doing it!").

• Best Dr. Spaceman scene in a long time, wasn't it?

• Astronaut Mike Dexter is now a running gag, I take it?

• Once we saw Whoopi Goldberg, on the heels of another appearance by Sherri Shepherd as Angie, was I the only one wondering if the show was going to find a way to squeeze in Joy, Elisabeth and/or Barbara before the end of the episode?

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Sun Tea": That's a Cosby sweater!!!!

Quick thoughts on last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I take a low-volume shower with Ed Begley Jr...

This was the strongest overall Thursday this season for NBC's comedies, and "Sun Tea" brought the evening to a fine close. Not all of it worked, but enough of it did (in that usual "30 Rock" power hitter way) that I was left happy.

Hell, if the episode had been 21 minutes of dead air and just the 10 seconds of Kathy Geiss using Teddy Ruxpin in a suit as her lawyer, I would have given "Sun Tea" my stamp of approval. (I'm easy that way. And note that a more casually-dressed Ruxpin was also in the photo of the Geiss family in happier times.)

But Liz's apartment story felt like a throwback to the sort of thing the show might have done a couple of years ago when the scale was slightly smaller, and it was a nice showcase for Dotcom's alleged improv skills. (I particularly liked, in his list of stereotypical Angry Black Man threats, that he was going to "take things out of context" all the time.) The environment story tied in nicely with both Frank's disgusting jars and the apartment plot, and if the show recycled Al Gore's whale joke from "Greenzo" (while acknowledging they were doing it), it also came up with a funny new joke about the pointlessness of the whole Green Week stunt, with Kenneth nervously eyeing the all-green peacock logo to his right.

Dr. Spaceman's first appearance of the season (if you don't count his cigarette diet book being shelved near "Dealbreakers") wasn't as deranged and brilliant as some past Chris Parnell guest spots, and I'm wondering if Tracy and Jack's desire for children will last any longer than Liz's baby needs did. But Tracy Jr. was on fire, as usual, and they told us just enough of the Charles Barkley/strip club story to make me, like Frank, really want to know the whole thing. And the increasingly strained nature of the tabloid headlines about the Geiss case was a nice background running gag, until finally the last one had to be explained in print ("a pun on disgrace").

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "The Problem Solvers": She's the one

Quick spoilers for tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I say "Wade Bogg's Carpet World" five times fast(*)...

(*) You can't do it, can you?

Okay, that's two episodes in a row now that, if not entirely satisfying (like the gourmet meal "30 Rock" can be at its best), at least made me laugh a whole bunch (like a really good pizza).

We seem to have moved away from the abrasive "real America" material for the time being, which is a huge step in the right direction. Ditto the new story idea of having Jack and Liz team up to make a "Dealbreakers" talk show. If the final sequence was a little obvious in how it applied the hoariest of romantic comedy cliches to Jack and Liz's friendship, at least it kept it clear that this is a friendship, and Tina Fey is smart enough to keep it that way.

The Tracy/Jenna team often seems too far out of the realm of reality for me to enjoy them - each character tends to work best when playing off of the more grounded Liz or Jack - yet this is two episodes in a row where I haven't cringed at their combined subplot. The running gag with the t-shirt confusion was a highlight, but the two characters were shooting so many jokes out there ("black stripper with blue eyes," Jenna referring to Kenneth as an "underhuman") that enough landed to make it work. And I don't know where Jack "Danny" Baker fits into the show long-term, but Cheyenne Jackson fit in well his first time out. (Or maybe I'm just a sucker for Canadian pronunciation humor.)

Plus, any episode that so expertly parodies the hideous monstrosity that is ESPN's "Around the Horn" (the obvious inspiration for "Sports Shouting") deserves applause.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Audition Day": Pure evil

Quick spoilers for tonight's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as my fontanelle closes...

I use the phrase "funny forgives a lot" in my "30 Rock" reviews when an episode fails to cohere but is still entertaining. My problem with the season's early episodes is that they weren't even funny enough to merit forgiveness.

That changed with "Audition Day," which still wasn't "30 Rock" at its peak but which had one perfect, hilarious sequence that almost singlehandedly redeemed the episode for me. Jack's bedbug ordeal leading him to be on the subway and asking for help in the same defeated, sing-song cadences that homeless panhandlers use when they deliver a speech to the whole car was the funniest moment so far of this "30 Rock" season, one of the funniest things Alec Baldwin has done on the show in a long time, and the funniest part of NBC's Thursday lineup tonight that didn't involve Ron Swanson talking about his love of brunette women and breakfast food. Just an outstanding example of a joke that was perfectly set-up and executed. (Moon Vest inching away from Jack like the rest of the passengers was the icing on the cake.)

The rest of "Audition Day" had some good moments - Kenneth hissing "Vampyr!" at the site of Jenna, Brian Williams' Jersey wiseguy character and, especially, Scott Adsit getting an unfortunately rare chance to let loose and be goofy as Pete tried to get The Hornberger System to work - and even managed to make Jenna seem human while sharing a subplot with Tracy.

But after not getting a lot of sleep last night thanks to the world champion New York Yankees, I shouldn't have been in any kind of shape to laugh as loudly as I did at the subway gag, and yet I did.

Great scene, and a solid enough episode to go with it.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Stone Mountain": Good for a few chuckles?

Quick thoughts on last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as you come to see my cover band...

I had dinner with fellow TV critics James Poniewozik and Maureen Ryan the other night, and Mo asked me why I was being so hard on "30 Rock" lately(*), especially compared to a show like "How I Met Your Mother," which can offer up its own clunkers and, at its best, isn't in the same comic stratosphere as "30 Rock" at its best. And I told Mo that the difference is that "HIMYM" creates an emotional engagement with its audience, so that I actually like the characters and enjoy spending time with them even in the episodes that aren't particularly clicking. There was a time where I felt some affection for Liz Lemon, but Tina Fey and company have taken the show in an all-zany, all-the-time direction - maybe not "Family Guy" with better writers, but not that far off - and while that's fine when the jokes are landing, when they don't land, as they haven't for most of this season, then it's a lot more frustrating than watching a not-very-funny episode of "HIMYM" or "The Office" or "Parks and Recreation."

(*) And I should say that I feel like I've been hard on "30 Rock" pretty much since it came back from the writers strike late in season two. They've done some brilliant shows, and also some uneven shows with brilliant things in them, but I don't want to get labeled as a backlash-er when I've been saying this stuff for a year and a half.

In particular, I want this "real America" storyline to go away, immediately. All the jokes about it feel angry and uncomfortable, like Fey has had a lot of bad meetings with the real-life versions of Jack Donaghy of late and wants to vent. It feels like watching those episodes of "Designing Women" where everything would grind to a halt so Dixie Carter could deliver a long rant about whatever was bothering the head writer that week. Fey and company have tried to leaven the anger a little bit with fart jokes and Jack beating up Jeff Dunham's dummy, but overall they need to let go of this.

Tracy's Rule of Threes subplot had a couple of funny moments ("Can you get me on Charlie Rose?" and Tracy not knowing Jimmy Fallon), but there weren't enough to carry another mediocre season four episode.

What did everybody else think?

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?

30 Rock, "Season Four": Page-off! Page-off!

I had planned to write a more specific review of the "30 Rock" review than what I said about the show in this morning's column, but I'm a little swamped, and not really feeling the premiere (or next week's episode) enough to spend more time on. I imagine I'll have the time and/or energy to dissect some episode down the pike that doesn't work - or, hopefully, to lavish praise on the ones that work - but "Season Four" doesn't even really qualify as my default "lots of funny things happened but it didn't come together." I think I only laughed a couple of times (once for sure at Tracy's reference to Rabbi Shmuley).

What did everybody else think?

'Parks and Recreation' & '30 Rock' reviews - andreikirilenkotattoo on TV

In today's column, I look at the return of "30 Rock" and the creative upswing of "Parks and Recreation":

If, as a wise man once suggested, there's such a fine line between stupid and clever, then the line gets even finer between clever and genuinely funny. Humor is such a delicate thing that it may not take much for a mediocre comedy to suddenly become a very good one, as NBC's "Parks and Recreation" has, or for a great comedy to produce some sub-par episodes, as "30 Rock" has at the start of its fourth season.

Neither development is all that surprising. Comedies can take a while to find themselves, as "Parks and Recreation" has, and "30 Rock" sets such a high degree of difficulty for itself that some episodes will inevitably fail to stick the landing.

But even though Tina Fey is the Emmy-approved darling of the TV business, at the moment it's her old "SNL" pal Amy Poehler whose show is the best piece of NBC's Thursday sitcom bloc.

You can read the full column here. Will have separate, albeit probably brief, posts for both episodes after they air tonight.

'30 Rock' one of many TV shows about TV shows - andreikirilenkotattoo on TV

In today's column, I talk briefly about the "30 Rock" premiere (full review to come later this week) as an excuse to look back at the long and occasionally glorious history of real TV shows about the making of fake TV shows.

30 Rock, "Kidney Now!": Steve Earle, Steve Earle, please write a song for me

Spoilers for the "30 Rock" season finale coming up just as soon as I say "opposite"...

"We sure had quite a year." -Liz
"What are you talking about? It's May." -Jack

Seems appropriate that a season of "30 Rock" that was dominated -- and too often overwhelmed -- by guest stars would conclude with an episode featuring not only more Alan Alda, but an all-star cast of musicians (NBC has a list here, which includes a few odd omissions, like Clay Aiken) performing a tribute song for Alda's character.

Fortunately, Sheryl Crow and company didn't dominate "Kidney Now!" to the point where the episode didn't work. It wasn't a classic, but it was funny enough -- which, I suppose, also makes it an appropriate finale for this uneven season.

Alda and Alec Baldwin continue to be a great team. It was great to see a normal, outside person having to deal with Dr. Spaceman's special brand of obliviousness, and I love that Alda was willing to deliver that meta joke about the "M*A*S*H" series finale, where Milton complained to Tracy, "A guy crying about a chicken and a baby? I thought this was a comedy show!"

Even better, though, was the sequence of Liz on "The Vontella Show" turning into the real version of Jenna's relationship guru character. Where the actual catchphrase from "TGS" is deliberately lame (and NBC's real-life attempts to make the catchphrase happen are even lamer), hearing Liz fire off intuitive explanations for why these women should dump their boyfriends ("You have sexually transmitted crazy-mouth" or "Sir, have you ever kissed a gentleman?"), followed by her simply shouting "Dealbreaker," was hilarious, and a fine demonstration of how much confidence Tina Fey has gained as an actress over the years.

The Tracy subplot with his honorary high school diploma didn't have a strong enough payoff, but at least it featured a number of suitably weird moments, like Tracy and the entourage somehow being able to hear Kenneth's voiceover about college, or Kenneth talking about his "science class," which was all Bible stories. Again, like much of the season as a whole, it didn't entirely work, but was funny enough to be worthwhile.

Some other thoughts:

• Not only are Kenneth and Clay Aiken cousins, but Liz went to elementary school with Sheryl Crow, who remembers her as a loser.

• Of course Milton is writing a Jimmy Carter biography ("From Peanut to President")

• Of course Jack calls it "Rainstorm Katrina."

• Speaking of meta, I was intrigued by the frequent references to "TGS" having only two more years left in it, tops. "30 Rock" is considered one of NBC's prestige shows, but the ratings have never been that great, and I could certainly see a scenario where NBC, Fey and Baldwin all decide that five years (or even four) are enough.

• Is this the first Jenna/Mickey Rourke joke? I have a feeling we've heard references before to them trying to date.

• I like that Liz is so uncouth that her idea of a fancy, all-expenses-paid lunch is to find a "sit-down Quizno's."

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Mamma Mia": It takes two to make a thing go right

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?