30 Rock, "The Ones": Puerto Rican!

Spoilers for last night's "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I put a feather in my fedora...

"The Ones" wasn't a classic "30 Rock" episode, and it definitely suffered in comparison to the amazing half-hour of "The Office" that preceded it, but it had more than enough funny things in it to keep me satisfied.

Start with the running gag about Liz's love of the Slanket, that horrific imitation precursor to the Snuggie(*) and her constant excuses for why she was wearing it. (In particular, the very meta, "It's not product placement! I just like it!") Liz wearing a Slanket, eating a plate of cheese and singing a song about it to the tune of "Night Moves," followed by Elisa derisively asking, "Lemon, isn't there a Slanket somewhere you should be filling with your farts?" is just funny. It just is.

(*) Two Snuggie-related points. First, you absolutely must read Joe Posnanski's scene-by-scene breakdown of the original Snuggie commercial if you haven't already, and not just because I shamelessly lifted the footnote format from him. Second, when our daughter was born, my wife was steadfast that, while we'd let her watch TV, we'd try to keep her away from commercials at all costs. And for a long time, we succeeded, sticking primarily to either PBS or Disney Channel (where the only ads are for other Disney shows/movies, which we can deal with). A while back, we stumbled across a few shows on other channels that we liked, including "The Magic School Bus," and we let her watch them in spite of the commercials. Then a few months ago, it's a cold morning and my daughter asks for a blanket. I get it for her, and she says, quote, "This blanket isn't comfortable. I can't move my arms around in it. What if I have to answer the phone?" She had memorized the Snuggie commercial. So, basically, she'll be watching PBS and nothing but from now until she's 18.

Beyond that, while Salma Hayek wasn't used quite as well as in her last few appearances, they did put her in a "What the Frak?!" t-shirt, which, coupled with a poisoned Kenneth blurting out, "My real name is... Dick Whitman!!!," made the episode a kind of paradise for snooty fans of quality TV (like me!).

The Jenna subplot didn't really work for me, other than gags on the side like Kenneth, or the idea of the marginalized male writers banding together as The Pranksmen, which seems the sort of thing a bunch of Harvard-educated comedy writers might think was really cool. Jenna stories need to always have Liz or Jack featured prominently, and/or to put her together with Pete more than they did here, as her insanity's only amusing when contrasted against a relatively normal character. (Though the final scene did mock the infamous "I'm just a girl, standing in front of a boy..." scene from "Notting Hill.") Didn't love Tracy's story either, but at least it had Dotcom ranting about Moroccan soccer.

Definitely a "funny forgives a lot" kind of episode. What did everybody else think?