30 Rock, "Cooter": The pen is mightier than the ketchup

Spoilers for "Cooter," the "30 Rock" season two finale, coming up just as soon as I sell my shares in Sabor de Soledad's parent company...

The candle. The mother-flippin' candle under the lampshade. That may be my single favorite joke in the short but brilliant history of "30 Rock," and the highlight of the nearly-perfect "Cooter."

(I say "nearly" because the page rivalry stuff never quite works -- if it hadn't been for Pete's secret archery history, and Pete with a wig and mustache, the latest round of Kenneth vs. Donny would have been a complete waste this time -- and yet the rest of the episode was so wonderful that I didn't mind it.)

The candle gag symbolized so much of what makes "30 Rock," at its peak (which the show admittedly hasn't been at since the strike ended), the funniest comedy on TV. We start off with our first glimpse of the crumbling remnants of the show's version of the Bush administration -- bare bookshelves, the leaky ceiling that everyone's in denial about ("We've looked into it, and it's not"), no pens or other relevant office supplies, an appropriations meeting where everyone argues over the most ridiculous minutiae (whether "dam" is a swear word, whether Rome was, in fact, built in a day). In this Kubrick-meets-Gilliam bureaucratic nightmare (sort of the D.C. equivalent of the 12th floor at 30 Rock), Jack's brand of Reagan-era conservativm marks him as an admirable man of action, but then he turns out to be just as motivated by petty self-interest as everyone else, with his desire to go back to GE and wait for Geiss to wake up. And so as he delivers that stirring speech to Cooter about capitalism's power to heal the nation, it only serves him right that the big symbolic gesture to lift up the lampshade blows up in his face, just as it underscores how pathetic the current administration is supposed to be. Perfectly set up, perfectly executed by the director and Alec Baldwin, and funny every single time I've gone back to watch that scene again.

It helped to have Matthew Broderick around as Cooter Burger (aka James "It was a sandwich!" Reilly). It's taken me a while to make peace with Ferris Bueller growing up to play so many dweebs on stage and screen, but the Leo Bloom association worked here, even before the story turned into such a blatant "Producers" riff. I'm surprised, and pleased, that the Gay Bomb plan didn't turn into a straight "Springtime for Hitler" copy, where it succeeded to the point where Jack and Cooter became indispensible Bush aides. That would have been a little too easy, and the idea of the Gay Bomb going off in Cooter and Jack's presence (and as a payoff to Cooter's Jack-fueled desire for pens) better fit the surreal tone of the storyline. I imagine they'll work their way out of it somehow next season(*), but the image of the other guys in the room getting amorous in a hurry ("Let's do this thing!") was wonderful.

((*) That said, it would be nice to see Edie Falco -- whose return as CC was a pleasant surprise -- show up while Jack is still experiencing the Bomb's effects so she can taunt him about the whole "and, as we broke up before it was my birthday..." whining from Jack's trip to her office.)

Robert Bianco at USA Today, whom I like and often agree with, wasn't a fan of the finale, or any of the other post-strike episodes (which you know I've had issues with), complaining that the show has been hurt by its increasing push towards farcical anarchy (he compares it at one point to "Family Guy"). Specifically, he takes issue with the writing of Liz:

The chief blame for the decline rests with Tina Fey and her fictional counterpart, Liz Lemon. At one point tonight, Tracy (Tracy Morgan) asks Liz, "Do you know what it's like to be the only one who cares about your job?"

There was a time when the payoff would have depended on our knowledge that Liz did, indeed, know what that was like. But now it leads to a joke about a missed period � and leads viewers to ask when exactly was the last time Liz showed any interest in her job at all. A woman who at least used to try to make her show better has spent the spring dragging through outlandish romantic entanglements and going ballistic over missing sandwiches.

Liz doesn't have to be sane, but when she's as unstable as the nuts circling around her, you get a show that plays more like a barely related series of sketches than a sitcom.

Now, I don't disagree that the show hasn't focused much of late on Liz's actual running of "TGS," but I never found that to be the strongest part of "30 Rock." Beyond that, though, I think a slightly-unhinged Liz takes better advantage of Tina Fey's growing acting gifts, in the same way that Jack's slight disconnect from reality plays to Baldwin's genius. And even in the midst of a very broad, ridiculous story involving the return of Dennis ("'Pre' -- before. 'Natal' -- ruined."), bull semen-flavored Mexican cheese doodles and Jenna's pathological self-regard ("Oh, no; someone's going to get more attention than me!"), Liz -- and Jack, for that matter -- became as human as ever in the two scenes where Jack listens to all of Liz's voicemails (the last one, and the way Fey said "Never mind," was kind of heartbreaking) and then visits her apartment.

It's not easy to combine complete cartoon behavior with genuine emotion -- "The Simpsons" could do it in the early days, as could David E. Kelley, but both struggle mightily with those tonal shifts today -- and this episode pulled it off. I bought Liz's realization that she wants to have a baby, and Jack's desire to help the closest thing he has to a friend, even amidst an episode featuring Gay Bombs and pornographic video games and notes written in ketchup.

This is the point of the review of any great "30 Rock" episode where I inevitably run out of ways to praise the show and just start listing other jokes I found funny. As this was the last show of the season -- and one of the best -- I'm actually going to keep it a little shorter than usual, both because there were so many things to list and because I want to hear what other people's favorites were. We've got to have something to discuss between now and the fall besides who shot Kenneth and what a gay Jack might be like.

Among my faves not already mentioned above:

• Kathy taking the race car out of her mouth, and then putting it back without saying a word
• Tracy directing Jenna's voiceover work: "Don't overthink it. I don't need another Judi Dench situation!"
• "Like eating a burrito before sex, a guaranteed disaster!"
• Even after discovering the secret ingredient, Liz keeps on eating the Sabor de Soledads.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Sandwich Day": Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria!

"30 Rock" spoilers coming up just as soon as I patronize the local IKEA...

Was it just me, or did that episode feel like it was about 15 minutes long once you took the commercials out of it? No pre-credits sequence, the least amount of Jack in any episode that I can remember, and the teamster storyline played like it had been hacked to bits. Everything was so rushed and disjointed, I would have wondered if this was a leftover pre-strike episode if it hadn't been for all the JetBlue jokes referencing stuff that happened during the strike.

Of course, even within an unusually thin episode, "30 Rock" still features plenty of funny moments. Baldwin's amused delivery of "Bush? Has it gotten that bad?" redeemed the episode all by itself, and we also got Liz on the treadmill (what's the opposite of power-walking?), Liz threatening to give everybody chins, our brief glimpse of the Charlie Kaufman-esque world on the 12th floor (complete with eyepatch-wearing receptionist), the random Cleveland put-downs (the tornado destroyed a liquor store and the liquor store museum), Brian Dennehy asking Frank and Lutz to kiss, ad Floyd's reaction to morning Liz ("Crone!").

But it needed several more script polishes (or editing work), and a whole lot more Jack.

(Odd; I want less Jack on "Lost," and more on "30 Rock.")

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Succession": Too many notes

"30 Rock" spoilers coming up just as soon as I hit the vending machine...

Okay, they're back.

Aside from the ongoing one-note-ness of Will Arnett as Devin Banks (and it pains me to speak ill of Gob), "Succession" was a fabulous episode, at once a great showcase for Tina Fey as an actress, an inspired riff on "Amadeus," and maybe the funniest Dr. Spaceman appearance ever.

After once more having fun with Liz's low self-esteem (she wants to go live with gorillas) and expectations for her future (she thinks she'll be teaching improv on cruise ships in five years), then helping Jack by kissing Devin ("I pretended he was a sandwich!"), we had her wholeheartedly embracing the world of the suits, with their slap-worthy salaries (a fever that Pete also caught), their Business Drunkenness, scapegoating, etc. And then she gets too Business Drunk to remember to keep Don Geiss out of his coma and... Blergh.

Meanwhile, Tracy as Amadeus and Frank as Salieri, on the subject of pornographic video games and The Uncanny Valley, was brilliant in its combination of high and low culture. If it had just been Frank's growing jealousy of Tracy, that would have been enough, but to then have Dr. Spaceman arrive with a billowing black cape? I had to pause the show for a good two minutes to regain control of my senses after that.

The rest of Spaceman's house call was amazing as well, as the guy continues to be Jack's biggest blind spot. He gives a placebo injection to a coma patient to see if he's faking, doesn't know where the heart is ("It's different on every person"), and can't remember the difference between 411 and 911. (Based on his phone request for "Diabetes repair, I guess," I'm assuming he wound up calling 411.) And yet Jack still trusts the guy. I love it.

Again, I wish that Jack's adversary was a more complex individual, but beyond that, "Succession" was so superb that I'm once again reduced to just listing other things I liked:

• "Eureka!" "What is it, Tracy?" "We should call Eureka! She always has good ideas!"
  
• Jack is uncomfortable with hugging, because "It's so ethnic."
• Liz offers to give up Kenneth to get Devin to stop attacking Jack
• "Hey nerds, who has two thumbs, speaks limited French and didn't cry once today? This moi!"
  
• Both Business Drunk and Rich Drunk mean it's legal to drive a car
• "My genius has come alive, like toys when your back is turned!"
  
• "You've got the charm and spark of a young Leona Helmsley."
• Liz hands Jack a tampon after he's too sympathetic towards Devin

Oh, one other complaint. This is the first post-strike episode I watched live, and now I understand the overwhelming hatred people had towards last week's "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" promo. Because when the "Baby Mama" ad took over a third of the screen -- in the middle of the otherwise genius Mozart montage of Spaceman's arrival and Frank's descent into madness -- I wanted to drive to NBC/Universal corporate headquarters and start slapping everyone there out of existence.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock, "Subway Hero": Baba-booey!

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

andreikirilenkotattoo on TV: '30 Rock' returns, a little rushed

Today's column looks at the return of "30 Rock," which is wicked funny in spots but overall still getting up to speed after the strike:

"If you're going to make something beautiful, you have to make a mess of it first. I don't care if you're making a baby, an omelet, or a television show -- things are going to get weird."

These are the words of Bucky Bright, a racist, sexist, possibly bisexual, definitely drug-abusing TV star from the '40s and '50s, who appears (in the form of comedian Tim Conway) in next week's episode of "30 Rock." And though the man doesn't seem wise on most subjects -- he takes Conan O'Brien for a lesbian and asks, "Why is she so sad?" -- his thoughts on the creative process of TV, particularly as it relates to "30 Rock," feel particularly on the mark.

To read the full thing, click here. Also, use this post to discuss tonight's episode after it airs. I'm going to do my best to watch "Office" and "Scrubs" (and maybe "Earl") tonight or tomorrow, so please refrain from commenting on them until I have separate posts up for them. It may be a day or two late, but it'll get done.

30 Rock: Damn good coffee! And hot!

Spoilers for the last "30 Rock" we're going to get until the strike ends (sigh...) coming up just as soon as I get on my treadmill...

What an unexpected treat. When the Christmas episode aired, there was some confusion about whether that was the last completed episode or not, and the general consensus was it was kind of a mess because they were rushing to finish it and couldn't do polishes. Then this one turns out to not only be done, but significantly better. Maybe it wasn't tops of the season, and maybe I'm grading on a curve because it's been so long since I've seen a new episode of any of my favorite comedies, but I was so happy (and yet sad) throughout this untitled one.

Germans and their language are just inherently funny -- as "The Simpsons" has repeatedly proved (think "Worker and Parasite") -- and so there were guaranteed laughs coming from hearing those words come out of Jack, Liz and eventually Kenneth's mouths, not to mention the bizarre shows ("Interrogation Bear!"). The co-op board as blind date was a great opportunity for Fey to play that note of romantic desperation she does so well -- if the repeated drunk dialing wasn't as painful as the brilliant sequence with Mikey from "Swingers," it was still pretty damn funny. The Jack/CC storyline was the usual right balance of creepy Too Much Information (they both view sex as a competition) and absurdity (CC missing the vote on the bill to legalize recreational whale torture), and while Kenneth getting hooked on coffee was predictable and silly, Jack McBrayer's deranged face and the "Midnight Train to Georgia" musical payoff made it totally worth it.

I'm so not objective on this one that I'm going straight to the bullet points listing the other stuff I liked:

• Jack hears that Liz wants to wait for marriage before buying property; "Sure. Wait for that, your first home will be in the floating city of New Chicago."
• Tracy's very Homer Simpson-esque memory of what happened the night before
• Liz's hairstyle in the college flashback (What do you call that, anyway? A femullet?)
• "Boundaries are made to be tested! That's why my wife and I stopped using a safe word!"
• "We're all white!"
• Liz back in the Laura Bush suit she wore to meet Tracy in the pilot
• "Love. A urine mirage in a desert of fear."
• As part of the drunk dialing sequence, Liz singing "You Oughta Know," and her boasting that "I bought a black apartment!"
  
• "Blurgh!" "Yes, blurgh."
  
• The moment when Jack and CC, and then Liz join in on the song, particularly Liz being the one to sing "I've got to go, I've got to go!"
  
• Also, "There's an 11:45. I was misinformed about the time."

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock: Merry Sheinhardt to all

Spoilers for "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I give my daughter a block of wood...

Since I now apparently have to begin every blog review with a note about how may episodes are remaining, I should say that this was episode 8 of the season, and we know that 10 episodes were made. (Tina Fey lamented in several picket line interviews that she was contractually obligated to act in the 10th episode, the last script they had finished.)

(Note: Turns out I don't know how to count, and this was episode nine. Also, turns out the 10th episode may not have been completed, in which case, never mind. This is what happens when you blog at 7 in the morning.)

So we'll have two more in the new year (or not), which is probably a good thing, as "Ludachristmas" was one of this season's weaker episodes. If we're going to be deprived of "30 Rock" for a long time, I'd at least like to see them go out on a high note.

(Please note: the usual "substandard compared to other '30 Rock' episodes isn't the same as substandard compared to the rest of TV comedy, and I hold the great shows to a higher standard" caveat applies.)

I was so over the moon with last week's episode that all I did was list the jokes I liked enough to jot down in my notes. This week's list would be far shorter -- though Jack's move to slide the donut tray under the coughing stripper may have been the funniest thing in either episode -- as I thought a lot of the jokes and stories were either predictable or not fully formed.

Take the Andy Richter brother character, for instance. The idea of a character permanently stuck in a single day in 1985 is strange enough for a "30 Rock" joke(*) (or an "Arrested Development" joke, for that matter), but, other than Cerie taking pity on him (or having some fun at his expense, depending on your opinion of Cerie), I don't feel like they did anything with it other than to put Richter in a ski jacket and make a handful of '80s references over and over. And then to let his condition be easily cured with a few references to the present sold out the joke and made Liz and her parents look like fools.

((*) Though wasn't this basically the plot of that Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore movie, "50 First Dates"?)

I appreciate the "SNL" legacy quality of having Buck Henry (the most frequent, beloved host of the Belushi/Radner era) play Liz's father, and I liked Jack's initial confusion about ("What did your mother mean when she said you were a beautiful genius? Was she taunting you?") and then affection for the Lemons. But, again, I think having Jack's mom turn out to be right seemed an easy way out -- that, or it wasn't executed well enough.

There were some nice touches in the Ludachristmas subplot, like Jenna singing the scales to "open-pit barbecue sauce" or the running gag about the paper shredder/photo scanner, but it wasn't as funny or memorable as your average "30 Rock" B-story. (Also, that was some of the worst green-screen work outside of "Pushing Daisies" in the sequence where the gang rushes out to destroy the Sheinhardt Christmas tree. I know "30 Rock" films in Queens and not at the actual 30 Rock, but since they went to the trouble of bringing half the cast to Rockefeller Plaza to film the skating scenes, couldn't they have brought the rest in a van? Or would putting the neon Sheinhardt sign up on the big tree have been a problem?)

I suspect this is the point at which people tell me I'm being too harsh, so fire away. What did everybody else think?

30 Rock: Jenna behaving badly

Spoilers for "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I adjust my lapel pin...

There are episodes of "30 Rock" where I want to spend a lot of time analyzing why it worked or why it didn't. Then there are episodes like last night's "Secrets and Lies," where everything was clicking so well -- more Baldwin/Falco genius, more of Liz embracing her pathetic nature, and just the right amount of Tracy, Jenna, Frank and Twofer -- that all I really want to do is list all the jokes I liked. (There were so many of them that I was constantly pausing and rewinding the episode to write 'em all down.) It's not analysis; it's just quoting, and sometimes an episode's so good (and also so evocative of earlier episodes I analyzed) that nothing else is needed. So, bullet points ho...

• The way Jack makes "pant suit" sound like the two dirtiest words in the language
• Jack's stereotypically ethnic pseudonyms/disguises for CC (Lakisha Gutierez Araft, Edie Falco finally embracing Italian caricature as Mr. Spoonatelli)
  
• Liz's rape whistle necklace (sans whistle) and her "Risky Business"/"Lemon out!" line
• Liz hates the word "lovers" unless it's between "meat" and "pizza"'
• NBC has a "bros before hos policy"
• Jack finding new ways to insult Liz's appearance ("Try not to dress like a smalltown lesbian")
• Tracy's diva-ish "Where are the french fries I did not ask for?"
• Tracy and Shaq's animated movie -- specifically, "Would you call what we did last night 'sex'?"
• "Samurai I Am Urai" (maybe my favorite Tracy movie title ever)
• "Maiden Voyage, Newark's first offshore gentlemen's barge"
• Kenneth bringing notecards to the dinner party ( "Liz, tell me a painful story about your teenage years.")
• Pete getting all "The Right Stuff" and declaring "Let's fake this candle" at the start of their Pacific Rim Emmys thing
• Jenna getting sharked by Tracy and only caring that he didn't thank her in his speech
• Jack and CC kicking ass at party games
• Did I mention Mr. Spoonatelli?
  
• Liz rattling off all the reasons CC shouldn't take advice from her, then reaching for the tape dispenser after CC leaves
• CC being annoyed she can't go on Oprah, and Jack's "I like when a woman has ambition. It's like seeing a dog wearing clothes."
• Liz telling Frank and Twofer that nobody cares about their rivalry
• Jenna's bitchy new entourage, and Jenna going to get her eyeballs whitened (no doubt by Dr. Spaceman)
• Practically every second James "Cajun-style!" Carville was on screen, but especially him helping to rob the vending machine
• Jenna is jealous of babies for their soft skin
• Almost the entirety of the Confessions of a GE Republican scene, save the final "I murdered my wife" joke, which took it further than it needed to go (the scene would have been perfect if it had ended a beat or two sooner)

I'm sure I left out one or two good ones, but what did everybody else think? You as blindly amused by this one as I was?

30 Rock: Do they have fist names in Knuckle Beach?

Brief spoilers for "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I enjoy some homemade country gum...

One of the best first season episodes of this show was the one where Liz met Floyd's girlfriend Liz Lemler and went into a complete Dubya-style meltdown, even barking out "I'm the decider!" whenever someone questioned the wisdom of her latest escalation. It was a hilarious episode from start to finish (it was also the one with Jack's family, each with their own pronunciation of "Donaghy"), and so I guess I can't blame them from going to the Iraq war parody well again. But I felt like the baseball plot of "Cougars" kept beating me over the head with all the obvious parallels. With Baldwin, Morgan, McBrayer and this writing team in place, there were definitely going to be some funny moments ("One word: surge!" "That's two words!"), but almost all of them were throwaway gags like the title of Tracy's tell-all book or Jack's charity that gives tuxedos to homeless people. Maybe if Jack hadn't announced his intentions to follow in Bush's footsteps, it might have all worked better, but the writers' need to spell it out in advance lest we not get it was distracting. (Also, the Liz version of this story worked in part because Liz is a liberal; seeing a devout Republican like Jack playing out failed Republican policy isn't as funny, even on a silly canvas like a Little League team.)

Liz's May-December cougar plot, meanwhile, has been done in various forms on lots of other shows (there was one sitcom in particular that did the gag where both halves of the couple lied about their age and didn't realize how far apart they were, and it's driving me nuts that I can't remember), and yet Tina Fey almost made it seem fresh with her usual willingness to appear completely pathetic. ("Oh... when will death come?") Frank's sexual confusion didn't quite work for me, but at least it led to one of the better Anne Heche-bashing lines I've heard in a while ("You can't be gay for one person -- unless you're a woman, and you meet Ellen.")

Ah, well. Win some, lose some. At least we have three more of these, while "The Office" is done for the duration.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock: Can we have our money now?

Was the above just a dig at product placement, or was it a coded message from the WGA? You decide. "30 Rock" spoilers coming right up...

Whatever episode followed "Greenzo" was almost certainly going to suffer in comparison, but "Somebody to Love" did as a good a job as one could in the shadow of that genius. The Jack storyline was the only one that was consistently brilliant, but it was enough to carry the rest.

Nearly every word out of Alec Baldwin's mouth last night was gold: "After all, your hair is your head suit," "I assure you, John McCain is very real," "You must have grabbed it by acciden after our night of doing it," Jack's description of CC making love like an ugly girl, etc. The best, though, and the one that was most quintessentially Jack, was his response to CC's mention of Hilary and universal health care: "God, I want to kiss you on the mouth to stop you from saying such ridiculous things." Jack and CC's absurd blind loyalty to their respective political ideologies was marvelous to behold, though it makes me think back to Al Gore's line last week about Jack being a former liberal; will we one day get a flashback (possibly starring Billy Baldwin) about how and why Jack switched teams, or was that meant to be a throwaway joke, never to be referred to again?

Not that it should be a surprise to anyone who laughed with her on "The Sopranos" (I have one word, and only one word: "Marco"), but Edie Falco was very light on her feet and played well off Baldwin. (The "Tennessee sorority girl" line was a particular highlight.) I look forward to more CC -- and, if possible, more snippets of her Lifetime movie with Kristen Wiig.

The rest of the episode was more uneven. I liked Liz's evidence of her non-racism -- "Remember, I asked that black guy if he had seen 'Sideways'" -- and the eventual reveal that Fred Armisen and his brother were making an "Amazing Race," audition tape, but it felt like a lot of effort to get to that punchline. (The story did, however, work as something of a thematic parallel to Jack's, showing that liberals can be just as hypocritical and tempted by the other side as Jack was being.) And, especially compared to the amazing, "This earth is ruined!" payoff from the end of "Greenzo," the Northrax/maple syrup conclusion to the episode just fizzled.

(On the plus side, is The Rerun Dance ever not funny? Though Tracy doing it wasn't as brilliant as Bill Haverchuck doing it.)

And Kenneth's quest to buy Jack new pants felt both predictable (did anyone not assume that Jack had a dozen identical pairs?) and too brief. If it hadn't been the distant third story of the episode, maybe it could have built up some momentum, with the pranks progressing from merely gross to genuinely dangerous, but there wasn't time for that.

But I can't complain much about any episode with this many Sheinhardt Wig Company references, can I?

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock: Kenneth Parcells' last party ever

Spoilers for "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I take off my shoes and socks...

Wow. Best episode of any comedy so far this season, and one of my favorite "30 Rock"s to date.

This morning's column went on at length at the genius and gutsiness of the show ripping "Green Is Universal" Week for the hypocritical sham that it is, but what made this one extra-special was that all the storylines were clicking -- not just Greenzo, but Kenneth's party and even Pete (hey, remember Pete!) cheating with his wife. The Redd Foxx/chiffarobe therapy scene from last week may have been the single funniest scene this show has done, but "Greenzo" was funnier and more subversive throughout.

To reiterate a few points from the column, I'm amazed at the stuff Tina Fey gets away with. Tearing GE a new one for destroying the earth was bold enough, but I gasped at Jack reading "colored people, broads, fairies, commies" from the outdated survey form. Even with the explanation for why Jack was saying it, how the hell did they get that past the censors?

David Schwimmer, meanwhile, makes a magnificent d-bag. He was great as the hated Capt. Sobel in "Band of Brothers," and most of the Ross moments I remember from "Friends" aren't him being schmoopie with Rachel, but him behaving like a jackass. (Him boasting about his mastery of karate, for instance.) Greenzo -- throwing around the word "gig" a thousand times, calling Meredith Viera "Merry" (and asking Jack if he "hit that"), insulting Cerie (leading to her hilarious "Did he just talk to me like I'm ugly?"), wishing his mom were alive ("so I could rub it in her fat face!") -- fit him like an oversized cartoon-ish glove. There's no room for him on "30 Rock" every week, but my buddy Fienberg wants to propose a sitcom (at least, he does once the strike's over, as he wouldn't want to be called a scab) that's just 30 minutes of Schwimmer and James Van Der Beek being tools. Tell me you wouldn't want to watch it.

The Greenzo storyline also featured the best moment yet in Al Gore's Yes, I Have a Personality Tour, a big fat clue that Jack wasn't always the pawn to right-wing interests he is today (having interned for Teddy Kennedy), and a completely over-the-top and yet dead-on final moment/line with the prop Earth on fire and Liz saying, "This Earth is ruined! We've gotta get a new one!"

The Kenneth's party plot was just as funny, even if no sacred cows were slaughtered. (Then again, we don't know everything that happened at the party; Liz did something to make Grizz cry, and it may not just be her kissing.) It worked as both farce and a satire of the (Harvey) lemming-like quality of celebrity culture. Of course all of Tracy's lies were going to catch on and snowball, because who wants to risk being the only person who didn't show for a party featuring some combination of TI, Bob Logan from Texas Instruments, Fall-Out Boy, Foxy Boxing, and Hayden Panettiere taking a shower? (For another example of the herd mentality, see Jenna immediately removing her shoes after seeing Cerie barefoot.)

The comparison between the quick cuts of Kenneth's old parties (the best, of course, was Liz dressed as Harry Potter and dancing to "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah") and the complete debauchery of the last one provided a great bookend for the episode, and any chance to see Jack look that disheveled should not be missed. The joke that really stuck the landing for me was the Harlem Globetrotter randomly showing up and getting scolded for his behavior ("Does that name mean nothing to you?"), because it made the party seem even stranger and more nightmarish than any hint of Liz/Grizz sex or sink-stealing could.

The Pete plot probably could have been placed into any episode, but Fey's terrified delivery of "What do you do with the Pop Tart?" kept it from just being a throwaway. (Also, it gave Liz the chance to say "Great, now I smell like midlife crisis.")

God, I love this show. I just want to stop right now and watch the episode again.

Some other thoughts on "Greenzo":

• Tracy's declaration that he loves Foxy Boxing because "It combines my two favorite things: boxing and referees!" was a quintessential zag when you expect a zig kind of "30 Rock" joke, and yet it also felt like something Lenny on "The Simpsons" might say. (Lenny, not Carl; the writers always give Lenny the best lines.)
• Speaking of both "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" and the mysterious Harvey Lemmings, if you listen to the full-length version, Tracy mentions Lemmings (as the guy who taught him all those Jewish words like "haftorah") in the lyrics. If I were Liz, I wouldn't be so quick to assume he doesn't exist; does she not remember the Dr. Spaceman problem?
• Straw poll: who would want Jack to banish them to the same island where they disappeared Phil Donahue and the electric car?
• I love that Grizz and Dotcom desperately want Josh to think they're cool.
• Jack McBrayer is inherently funny even at normal speed, but Kenneth in slow motion made me laugh so much I had to hit rewind, or else I would have missed Tracy handling a snake.
• What exactly is ironic about listening to Schubert while viewing Canadian pornography?
• Speaking of geographic humor, has Holland replaced Sweden as the go-to place for jokes about hot, easy women?
• Jack's response to Liz's joke about cloning Geiss: "Think it through." Of course.
  
• Would Angie Harmon as Greenzo be a better use of her than "Women's Murder Club"?

What did everybody else think?

The honkies shot me!

Spoilers for "My Name Is Earl" and "30 Rock" coming up just as soon as I compete in a page-off...

It's a good thing "My Name Is Earl" gets to air first, because on nights like this where another NBC comedy does the same joke -- in this case, extended breast-feeding -- most viewers get to see the "Earl" version first. Nothing in this episode was as funny -- or as strange -- as Randy's creative writing exercise last week, but there were the usual grace notes sprinkled throughout, like Earl admiring the science behind his conjugal date's new breasts, or Joy asking Darnell to explain JPGs and downloading to her. It's hard for me to look at Alyssa Milano, though, without thinking of all the poor MLB pitchers whose careers she's messed with by dating them. (Think what heights Carl Pavano could have achieved if Milano hadn't gotten her hands on him!)

"30 Rock" did probably its best episode of the season by playing to its biggest strength: Jack playing off of Liz ("Are you an immigrant?") and Tracy (the entire offensive African-American and Latino role-playing therapy bit, highlighted by Jack as Tracy's dad saying "chifforobe"). Tracy's butchering of the National Anthem couldn't quite live up to the Frank Drebin version from "The Naked Gun" (which has rendered me incapable of attending a ballgame without singing, "And the rockets red glare, bunch of bombs in the air..."), but the satire of the public reaction to Michael Vick (as opposed to athletes accused of raping or killing people) felt right on.

Carrie Fisher was also one of the better-incorporated guest stars, returning to the tried-and-true theme of Liz's devotion to her job at the expense of all else. (And they only felt compelled to make one "Star Wars" joke.) As someone who served as "SNL" head writer and no doubt had to hear a lot of whinging from baby boomers about how the show had sold out and wasn't cutting edge like it was in Chevy's day, Tina Fey obviously had some issues to work out, and I like that she and Liz seem to have made peace with selling out so long as you can be funny doing it. (Plus, as she returned to Jack for more mentoring, he delivered another brilliant bit of Donaghy advice: "Never go with a hippie to a second location.")

While watching the slightly revised opening credits (Liz, Jenna and Jack get new poses, while Tracy, Kenneth, Pete and Frank don't), I made a note that Pete and Frank had barely appeared so far this season, and for my comeuppance got the most Pete-heavy episode of the season. It's all relative, but at least he got to resolve the page subplot before it got too strange. (I'm trying to figure out how any show, even one about a supercomputer, could spin off "Cheers," "Miami Vice" and "Highway to Heaven.")

What did everybody else think?

Alan andreikirilenkotattoo's day off

October 19 is my birthday, so I'm pulling a Ferris and taking Friday off. (Playing the role of Cameron: my daughter.) I wrote my "Mad Men" and "Friday Night Lights" reviews in advance, so those should be posted close to on time (if either one's delayed here, check the NJ.com blog, which allows me to auto-schedule posts), and I'm going to deal with "The Office" and "30 Rock" really quickly right now. Spoilers coming up just as soon as I make a reservation under the name Abe Froman...

Paul Lieberstein, who plays the most melancholy character on "The Office" in Toby, writes and directs a very melancholy episode that I found oddly compelling in a way that none of the previous three were, even though I would argue all of those were funnier, minute-to-minute. Lieberstein really understands what makes these characters tick, so while Michael's second job and money problems or Dwight literally moaning over Angela weren't gut-bustingly funny the way the DVD screensaver gag or the Alfredo's Pizza Cafe/Pizza By Alfredo gag were, I felt invested throughout. And by the time Jan gave Michael the pep talk in the train yard and Jim opened up to Dwight about heartbreak -- and then professed his love of Pam/Italian food -- I was genuinely touched.

Which isn't to say there was no comedy here, just of a lower-key variety, like Michael pointing out to Ryan that he wasn't going to figure out the Power Point presentation even if he didn't have the second job, Kelly being baffled by Darryl's straight talk, the protracted "whoever" vs. "whomever" debate, or Kevin telling Michael to call someone in the mob for gambling advice. Also, any episode in which Michael can cogently explain why the original "Die Hard" was much better than the fourth gets major bonus points from me.

Meanwhile, any "30 Rock" episode that comes out and makes the obvious but brilliant Jack Donaghy/Tim Donaghy joke automatically gets a pass from me. Fortunately, there was some other brilliant stuff in there, including Kenneth's reaction to Jenna licking his face, Steve Buscemi saying of Jack's cookie jar collection, "You wish it was a gay thing!," Angie explaining that Tracy wouldn't play Obama because "we support Kucinich," or Jack explaining that "businesswoman" isn't a word. They still haven't knocked one out of the park yet this season, but they've made me laugh a lot.

What did everybody else think?

What's eating Tracy's mind grapes?

Spoilers for "30 Rock" and "My Name Is Earl" coming up just as soon as I eat a lot of paper...

No bad Seinfeld acting this week to gum up the works, but "30 Rock" still doesn't seem quite all right yet this season. A lot of hilarious stuff -- much of it involving Jenna and Tracy, who were the two most uneven characters last year -- and yet the A-story with Jack and Devin Banks felt very uneven. I think part of that can again be blamed on the guest star; it pains me to speak ill of the man who would be GOB, but Will Arnett's been wearing thinner on me the last few years, even moreso than when he first played Devin in season one. The subplot wasn't completely a waste -- no story with a reference to Garkle could be -- but, outside of the easy Scientology spoofing (wih the Church of Practicology, "the religion founded by the alien king living inside Stan Lee"), it felt flatter than most Jack-centric stories.

(Speaking of Garkle,as I was watching the Yanks-Indians series, every time Ryan Garko came to bat or made a play in the field, I couldn't stop myself from saying, 'Well-played Garko,' even though I was rooting for New York.)

The problem's definitely not Baldwin, as evidenced by his amazing delivery of "No, no, no, no. You are fat." to Jenna. That subplot continues to be my favorite of the season, bringing Dr. Spaceman back into the fold ("For your height, your weight puts you in what we call 'The Disgusting Range'") and nicely pitting Liz's frustrated idealism against Jenna's attention-seeking vanity. (I think I spotted the following as Dr. Spaceman patients with photos on the wall, by the way: Alf, the Unabomber, Kenny Rogers, Ashlee Simpson and maybe John Ashcroft. How'd I do? Any obvious misses?) Liz is falling apart even worse than Jenna -- when a tooth falls out with no impact, you've got problems -- and yet her own neuroses, workaholic tendencies and preconceptions about how the world should work keep her from acknowledging it.

Tracy was a very hit-and-miss character for me last year, but I like what they've done with him so far here. The problem I had in season one is that I didn't like him when he was too crazy but got bored of him when he was relatively sane, and they've had a nice balance here: completely disconnected from all rational human behavior, yet not bouncing off the walls with it. I'm still laughing at the thought of Tracy's inscrutable vanity license plate (ICU81MI) and the brief snippet of his novelty music video "Werewolf Bar Mitzvah" ("Boys becoming men, men becoming wolf"), and I like that even in a relatively normal scene (by Tracy standards) like Angie setting the terms for a reconciliation, we get completely bizarre details like Tracy's penchant for sexually explicit skywriting.

Meanwhile, I had reasonably high hopes for this week's "My Name Is Earl," as it was written and directed by Greg Garcia and was largely a flashback to the Bad Earl days. I was mostly disappointed, though; outside of the Michael Rappaport character's tour of the trailer (particularly the "half-bath"), most of the episode felt like an excuse to revisit earlier, funnier flashbacks (most of them from the Garcia-penned "Guess Who's Coming Out of Joy?" from last season) and tack on a few details in the margins.

What did everybody else think?

30 Rock: Baby got front

I intend to devote a good chunk of this evening to watching Yanks-Indians game 1, so posts on "The Office," "Earl" and "Mad Men" are going to have to wait until sometime tomorrow. But since I've seen both the "30 Rock" premiere and "Grey's Anatomy" episode two in advance, I'm gonna blog 'em early, separate posts for each. Spoilers for the former coming up just as soon as I fill my house with the sound of the ocean and the smell of bacon...


"30 Rock" is back, and all is right with the comedy world. Like I said in the column, this wasn't one of the show's best episodes, though I put a lot of the problem on the guest star they're counting on to bring in more eyeballs. Seinfeld's never been able to act, even turned it into a running gag during the "Seinfeld" season about the making of the "Jerry" pilot, and in the exaggerated world of that show, his clumsy mugging worked just fine. (If anything, some of my favorite "Seinfeld" moments involve Jerry overacting terribly in moments of panic, like the two-line phone mishap from "The Outing.")

But even though "30 Rock" is a farcical, sometimes surreal show with characters like Tracy, Kenneth and Dr. Spaceman (who makes a triumphant return next week), everyone is played in a style that's believable within this strange universe. Tracy's insane, but in a way that makes him work next to more realistic characters like Liz and Pete (who got his weekly line with "I thought you broke up!"). Seinfeld, on the other hand, is just a great comedian who can't act, and that stuck out like a sore thumb in a way it never did when he was playing scenes with George and Kramer. (Fey did use it to her advantage in the "Seinfeld-Vision" clips, which became funnier precisely because Jerry was just shouting clumsily.)

Beyond that, though, it was a really funny episode, and when "30 Rock" is clicking like this, it isn't so much a show that you review as one where you list all the jokes that you liked. Among my faves:

• "She needs to lose 30 pounds or gain 60. Anything in between has no place on television" (the entire Jenna plot, in fact, which is the best use of Jane Krakowski to date.)


• "Office wife" Kenneth quickly getting into a bickering spousal relationship with Tracy


• The Saul Rosenbear flashback


• Tracy suspecting his wife is sleeping with D.L. Hughley ("Studio 60" may be dead, but the "30 Rock" digs at it live on!)


• All the talk about the country only rich people know about


• Dieting Jack sniffing the photo of french fries on Liz's wall


• Liz calling Twofer "Chocolate Rain"


• Tracy seeing Liz in the wedding dress and asking if a Korean person died

What did everybody else think?