‘30 Rock’: Eating its own twin

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The ’30 Rock’ post-strike return was big on cleverness last night, but of a different sort than usual. Fans of the show love the machine-gun barrage of witty lines and bizarre situations -- Tina Fey herself has noted that she has received feedback that some episodes are watched several times for all the jokes to be picked up. However, with a grand overarching allegory to a reality TV show (with a name that can’t be printed in the L.A. Times), the episode was slightly more of a thinker and not as much of a laugher.

To recap, someone from ‘The Girlie Show’ was quoted as saying something nasty about Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) in the newspaper: a game of strategy thus played out to figure out the culprit, one that mimicked the reality TV show that was currently airing throughout the show. Part of the problem is that the target seems a bit stale. Reality TV shows are certainly ripe for mockery, but strategic shows like ‘Survivor,’ obviously a show that ’30 Rock’ was referencing, are not as hot right now as more situational reality TV shows like ‘Rock of Love’ (which Fey helped send up during her appearance on ‘Saturday Night Live.’) And some of the references simply didn’t work all the way out. Pete Hornberger (Scott Adsit) spent the entire episode trapped in a vending machine, a gag which in and of itself wasn’t that funny, plus, what part of ‘Survivor’ was that supposed to mimic? It was fun seeing Liz Lemon play the Omarosa character, but since it’s so unusual to see her in a position of wrath and power, she should have played up the evil insanity factor further.

On a side note, the show seemed a bit more vulgar than it typically is, with the aforementioned title of the show that must not be named, bleeped out cursing (still funny thanks to ‘Arrested Development’), blurred out middle fingers, a place called ‘erection cove’ mentioned not once but twice, and a made-up state that begins with the ‘A’-word and ends in ‘-sylvannia.’ It neither really added nor detracted from the episode, but like the plot device, it merely seemed a little out of step with the show.

There were a few funny moments, like Jack Donaghy saying ‘I’ll return’ when Sumner Redstone was on the phone for him, and Liz Lemon doing a reenactment of a ‘Cathy’ cartoon. Hopefully, the next episode will return with moments like these, only much more of them.

--Claire Zulkey