'30 Rock' recap: 'To a hundred more episodes!'

"30 Rock" has always had an uneasy relationship with sitcom conventions, and rarely has this been as evident as on Thursday night's 100th episode. However arbitrary a milestone it might be, the 100th episode of any scripted series has traditionally been a cause for celebration (Yay...we reached the syndication threshold!?), a time for self-reflection, "greatest hits" montages and surprise visits from old friends.

To use a risky metaphor, anniversary episodes are a little reminiscent of going to church (or, for that matter, temple) on a big holiday: There are far more decorations than usual, and the place is so full you can hardly breathe, but it feels like everyone is there begrudgingly, in a reluctant nod to tradition. Though the 100th episode of "30 Rock" had some ripping one-liners it was, in the end, forgettable. It's true of most shows, but "30 Rock" in particular: "event" episodes are so constrained by formula that they rarely make for inspired television. 

The episode included a reasonable number of brief clip montages, all of which were presented in the same way as the show's trademark "asides," little swooping sound and all. In a sense, it was probably a wise creative decision not to make too much of these sequences, but at the same time, the show might have had a little more fun if it had really indulged the cliché. (Why not a wavy dissolve, with a little harp music to go along with it?) 

'30 Rock': 15 funniest moments from the first 100 episodes [Video]

Congratulations are in order for "30 Rock." Back in 2006, no one would have guessed that the quirky sitcom would have long outlasted "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip," that other NBC series about a late-night comedy show. Luckily for us fans, it has. Tonight, the hourlong 100th episode of the series airs on NBC and, no doubt, will feature lots of montages and memorable guest appearances.

To celebrate this landmark, we've compiled an entirely subjective and not exactly scientific list of the 15 (half of 30!) funniest moments from the first 100 episodes of "30 Rock." 

Disagree with our list? Think we missed something? Please share in the comments.

15. Liz chokes on camera

After Liz's dating manual, "Dealbreakers," becomes a nationwide sensation, she and Jack develop a spin-off talk show. But the project is scuttled when, under enormous scrutiny from Jack -- not to mention a particularly unforgiving high-definition camera -- Liz completely chokes on camera. Rarely, if ever, has the cruel pressure of being a woman in showbiz been conveyed so effectively.  

14. "The Rural Juror"

A running joke throughout season 1 was the indecipherable name of Jenna's latest movie project, "The Rural Juror." She stars as Constance Justice, a Southern lawyer, in the adaptation of a novel by Kevin Grisham (John's brother). Much to everyone's surprise, the movie isn't terrible, but the real problem is its title, which no one can quite understand. Various misinterpretations include ""Roar Her, Gem Her" and "Roaring Junior."

13. Jack meets Avery

Jack's and Avery's storied love affair began with this flirtatious and rapid-fire exchange on "The Hot Box," which also produced one of the greatest jokes in "30 Rock" history:

Avery: "Favorite movie?"

Jack: "Tie: 'The Fountainhead' or 'Uncle Buck.'"

12. Jack gives up drinking -- live! 

Last year, "30 Rock" decided to up the ante by performing not one but two live episodes in a single night. The experiment was a success, a perfect outlet for the show's zippy writing and a cast made up of seasoned live performers such as Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan and Tina Fey. Possibly the highlight of the live episode came when Jack, having given up drinking in solidarity with a pregnant Avery, resorts to sniffing Jenna's boozy breath.

11. "Give me your fingernails!"

Way back in the first season of "30 Rock," Kenneth pitches a game show called "Gold Case," and tells NBC executives that he's already met with "Moonvest over at CBS" about the project. They assume he means Les Moonves, the president of CBS. Cut to a shot of Kenneth, astride his bicycle, talking to a homeless man wearing a vest covered in gold crescent moons. It would probably ruin the fun to explain what happens next, so just watch for yourself.

'30 Rock' recap: Where in the world is Tracy Jordan?

"30 Rock" is, by design, an extremely self-referential show (news flash!). Sometimes, "30 Rock" gets a little carried away by its own cleverness, and leaves the viewer in the cold. Done the wrong way, "meta" can feel empty and self-indulgent. But done the right way, it's an intriguing -- and entertaining -- insight into the pressures of being a woman in showbiz. Tina Fey's much-hyped new memoir, "Bossypants,"  hit bookstores this month. It has received positive reviews so far, but there's a consensus emerging: It's not quite forthcoming enough to be considered a memoir. I'm sure I'll read the book, though in a way, I feel it might be redundant. "30 Rock" is already Tina Fey's confessional booth.

Consider this week's episode, in which Liz, desperate to get "TGS" back on the air, goes on a manhunt for Tracy Jordan. "This show is my life. I need Tracy back," she tells Jack. (Of course, the real Tracy -- Tracy Morgan -- has been away for medical reasons.) There's something about Liz's desperation and anxiety in this episode that felt a bit raw. It conveyed a sense of what it's like to run a show that not only means everything to you, but which keeps many other people employed.

The entire episode had an improvisational, pasted-together quality to it, like you could feel the writing staff straining to fill the giant, Tracy Morgan-shaped hole in their show. I don't actually mean this in a bad way. Tracy's absence, so far, has yielded some surprisingly funny shows. But there were times at which the plot felt stretched thin, like Liz and Kenneth's trip to the pizza place. The "New York Pizza Academy" joke was amusing and silly, one of the weird little asides that "30 Rock" does so well, but it was, if anything, too digressive. As Kenneth puts it, "Well, this is obviously a dead end."

Though we've seen the Liz-as-detective thing before, it's still funny watching as she and Kenneth follow Tracy's footsteps around the city.  Liz, noticing the sex-stain-free futon on which Tracy is sitting, eventually realizes that he's been hiding out in her own apartment. His rationale is that Liz only goes home to sleep, so she'd never notice him living there. Again, there's more than a trace of the autobiographical in this turn of events. (Though, I doubt that Tracy Morgan has made a habit of hiding out at Casa Fey -- yet.)

'30 Rock' recap: Forced hiatus

Back in December, when it was announced that Tracy Morgan was undergoing an emergency kidney transplant and would be missing several episode of "30 Rock," my response to the news was selfish: "30 Rock" without Tracy Morgan? How will I survive?

Defying expectations, for four weeks now, the show has thrived with only fleeting appearances from its most outlandish star. Now, I'm not about to argue that "30 Rock" is better without Morgan -- the show could never be quite the same without all of his skewed non-sequiturs -- only that I'm continually impressed by the ingenuity of the writers on this show, which, in its fifth season, is at least as strong as ever. During Jordan's absence they've written some fantastic episodes. "TGS Hates Women" was both very funny and a shrewd take on the ongoing debate about women in comedy and, even if the conclusion was a cop-out, the spectacular showdown between Jack and Kabletown's tween heiress may have been the highlight of the season so far. Last week's Bravo spoof was gimmicky, to be sure, but the spoof was so spot-on that it didn't matter. (As an avid "Real Housewives of Beverly Hills" viewer, my favorite was the electronic cigarette reference. Hey Tina -- anytime you're in the mood for a "RHOBH" marathon, just give me a call!)

Anyway, the point is that "30 Rock" seems to thrive when it's placed under creative constraints. (See also: the live show.) The same cannot be said of "TGS" -- how's that for a segue? -- which, without Tracy (Jordan), is floundering. Jack tells Liz that until Tracy returns from Africa, the show will have to go on a "forced hiatus," a euphemism for "on the brink of cancellation."

The cast and crew panic and immediately switch to their back-up plans. Pete dons his corduroy blazer and signs up to substitute teach; Frank books stand-up gigs at black women's colleges around the country; and Jenna resorts to hawking "baby Jenna" figurines on TV.  It seems Liz, who's spent most of her free time in the past few years commenting in "Amazing Race" forums, is the only one without a plan B in place. She calls up her agent, Simon, who's so young that he's not even allowed to watch "Twilight," and whose other clients are dogs. He manages to score Liz a meeting with Nick Lachey about a show called "The Sing-Off," but Lachey passes. ("The good news is he hates you," Simon tells Liz.) After a little girl on the street points to an empty newspaper box and asks her mother "What's that?", Liz momentarily becomes an evangelist for writers everywhere -- even those of us who didn't get a $6-million advance for our memoirs. "People of the sidewalk, we need stories," Liz proclaims. In the end, Liz discovers that Tracy is not actually in Africa, so her job is, at least for now, safe. Eat your heart out, American auto worker!

Meanwhile, Jack has his own fires to put out. He tells Liz he can't put his energies into "power wagging" on behalf of "TGS" because he's already expended too much political capital convincing Hank Cooper to buy Twinks, a "fellas-that-like-fellas network" that has so far failed to cash in on a demographic willing to spend thousands of dollars on Chihuahua outfits. Hank is mostly unfazed by the network's lack of profitability -- "You made a bad decision and bought something you didn't understand, like when I bought tickets to 'Black Swan,'" he says -- but Jack is determined to turn Twinks around. All he needs is "a gay Jack Donaghy," and soon enough, he's enlisting Devon Banks for help.

'30 Rock': We interrupt this episode to bring you ... 'Queen of Jordan'

NBC's "30 Rock" returned from hiatus Thursday night with a vengeance, and paid homage to "Real Housewives" in all its table-flipping, hair-pulling glory.

Fans have had hints about show-within-a-show "Queen of Jordan" before, but never the fully realized vision that emerged this week. The faux reality series, starring Tracy Jordan's outspoken wife, Angie (played by Sherri Shepherd) now has catch phrases, cartoonish characters and manufactured tension. (And so much wine tossing that even a dog gets hit in the face with a cocktail.)

Not surprisingly, it's a success, according to Jack Donaghy/Alec Baldwin, beating "all the music choice channels except, of course, Latin Beats."

Since "30 Rock" is about the daily happenings at fictional sketch series "The Girlie Show," "Queen" is really a show-within-a-show-within-a-show, in which star Angie says things like, "I will not wear anything in my size or appropriate for my age," and promises to yank out at least eight more hair weaves by the end of the season.

"Queen of Jordan" follows in the footsteps of other fake reality shows that have had their meta moments on "30 Rock." Can any fan ever forget "MILF Island" or "America's Next Top Pirate"? But this was the first time a faux show had more than a brief tease, with "Queen of Jordan" taking up as much space as the secondary story, a Mary Kay Letourneau-esque tale involving guest star Susan Sarandon and her forbidden teenage lover, Frank, who's now grown up (but not) and writing for "The Girlie Show."

The blogosphere is alive Friday with demands for "Queen of Jordan" as a stand-alone series. No word yet from NBC about bringing that to life. Kenneth already has his own little online series. Would you watch a spin-off about Angie?

RELATED:

Full Show Tracker coverage of '30 Rock'

-- T.L. Stanley

About (Late) Last Night: On 'Conan,' Pee-wee Herman and the story of Lent [video]

Pee-wee Herman dropped by "Conan" last night on his water skis in a total blast from the past.

He apparently left the playhouse to visit Conan on Ash Wednesday to tell the story of Lent -- a time of sacrifice, turning away from temptation and, um, dreidel. And it all culminates in Easter, with a man-chick emerging from a giant egg. 

This is the latest in a comeback tour for the star -- he's on Broadway, he'll be on HBO and he had a hilarious digital short with Andy Samberg on "Saturday Night Live" just a few months ago. (Also, the man portraying Pee-wee, Paul Reubens, did a wonderfully hilarious turn in the first season of "30 Rock," as Prince Gerhardt, the victim of centuries of royal inbreeding.)

Here's the digital short, which also features Anderson Cooper.

 

-- Rick Rojas

'30 Rock' recap: Joan of snark

 

Whether or not she likes it, Tina Fey has come to epitomize the somewhat confused state of contemporary feminism: whip-smart, funny, and at war with herself. It's Fey, after all, who coined the term "bitch is the new black" and who, for almost five seasons now, has played Liz Lemon, an extremely successful but self-loathing woman thriving in the male-dominated field of comedy while bemoaning her single status. Gender politics have always played a crucial role on "30 Rock," but Thursday night's episode took this to an unprecedented level. "That's exactly the problem. Men infantilize women and women tear each other down," Liz tells Jenna. But is she right?

Questions arise when Jenna discovers that "JoanOfSnark.com" has been writing about her. The so-called feminist website--"where women talk about how far we’ve come and which celebrities have the worst beach bodies," Liz explains--has singled out "TGS" for its mysoginistic writing. They seem to have a point: There are lots of jokes about famous women getting their period and going ballistic. This plot is, clearly, a riff on the controversy that erupted last fall when the feminist blog Jezebel posted a lengthy critique of "The Daily Show." Jezebel claimed that the ostensibly liberal "Daily Show" had a "woman problem." The show had only two women on its writing staff and their lone female correspondent, Olivia Munn, was, prior to "The Daily Show," best known for diving into a giant chocolate cream pie while dressed as a French maid. The controversy raged for weeks in the blogosphere.

Liz half-heartedly tries to defend the show's writing. "That was an ironic reappropriation…I don’t know anymore," she admits. Taking the criticism to heart, Liz decides to hire a hot young female comedian, Abby Flynn--emphasis on "hot." Much to Liz's horror--and the male staffers' glee--it turns out that Abby is a busty, pigtail-wearing blond who speaks in a high-pitched voice, sucks her thumb, and regularly makes inappropriate jokes about molestation and lesbian orgies. (Abby is a nightmare, but the actress who plays her, Christin Milioti, is a marvel. Maybe "The Daily Show" can hire her?) In the shadow of an Eleanor Roosevelt statue, Liz tries to have a frank and constructive talk with Abby about her behavior, but it backfires. Abby tells Liz she's a judgmental hypocrite, Liz tells Abby she's a disgrace to "TGS" and the female race.

In a third-act twist, Liz discovers that Abby Flynn is actually Abby Grossman, a naturally flat-chested brunette who used to make jokes about erasable pens ("I always thought that but I never had the courage to say it," says Liz). In the "TGS" writers' room, Liz confronts Abby about the image overhaul, but it turns out the young comedian is actually hiding from a homicidal ex-husband, not caving in to "like, pressure from society."

'30 Rock' recap: A graceful transition into spinsterhood

Dear readers, I'd like to begin this week's recap on a serious note. We all laugh at "30 Rock," but spinsterhood is no laughing matter. Should you or someone you love feel that you're sprialing downward into spinsterhood, there are ways to help. Don't give up. Telltale signs of premature spinsterhood include: Pets named after female literary figures; fanny packs stuffed with various pharmaceutical products "just in case"; kitchen gadgets used as hair accessories; faithful viewing of grotesque reality shows and/or CBS procedurals. Remember, the more you know, the more you can do to help.

Thankfully, the TGS gang is well aware of these symptoms, so when a post-breakup Liz shows up to work with a new cat and a powder pink "New York" sweatshirt, they immediately know it's time to intervene.  Jenna forces Liz to join her for a night out on the town so she can "rebuild sexually." She's resistant, but when editor Donna Strunk suddenly comes down with food poisoning, Liz is all out of excuses. She and Jenna head to a nightclub with ample seating, acoustic music and clearly marked fire exits. Even these selling points are not enough for Liz to stay, that is until she meets Anders, a handsome "Star Wars" fan who also drinks white wine Sprite spritzers and uses the word "malarkey." Their nightclub flirtation ends with a "repulsive act in a midtown hotel room," and Liz happily rolls up to 30 Rock the next morning with a serious case of bed head and same fetching ensemble from the day before. Just like that, Liz is back in the game.

Or is she? When Anders tells Liz "it's never too late for now"-- also the name of the song Pete and Frank are recording-- she becomes suspicious. The episode culminates in a bravura sequence straight out of "Murder on the Orient Express" in which Liz enumerates the many suspcious circumstances surrounding her tryst. The evidence strongly suggests that her co-workers coordinated a one-night stand to help her get over Carol. First, there's the matter of the quiet, uncrowded nightclub itself; then there's the fight that broke out and forced Liz and Anders to make a hasty exit; then, there's the unopened bottle of ibuprofen in LIz's fanny-pack.  The clincher? "How does one lose one’s license out of a malfunction-proof Velcro Phillies sport wallet?" Like an Ugg-boot-wearing Hercule Poirot, Liz has assembled an airtight case against her colleagues. But, happily, she decides that it doesn't matter whether Anders was a Swedish prostitute recommended by Martha Stewart: If she's got friends who'd go to such lengths, she's a lucky lady.  The Agatha Christie spoof -- down to Kenneth's ring full of poison -- was spot-on. It also encapsulated the highbrow/lowbrow references that make "30 Rock" so much fun. It's hard not to love a show that alludes, in a single episode, to a global economic crisis, an appalling reality show and a 80-year-old British murder mystery novel. 

Jack also manages to triumph over his latest adversary, an intractable Trinidadian baby-nurse named Sherry. Preparing for licensing negotiations with the new corporate parent, Kabletown, Jack's usual steely confidence is shaken. He can't seem to say "no" to any of Sherry's demands, no matter how outrageous. How can he play hardball with his colleaguse when he "just got reamed by a woman wearing Winnie-the-Pooh hospital pants"? For one thing, baby Liddy is powerful emotional leverage. Sherry is also an unflappable negotiator. She sits, silently, peeling a tangerine, while Jack blabbers on, giving in before he's even put up a fight. For his sit-down with Kabletown -- which Meeting Magazine is already calling the first great meeting of the decade -- Jack takes a page from Sherry's book. Armed with nothing more than pursed lips, a scornful look and a ripe tangerine, Jack easily works over his Kabletown cronies. It's funny stuff but also, I think, revealing. There's always been an interesting relationship between Liz Lemon and Tina Fey; Liz both is and isn't Tina. Sometimes, there are "30 Rock" plotlines that seem especially personal and specific to Fey's experiences, even if they don't directly involve Liz. Jack's willingness to pay a Trinidiadian baby-nurse any amount of money to keep his family happy seems too personal, too specific, to have been invened out of thin air. Is Jack going to be the character through which Tina Fey shares her parenting experiences? Now that would be interesting.

'30 Rock' recap: Splitsville!

Before I begin, I have to confess something: I'm feeling a little verklempt this morning. I suppose that, deep down inside, I knew this day was coming, but that doesn't make it any easier for me to accept Liz's and Carol's breakup.

Whereas other sitcoms indulge their sappy side on Valentine's Day, the holiday has always been a fraught occasion on "30 Rock." In last year's excellent "Anna Howard Shaw Day" episode, for instance, Liz met her "future husband," Wesley, while in a drug-induced fog at the dentist's office. Granted, the previews for this week's episode did not exactly inspire confidence, but I was hopeful that Liz and Carol would patch things up. This appears unlikely.

As bad as it is that Liz told Carol that he "sucks" at his job, it's far worse that he pulled an air marshal's gun on her. Not to be too literal about the whole thing, but that was kind of dark, wasn't it? As Carol screamed "I will waste you," his eyes welling with tears, I felt like I had been momentarily transported into some dark melodramatic indie movie about the miseries of marriage. It was a split-second punch to the gut, exacerbated by the sad, snowy establishing shot of Liz's dark apartment building. Jack calls Liz with the happy news that he has given birth to a "Canadian-American" daughter, but fresh off the breakup, she's already back to her miserable old Liz ways. "You have a whole lifetime ahead of you of that double-edged sword, just swinging around trying to cut your faces off," she tells Jack. "I'm glad I called," he replies.

The real question is where the show can go from here. Last season, "30 Rock" went to somewhat extraordinary lengths to humiliate Liz. She was subject to the cruel scrutiny of HD television, made out with a houseplant she thought was Jon Bon Jovi (who knows which is worse?), almost married a man who loves "Notting Hill," and had a threesome with James Franco and his fetish pillow. The season's overarching narrative was Liz's personal evolution. All the romantic humiliation was worth it, or so it seemed. First, Liz abandoned her girlish "astronaut Mike Dexter" fantasy, then she met Carol. The theme of this season has been her pseudo-marriage to Jack, through which Liz has tackled her fear of intimacy. It seemed clear that that next step in Liz's growth would be a real-life marriage of her own; apparently, I was wrong. How will Liz deal with this latest setback? Will she try internet dating? Can she and Carol somehow make amends? Or will she find a new boyfriend who's less mule-headed? I have no idea, but I am sure of one thing: I'm not ready to revert to episodes about sad-sack single Liz.

So why do I feel so invested in Liz Lemon's romantic future? This is a comedy, after all. I guess it's that Tina Fey and her fictional counterpart have come to mean so much to a certain demographic of women. She is a 2ist century Mary Tyler Moore, more than just a sitcom character and actually emblematic of a whole swath of women. We want her to marry the handsome, funny pilot and thrive professionally because we want that too. Maybe it was inevitable that Matt Damon was never going to be a regular guest star on "30 Rock," but I still had high hopes for these two. I was also looking forward to how Liz would deal with the challenges of marriage and maybe even babies -- subjects that Tina Fey recently discussed in the New Yorker with her trademark honesty and wit. This is the woman who practically single-handedly derailed Sarah Palin's vice-presidential dreams; surely Tina Fey can figure out a way to make Liz happy, while also staying true to her character. Instead, it looks like we've got more jokes about junk food and foot fungus in our future.

Being a "30 Rock" fan, and identifying with Liz Lemon, can be a real double-edged sword.

'30 Rock' recap: Hysterical pregnancy

Just how far will Liz go to prove her commitment to Jack?  Jack and Liz have always had an "office marriage" of sorts, but this season "30 Rock" has made this dynamic increasingly literal. Jack has helped cure Liz's sexual hang-ups, and she even granted him a divorce after they accidentally wed. Now she's faking pregnancy in order to help out Jack's real wife. Jack and Liz's quasi-marriage is the heart of "30 Rock," though I wonder if the writers haven't finally exhausted this theme. How else, short of actually sleeping with each other, could Liz and Jack push the limits of their relationship? I'm afraid we'll have to find out.

It all begins when Jack asks Liz to take Avery shopping for baby things. Avery's sister, Eugenia, has been institutionalized for "nerves" ("Lesbian," Jack stage-whispers) and her work friends still don't know about her pregnancy. Yes, she's 8 months gone but thanks to close friend Michael Kors, whom they convinced to bring wizard clothes into fashion, Avery has managed to keep her bump well-hidden.

The secrecy is not entirely unfounded, since Avery is up for a job as NBC's financial reporter. Her main competition is Carmen Chao (a surprisingly funny Vanessa Minnillo), an MSNBC anchor possessed of keen investigative instincts and indeterminate ethnicity. "She's like a bloodhound. Perhaps literally, we still don't know her genetic background," says Jack.

Naturally, Liz and Avery--who is shrouded in a Merlin-esque velvet cape--bump into Carmen while baby shopping. In a panic, Liz tells Carmen that she's pregnant, and that Avery is just helping her decide which "baby megaphone" to buy (to the guys at home: that was actually a breast pump). Carmen's not buying the story, and decides to call Liz out on her bluff. Liz's commitment to the lie--she even strips down to her bra and oils up her stomach for a pregnancy photo shoot--is a testament to her friendship with Jack. It's also a testament to her need for years and years of intensive psychotherapy.

'30 Rock' recap: Saving Mel Gibson's sex jacuzzi

After months of anticipation, Kabletown finally assumed control of NBC on Thursday night's "30 Rock." It was a bittersweet moment for Jack, who stood on the sidewalk outside Rockefeller Center and watched as the neon sign atop the "giant robot penis" of a building switched from the iconic GE to the strange new Kabletown logo. (Was it a Circle K reference? Or just an accident?) Somewhere in the distance -- or maybe just at St. Patrick's Cathedral across the street -- mournful bells chimed the hour. Jack was in a reflective mood, looking back on his 30 years of service and comparing himself to "stout Cortez," a character from a Keats poem (as one does).

But Jack quickly shakes off his melancholy mood and switches to attack mode. He's going to score a ratings coup for the network, just to stick it to his new Kabletown bosses. Despite Liz's assertion that "we are in a new golden age of scripted television," Jack knows the real truth: that reality TV is king. People really want to watch  "a woman with hundruplets, a live execution, 'The Real Transvestite Hoarders of Orange County Penitentiary.'" The highest-rated events of the last five years have been disaster telethons, but they're usually a ratings wash for the networks, which air them simultaneously. Jack's idea? Pre-tape a telethon, one that anticipates every conceivable natural disaster -- and a few inconceivable ones too -- get some A-list celebrities to agree to appear in it, and air it as quickly as possible. 

Naturally, Jenna is happy to sing the telethon's generic anthem, which urges listeners to "help the people the thing that happened happened to." He even gets a genuine superstar, Robert DeNiro, to pre-tape dozens of messages of support for the future victims of a slew of potential calamities, by threatening to expose the fact that DeNiro is actually from England, not New York.

So when a typhoon hits a tiny South Pacific island of Mago, Jack is thrilled, and orders the telethon to air immediately. The plan goes awry when it turns out the island in question is owned by Mel Gibson, and so the proceeds from the telethon will go toward rebuilding the luxurious estate where he and his house guest, Jon Gosselin, are staying. The joke, of course, is that there couldn't be two less sympathetic people on Earth; this is not the rustic island populated with brave, shorts-wearing policemen that Jack had envisioned. The telethon debacle was a very funny riff on the media's disaster fetishism, a jaundiced take on the emptiness of so much celebrity activism. Haiti, Katrina, super-intelligent sharks--who cares? Just put me on the TV. 

This episode of "30 Rock" was an especially meta one, all about reality television, showbiz dealings and our weird celebrity culture. Tracy is being followed by the production crew on his wife's reality show, but this puts him in an awkward position. He's also campaigning for an Oscar -- and, most important, the private island he'll be able to buy once he wins the award -- so he has to remain likable at all times. The problem? Good behavior does not make for entertaining "celebreality."  Tracy's also fighting with Liz, who's sick of her star (literally) phoning in his performances. How will they hash out their disagreement with the cameras rolling? By fighting to the tune of popular songs that the producers cannot afford to buy. Even for "30 Rock," this was a spectacularly convoluted and self-referential chain of events. This storyline teetered on the brink of "just too much," but was saved by this exchange: 

Tracy: I have no reason to hug her other than my love of having boobs pressed against me

Liz: If I hugged you, I would angle it so you would get no boob.

Tracy: And I would anticipate your angling and I would get there ... I would get there!

The third storyline in this episode was easily the weakest. The TGS writing staff decided to come up with their own plan in case of apocalypse. It turns out that Lutz is the only one with a car -- or so he says -- and they all shower him with gifts so that he'll give them a lift out of Manhattan once the rapture comes. As much as I love "30 Rock," the show's glaring weakness has always been the (fictional) writing room; I feel myself getting a little impatient every time Liz, Jack or even Kenneth enters it. It's just full of too many unformed, one-note characters, like Twofer and Lutz.  I guess not even "30 Rock" can always be perfect.

'30 Rock' recap: Congratulations, Jack and Liz!

After more than a month of reruns, "30 Rock" returned Thursday night, and what an episode it was. It had everything: marriage, divorce, a corporate merger, even a bat mitzvah. Mazel tov!

Part of what has made "30 Rock" so strong this season is that it's returned to the basics. The splashy guest stars are still there, but the focus of the show is back squarely on the outlandish characters we know and love. Most important of all is the dynamic between Jack and Liz, which is the show's linchpin. But with Jack starting a family and Liz in a healthy relationship (last time I checked, anyway), this odd couple has been forced to reexamine their friendship many times over. By my count, "Mrs. Donaghy" was at least the third episode this season that examined their strange pseudo-marriage -- which, by way of a clerical error, has now become a real one. Somehow, Liz and Jack are such a perfect, if unexpected, pair that this theme manages not to wear thin. Their accidental marriage in St. Esclavage (translation: "Saint Slavery") was almost inevitable, the logical end to which the writers could stretch the relationship. It does make you wonder what the writers can possibly do next, but I have faith.

"30 Rock" has drawn comparisons to shows as wide-ranging as "Sex and the City" and "The Muppet Show," but I've always thought of it as a live-action "Simpsons." You've got the core "family" made up of lovable characters, and a large rotating cast of more cartoonish supporting roles. On "The Simpsons," you've got Patty and Selma, Principal Skinner and Dr. Nick; on "30 Rock," there's Angie, Jeffrey Wienerslav and Dr. Spaceman, all of whom showed up in this episode. Dr. Spaceman can always be counted on for laughs. This time around, he tells Tracy that he's dying. "You have no reflexes, your blood tastes like root beer and some of your bones appear to have vanished." I'm guessing Tracy's illness is a way of writing around the real Tracy's recent kidney transplant.

It also means that Angie will have to become the family breadwinner. Given her lack of talent and need to make millions of dollars, Angie's only real option is -- naturally -- becoming famous. As Jack wisely notes, she's got all the hallmarks of a reality superstar: "Hair-pulling-ness, delusions of grandeur, an insanely short fuse, catchphrases." Add to that a fat, hilarious best friend, a white divorcee with crazy eyes and showbiz ambitions (paging Kim Zolciak) and a nephew with a meth problem and you've got a show Liz Lemon, Andy Cohen and I would all watch religiously. Not since "MILF Island" has "30 Rock" spoofed reality television with such deadly accuracy. (If your DVR cut off like mine and you didn't catch the credits on this episode, do yourself a favor and watch them on Hulu now.)