Need more laughter in your life? Give "30 Rock" a chance.

About ten years ago, I fell in love with Tina Fey. One of the few female writers for "Saturday Night Live," she was mostly behind the scenes until she stepped on stage and behind the "Weekend Update" desk with Jimmy Fallon. She started out visibly nervous, but able to deliver the killing blow on lines smarter than the rest of the show around her. She got better with each season, until she left the show in 2006. I was heartbroken. How could she leave me? Well, it turns out she was creating a better vehicle for herself than SNL was--funnier, smarter, and with more of her in it. That show is "30 Rock."

About a month ago, 30 Rock's first season came out on DVD, and because we only caught about half of the season's episodes when they were broadcast, we've spent the last few weeks before the new season starts devouring them. And it's been a good meal. Watching an entire season over the course of a few weeks showed us just how good the show really is, and I'm impressed more than ever with how talented (and cute) Tina Fey really is. The show won the Emmy for Best Comedy last week for a reason.

The 21 episodes not only get better over the course of the season, but are so packed with jokes that they get funnier with subsequent viewings. The series is set at a fictionalized version of SNL, called "The Girlie Show," since it was started by Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) and Jenna Maloney (Jane Krakowski). When a new suit at NBC comes along (Alec Baldwin's Jack Donnaghey) and forces a new player into the cast, it upsets everything, and the first part of the season is spent trying to cope with that new star (Tracy Morgan's Tracy Jordan). These are the main characters, and there are enough ancillary characters to keep things spinning.

Liz Lemon and Jack Donnaghey are the two best characters--and although Liz is clearly meant to be the heart of the show, and is--Jack's turn as both her nemesis and her mentor finds a kind of bizarre center to the show as well. In some ways, their relationship is like a 21st Century Mary Richards and Lou Grant, and no one fit that updated archetype better than Liz Lemon. She's funny, cute, trying to make it in a man's world, and has incredibly disastrous dates. She's coming off a long-term relationship with the "Last Beeper Salesman in New York City," she has one perfect date with a guy she should have never dated to begin with, and she gets flowers on Valentine's Day that were meant for another Liz in the same building. Jack's love life is even more of a roller coaster, with references to his dating everyone from Katie Couric to Condoleeza Rice coming up in almost every episode.

My favorite episode comes mid-season, and is the only episode on the DVD set with a commentary track. "Black Tie," guest stars Paul Reubens as the Last Surviving Hapsburg, Prince Gerhard, who's throwing an extravagant birthday party. Jack Donnaghey is invited, of course, corporate mogul that he is, and brings Liz Lemon as his date. Jenna crashes the party with visions of being a modern day Cinderella. Gerhard is the result of centuries of inbreeding, and is basically Paul Reubens pasty, disfigured head on a puppet body, and is so inappropriate and so hilarious that my wife and I didn't stop laughing for the entire episode. It was ridiculous but somehow believeable, and Isabella Rosellini's guest appearance as Jack's ex-wife was just the cherry on top of the dessert.

There are lots of inside jokes, jabbing at other NBC personalities who work in the same building. Evidently Brian Williams trashes his dressing room after every broadcast, and it's up to the NBC pages to set it right. The uneasy marriage between GE and NBC is also the source of many jokes, and Jack Donnaghey's job includes not only television programming, but also microwave ovens. There are also references to other television programs--when Liz Lemon is crawling out of Jack's office, trying to go unnoticed, she huffs, "that would have worked on 'Ugly Betty," and leaves, her pride not intact. At all. Liz also makes some obscure "Star Wars" reference in almost every episode, comparing someone to Admiral Ackbar, and describing a handsome man's look as being caught in the tractor beam of the Death Star. She's a geek, but she's a cute one.

This season was full of surprises, and it even took characters I didn't initially like, like Tracy Jordan and NBC Page Kenneth, and turn them into real people with heart. That doesn't mean they aren't made fun of, because everyone's the butt of someone else's joke in this season. And that's the beauty of it. No one, especially Tina Fey, is off-limits. Her Liz Lemon is put through the wringer each week, but keeps on producing comedy gold. I hope the next season (starting October 4th) is as good.


This is Review #9 in CopeSullivan’s Fifty Reviews By Halloween Write-Off. I should have saved it for #30!