I forgot the way that sitcom episodes tend to blur into each other. Even a show as densely written as "30 Rock" is designed to be easily bingeable and I was at the end of season three before I knew it. I find it easiest to keep track of passing time through whoever Jack and Liz are dating, and we've just wrapped up the Salma Hayek and Jon Hamm era. I remember watching a couple of these episodes back during the original run, and it's been nice to fill in some blanks and get some closure on some of the storylines.
The show has hit its stride. Like all successful sitcoms, "30 Rock" has found its formula and is sticking to it. The A stories involve Jack or Liz dealing with their personal lives and romantic partners. The B stories involve hijinks with Jenna, Tracy, or Kenneth. Josh (Lonny Ross) has mostly been phased out and I don't think Rachel Dratch is coming back. Jonathan (Maulik Pancholy), Jack's assistant, has ascended to the level of sturdy recurring character, similar to Lutz (J.D. Lutz) or Toofer (Keith Bowden). I still don't know which of Tracy's bodyguards is Grizz (Grizz Chapman) and which is Dot Com (Kevin Brown), but I promise that I'm working on it.
All the characters are more firmly established and leaning into broader comedy, so they get dumber and sillier more often. Kenneth's not just a hick, but one of the "Hill People," the son of a pig farmer, and has a rural aphorism for every occasion. Tracy seems to vacillate between being dumb as a rock and just pretending to be dumb as a rock. Jenna is getting more fame hungry and vain. To be fair, the show keeps trying to push back against us getting too comfortable with the status quo, such as the time Jenna was fat for a chunk of season two, or Tracy's skeevy pornographic video game actually paying off and making him millions. There's also an admirable amount of continuity, with running jokes and callbacks trying to keep some baseline reality consistent throughout.
I like that Liz is allowed to be more of a mess as time goes on. The show is often at its best when she's at her worst - plotting to adopt a baby through unethical means or revealing that she was a bully in high school. Meanwhile, Jack has gotten cuddlier, still a staunch creature of business and capitalism, but we can root for him to make up with his estranged father (Alan Alda) or find love with a Democratic congresswoman (Edie Falco). They're the best characters by default, because they're the most well rounded and the least caricatured. I know Liz will finally find love in the later seasons of the show and I'm looking forward to it.
Anticipating an eventual Top Ten list of episodes, I've been keeping an eye out for highlights, and it's been tough. The episodes really do all seem to blur together after a while, though I've been careful not to watch more than three episodes at a time. The workplace comedy structure is loose enough that it can accommodate the occasional wild tangent, like the kidney telethon in the finale of season three, or just letting Tim Conway wander the network's halls and say outrageous things for an episode. However, these format-breaking episodes are rarer than I was hoping for.
I'm going to keep watching, because "30 Rock" is a fun show, but I'm not connecting to it in the way that I did with "Parks and Rec" or "Community" or some of my other favorites from this era of television. I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop - maybe for "TGS" to be canceled or for Liz to be fired so we can really see how everyone ticks - and I suspect that "30 Rock" just isn't that kind of sitcom. There's character progression, but it's slow and meandering. The characters are fun to watch, but none are people I'd actually want to hang out with. Well, maybe Jack for purely aesthetic reasons.
I'm seriously considering starting another, more recent sitcom to watch alongside this, so I have something to compare and contrast to. Stay tuned.
---
No comments:
Post a Comment