Spoilers ahead, folks.
I think my favorite season of "30 Rock" so far has been the fourth one, with year five pretty close behind. The creators have let the status quo change, with Jack resolving a major love triangle with Julianne Moore and Elizabeth Banks, emerging a family man in the fifth season. Meanwhile Liz escapes what seems like an inevitable future with Michael Sheen (playing Wesley Snipes?) and snags Matt Damon in a pilot uniform - at least for a while. There's a new TGS cast member, Danny (Cheyenne Jackson), a lot of hints dropped that Kenneth is at least 200 years old, and NBC was bought by Comcast, I mean Kabletown.
However, the character I've warmed up to the most has been Tracy. Dissatisfied with being the resident hedonist and producer of lowbrow comedy, he goes on a quest to become an EGOT winner and girl dad. It's genuinely fun to see this play out, and Tracy's material is consistently among the funniest stuff that the writers come up with week to week. Jordan is a fantastic performer, and is allowed to take some bigger swings. And I like Sherri Shepherd as his wife Angie, who gets more screentime (and I confess I didn't know Sherri Shepherd was an actress before this). Grizz and Dot Com also being secretly erudite never gets old. Tracy Morgan missed a good chunk of the fifth season due to health issues, which the writers turned into a Dave Chapelle-esque sojourn to Africa.
There were more format breaking episodes, like the live show, the episode of Angie's "Queen of Jordan" reality show, and a hundredth episode two-parter. However, I've always been a sucker for serialization, and Jack tackling monogamy and fatherhood is what has gotten me the most engaged with "30 Rock" to date. Avery (Banks) is such a great character, and I'm delighted that she's become a recurring player. I can only hope that Liz's love life undergoes something similar in future episodes - Damon's appearances are fun, but we all knew it was never going to work out. Speaking of Damon, the caliber of talent that shows up on "30 Rock" never fails to boggle me. At NBC, they have Paul Giamatti working as an editor, Michael Keaton as a maintenance guy, and Tom Hanks even pops up to boot Tracy from the A-list. The mother's day episode was awash in comedic greats, from Patti LuPone to Jan Hooks. And it's increasingly obvious that Brian WIlliams is a giant ham.
100 episodes into the show, I feel like I've been fully won over at last, and thoroughly enjoy the "30 Rock" universe and the deep bench of minor characters its built up. It's gotten to the point where it's genuinely nice to see Dr. Leo Spaceman (Chris Parnell), Devon Banks (Will Arnett), and Dennis Duffy (Dean Winters) pop up every now and then, where I'd initially found each of these characters annoying. Conversely, some of the running jokes are starting to wear on me. A few characters like Jonathan (Maulik Pancholy) and Kenneth really feel like they're in a rut. Kenneth in particular has been getting jokes that are more absurd and extreme, and I don't think it's helping. He got an arc in seasons four and five, where he was briefly fired from the NBC page program and had to work his way back to the status quo, but it's just made him more cartoonish - and not in a good way. Jonathan and most of the writers are good for one-note gags, but Jonathan specifically gets the same joke every single time he appears. Jenna is holding steady, but I do hope she gets more to do than date Will Forte in drag.
As we move into the final seasons, I expect the remaining episodes will go faster than I think they will, and not just because the final season was truncated to thirteen episodes. I've gotten exactly what I wanted out of the show, which is the feeling of watching a solid network sitcom again, and finally getting some very old references. Don Cheadle on a bed of rice!
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