Tina Fey is on fire.
Formerly a head writer and performer on Saturday Night Live, she recently captured the national spotlight for her Sarah Palin impersonation. But it's in her best interest to relocate her star status to her ratings-challenged sitcom 30 Rock.
The critical darling was perched on the top of most top 10 lists for TV last year and piled in accolades from the Emmys (two back-to-back Outstanding Comedy Series wins) and Golden Globes.
While most sitcoms floundered under the pressure of unstable TV seasons thanks to the writers' strike, 30 Rock thrived with its decreased quantity of episodes, no less courageous in its satirizing.
The clever, silly meta-comedy, 30 Rock, created by Fey, recently entered its third season on NBC. The writing and acting is still in top form even though the bland celebrity cameos continue to bog down the overall novelty.
The series is set backstage at a sketch comedy show in NBC Universal studios not unlike SNL. Fey plays Liz Lemon, the show's head writer, who juggles the crazy cast, crew and corporate honcho Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) with her personal life.
The strongpoint on which the show hinges is the back-and-forth dynamical chemistry between Jack and Liz. It's one of the few relationships in TV series that works best as a business-oriented camaraderie. Hopefully, the network will never force the show to make the two "get together."
Tracy Morgan also draws big laughs as Tracy Jordan, the unpredictable, insane movie star.
Of the first two episodes, the Fey-scripted opener is surprisingly weaker, focusing too heavily on a broad, stock sitcom humor.
In the Oct. 30 premiere, "Do-Over," Liz attempts to convince an adoption agency inspector (Megan Mullally as an uptight caricature) she is fit to be a mother. Meanwhile, Jack gets a job in the mail room to work his way up to his old position as vice president of East Coast Television Programming. He tries to get his job back from Will Arnett's Devin Banks (whose disastrous running of a company feels like an extension of Gob's on Arrested Development).
When an opening scene ends with the line, "There is no chance I am blowing this," (in reference to Lemon's meeting with the adoption agent), it should be a shock to no one what unfolds next.
In the Nov. 6 episode, "Believe in the Stars," Liz sits next to Oprah Winfrey on a plane flight and prods her for inspiration. In a far-from-subtle topical gag, the character Jenna (Jane Krakowski) dresses up as a black man and Tracy as a white woman to prove to the other whom has it hardest in America.
The biggest flaw of 30 Rock is the surrounding corporate excess. Some of it is used for parody (Jack fabricating Olympics tetherball for ratings), but too much of it is a manufactured product of marketing. Behind the scenes is a thinly veiled NBC manipulating the public's perception of the network as it's portrayed on TV. The onslaught of A-list celebrity appearances on a sitcom is typically a nauseating faux pas gimmick. In a show where this gimmick could fly, it seems clear NBC has a hunger for big numbers.
This season kicked off one week before November Sweeps, which means big shots like Jennifer Aniston, Steve Martin and Salma Hayek will conspicuously insert themselves in storylines.
Oprah is barely in a quarter of the 22-minute second episode. The device is smoother in the context of 30 Rock than it would on other shows, but the show is so smart and consistent it doesn't warrant these interruptions.
The supporting cast, specifically the writing staff, is strong enough to support the show. There's never been enough effort to distinguish and effectively develop them, so the screen time will perennially be divided up among Liz, Jack, Tracy and the episode's celebrity guest (e.g. the third episode is titled "The One with the Cast of 'Night Court' ").
The intention is the celebrity appearances will boost ratings for a critically lauded show the public might never get.
A show like Scrubs lost control of its characters in later years by leaning toward extreme over-the-top bits because the characters weren't developed enough to begin with. Hopefully 30 Rock won't go down this path, as its motley crew of supporting characters like Pete (Scott Adsit) and Josh (Lonny Ross) go most episodes minimized and unexplored.
In the way Arrested Development was pronounced dead before its time, 30 Rock's fate is questionable. Fey's writing and acting and her chemistry with Baldwin contributes to the show's solid nature. For 30 Rock to maintain the same level of wit and charm and divert from a creative slump, audiences will have to clamor to it like they did to Fey's Sarah Palin impression.
Grade: B+
