30 Rock

the fact that they cast that trucker hat guy from the Dave Matthews Band video makes me want to dislike this show, but it is pretty good. Baldwin in this kind of reminds me of Jimmy James from Newsradio (=ridiculously high praise).

It's really so simple; good writing and good comedic timing. Why do so many shows fail at this?

hee hee

Can we get AIDS into every episode, plz?

alec baldwin continues to kill me - and that southern accent taunting across the poker table! hahaha

oh man after i saw that scene i wanted to go so bad... i was planning on hunting for that place when i'm in ny for 48hrs this wknd... thanks for the tip!

The show on after this with Jeffrey Tambor & John Lithgow is a lot funnier than I expected, but it's still a regular sitcom, which is so much harder to watch now post Arrested Development/Office/etc.

"In five years we'll either be working for him or dead by his hand"

From today's Washington Post:

And, in a move that can only be called PR genius, NBC announced "30 Rock," Tina Fey's sendup of "Saturday Night Live," and mothballed doctor comedy "Scrubs" would join "My Name Is Earl" and "The Office" for a four-comedy block on Thursday night, harkening back to the golden days of NBC, long before it became just another cog in the great GE/NBC Universal 2.0 mandala.

Based on early exit polling, it worked like gangbusters. Critics seemed to like it; ditto members of the Hollywood TV community. The move "at least gives the network an identity" on one night of the week, said one industry suit who wished to remain anonymous because private schools aren't cheap.

This is saddening in a way though because now once again there will be nothing decent on tv in the hour before LOST on Wed.

(they just wanted to prove me wrong. they are ALWAYS doing that.)

bulllllshit, three-camera/studio audience sitcoms are still, as a format, way better than all that steadicam/awkward-silences-with-no-laugh-track stuff that's trendy now (although I do like what 30 Rock does with it), and judging from CBS's Monday night lineup there's still some good shows being made in that style.

they had promos up the butt for months! they looked like snl promos.

"and judging from CBS's Monday night lineup there's still some good shows being made in that style."

other than lost, and now 30 rock, these are the only shows i watch. i dig how i met your mother, and 2 & a half men, and old christine. the class is pretty bad though. maybe even worse than the one with the fonz and stockard channing that is gone now i think.

it seems like if she's gonna make that joke she should have the self awareness to not make the show 90% about how hilarious/pathetic it is when old ladies of 35 cant bag a man or w/e! also soooo many jokes about fat ppl being gross

It's so weird to single out Liz Lemon as a "cartoon character" on a show full of cartoon characters. I mean, c'mon. Pretty much every main character, and I would definitely include Donaghy as a cartoon, is one.

yeah theyre all cartoon characters, she's just an extremely lame cartoon character

i guess i feel like the show treats jack's relationships more seriously than it treats liz's -- hers are mainly treated for laughs, there's no liz equivalent of the episodes where jack's torn between two girlfriends who are both right for him, etc. obv he's kind of a cartoon in many ways -- quoting reagan, etc -- but the show gives him more depth than liz most of the time.

90% about how hilarious/pathetic it is when old ladies of 35 cant bag a man or w/e

I'm not really getting this at all. Maybe at the beginning? idk

I'm in the middle of a s5/s6 binge. I think I love Grizz & dotcom the best

there's a really weird dynamic on a lot of TV shows that i think 30 Rock accidentally epitomizes, where married successful people are constantly playing unmarried unsuccessful people because, unless it's a 'family show' or a satire of success or something, it's considered not sexy enough or not funny enough to show people who are settled down or w/e and so you end up with these slightly icky situations where Tina Fey, in an effort not have a show about Tina Fey being awesome and winning at life, creates this 'lol pathetic spinster alternative universe me' character that gets kicked in the shins over and over. it's especially odd because Liz Lemon seems to keep encountering this "work vs. personal life" dilemma that Fey doesn't seem to have struggled with at all.

Seinfeld to Fey: do you miss 30 rock?
Fey: No!

The workload was apparently nuts.

yeah...some SNL alumni have said that in a way sitcoms are actually a harder grind, because instead of writing and rehearsing and then performing a show in 6 days and being done with it, you've gotta go through long hours of multiple takes and editing, etc. being a star/writer/producer of a show like that must be exhausting.

also it wouldn't surprise me if Tina put more of the work and the pressure on her shoulders than Jerry ever did.

I read an interview where she admitted that she kept the show going because of all the jobs of her friends and crew that were riding on it, so maybe the show is actually an idealized version of the work/life struggle, whereas real tina fey was in a nightmare hellhole.

i could believe that. there was a lot of hamster-wheeling going on during the last few seasons, though it was still enjoyable

"greenzo" is so good, kenneth's party, david schwimmer, lol

three years pass...

...lol

there's no season 2 thread!

We went in to the sandbox about a 1/3 of the way into the 1st season. After we got out, a new thread was started and it carried us through the rest of the series.

Obvs. this was back before we really started doing devoted seasonal threads for shows.

thinking a lot lately about the scene where jack goes to work for the bush administration and he walks into a room and looks up and goes "um, the ceiling appears to be leaking" and matthew broderick cheerfully responds "no. it's not. we've looked into it, and it's not."

A pack of wild dogs took over and successfully ran a ‘Wendy’s