30 Rock: Season 1

Review By: Michael Dance
MichaelDance@TheCinemaSource.com

What's with brilliant NBC comedies having terrible pilots? The first episode of the American Office was a line-for-line remake of the British version, and the results were pathetic. Then the show found its footing, Steve Carell blew up, everybody fell in love with Jim and Pam, and suddenly it was a big hit.

A similar thing happened with 30 Rock. No, it isn't based on a BBC show, but the pilot episode of Tina Fey's single-camera sitcom is less than encouraging. There's awkward acting, bad jokes, and what seemed like a limited, insider-y concept: Fey stars as Liz Lemon, the head writer of a late-night sketch show for women, who faces a nightmare when her new boss (Alec Baldwin) hires an insane black comic (Tracy Morgan) to give the show male appeal.

And then, what do you know? The show got really funny. Baldwin's character, Jack Donaghy, became less of a blowhard and more of Liz's Republican, backhanded-complimenting mentor. The humor became irreverent and consistently made me laugh out loud – everything from the constant cheerfulness of Kenneth the Page (Jack McBrayer) to the absurdity of the guest stars, such as Paul Reuben's turn as a prepubescent-sounding foreign prince with a tiny, creepy baby hand. And Liz, who's always looking for love but often only finds third cousins and gay men, became lovable herself.

Strange how it happened so quickly, too. By the third episode, "The Blind Date" – in which Jack sets Liz up on a date with a female (Stephanie March) after assuming she's gay – 30 Rock had firmly found its footing. And the seventh episode, "Tracy Does Conan," is the season's frenetic, screwball-comedy high point. Morgan's character, Tracy Jordan, forgets to take his crazy pills before an appearance on Conan O'Brien, which sparks a mad rush to get him his pills to stop him from stabbing Conan...like he did the last time he was a guest. (And yeah, O'Brien does appear as himself – and in typical throwaway-joke fashion, we learn he once had an affair with Liz.)

The episodes are mostly stand-alone, although there's the typical lead-up to the season finale in which Liz's new boyfriend (Jason Sudeikis) gets a job in Cleveland, Tracy has to flee New York from a secret group called the Black Crusaders, and Jack gets engaged Phoebe, a possibly treacherous woman played by Emily Mortimer. (Phoebe: "You know how John Lennon was better than the rest of the Beatles but didn't realize it until he met Yoko Ono? Well, I'm Jack's Yoko." Liz: "You want to be Yoko?")

There are a few flaws. The show hasn't really found a good way to work in Scott Adsit's character Pete; he's supposed to be Liz's best friend, but all her time is taken up between Jack, Tracy, and the sketch show's prima donna star Jenna (Jane Krakowski). And speaking of which, Jenna is painfully ...