(As seen in the current issue of TV Guide Magazine)
Three for three in the best-comedy Emmy race, can
30 Rock do it again? Given how many jokes are fired off successfully in the opening episodes of Season 4 (which itself becomes a self-aware punchline, and is the name of this week’s fourth-season opener), I wouldn’t count it out.
As the perpetually harried Liz Lemon,
Tina Fey oversees a twisted world of chaotic satire that spares no one, especially NBC (that means you, Jay Leno) and GE.
30 Rock delights in skewering the insecure egos of showbiz ninnies while lampooning the cutthroat bluster of capitalist giants like Liz’s inscrutable boss, Jack Donaghy (
Alec Baldwin)—who once again confronts his arrogant nemesis, Devin Banks (
Will Arnett), in next week’s episode. Which is reason enough to watch.
The new season opens with Liz ordered to find new talent to broaden her show’s appeal to the heartland. “We’ll trick those race-car lovin’ wide loads into watching your lefty homoerotic propaganda hour yet,” crows Jack. Good luck with that.
While an industry darling,
30 Rock has never been what you’d call a mainstream hit. That’s unlikely to change.
Good for
30 Rock.
Addendum: After initially writing those words a little more than a week ago, I now find myself wondering if the Emmy voters might not have a new media darling on their hands this season with ABC’s getting-better-by-the-week
Modern Family, which hit another home run Wednesday. This is the most seriously funny competition
30 Rock has faced since it won over the industry three years ago with its wacky, cynical show-biz insider’s anarchy. Not that
30 Rock is slipping, but the show by its very nature is wildly uneven, and when you get past Liz and Jack, Kenneth and sometimes Tracy, the comedy can be (to put it mildly) spotty.
Modern Family may come from a more traditional place, though with an unconventional realism, but it has so many characters that instantly jump off the screen, so well developed and well defined and well played—and, thankfully, very funny—that it already feels like more of a full-course comedy meal. Both shows are modern classics of very different sorts, but my gut tells me that if
Modern Family keeps up the quality—and why doubt it?—we may have a new front runner in the comedy sweepstakes for a while to come.
The good news in all of this is that the new season is on a comedy high, with strong performers on all the networks, now that ABC is finally back in the game in a big way. I for one couldn’t be happier.