30 Rock Review

30 Rock is built on volume. It fires jokes at a rate no other broadcast comedy attempts, layering cutaways, running gags and background signage until a single viewing cannot catch everything, and critics rewarded it with three straight Outstanding Comedy Series wins while almost nobody watched. Tina Fey writes Liz Lemon as a competent woman surrounded by children and then refuses to let her be the sane one, which is the choice that keeps the show honest.

Alec Baldwin does the best work of his career as Jack Donaghy, a General Electric executive who sincerely believes capitalism is a moral system, and the Jack and Liz scenes are the spine of the run. Tracy Morgan and Jane Krakowski are handed characters written as pure appetite and make them human almost by accident. The weaknesses follow from the strengths. Story barely exists, arcs start and evaporate inside three episodes, and the fourth and fifth seasons run on formula while the joke engine idles.

The satire of NBC softens into affection once the network stops mattering. Visually it is standard single camera coverage with no ambition beyond staying out of the way, which is the correct call for material this dense. What it offers instead is a script that still pays on a fourth rewatch, and almost nothing else made for a broadcast network can claim that.