30 Rock Recap:

Brian is back with this week’s 30 Rock recap.  If you weren’t sure if it was me writing it or Brian, a good clue would be the first sentence: “The Mets deep October run is destroying my TV-watching schedule”..yeah, you’re not really going to hear that coming from a diehard Sox fan.  Anyway…thanks Bri for taking on 30 Rock on the with recap. If you missed last night’s show (and forgot to TiVo is like I did, you can watch it online at NBC.com)
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The Mets deep October run is destroying my TV-watching schedule and several good nights’ sleep. So thank goodness for DVR for enabling me to bring you this, the second weekly recap of what has a good shot of becoming one of my favorite shows.

I was looking for bigger and better things from the second episode of 30 Rock, NBC’s other SNL-type show, and I was not disappointed. With lots of groundwork to lay, and months and months of hype to live up to, the show had its work cut out for it in the series premiere. The result was a mediocre launch to one of the more promising comedies to come down the pike in a while. But solid casting and good writing will always save the day (unless you’re too smart for your audience, a la Arrested Development.)

Well, Tracey Jordan is now a staple of The Girlie Show, our show-within-the-show, and head writer Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is none too happy about it, though we get the feeling she’s got a bigger beef with having her leadership usurped by corporate dolt Jack Donaghy (the so-far hilarious Alec Baldwin).

Donaghy:Movie stars move at their own pace, Liz. We have to accommodate them.
Liz: Yeah, well. A lot of people are still upset about Tracey joining the show.
Donaghy:Well that’s not my problem. I have other things on my plate. Did you hear about that chemical factory explosion outside of Colorado Springs?
Liz:No.
Donaghy:Good

Liz would like to play down Tracey’s addition to the show. Donaghy wants to play it up, big-time, even having the Solid Gold dancers greet him in the studio – and inadvertently greeting everyone else who arrives before him. I don’t plan to quote the entire show, but some of the funniest exchanges come before the first break, like when Donaghy greets Tracey on the set.

Donaghy:Listen, Tracey, if there’s anything you need, anything, you come to me.
Tracey: Come on, (inaudible), you know I’m the kid. I’m easy like Sunday morning. (turning to a crew member) Don’t look at me. Do not look at me in the eyes.
Donaghy: (announcing) Do not look at Mr. Jordan. Do not look at him in the eyes. (to the offending crew member) Just look away. Look away.

Liz sets about trying to do damage control, assuaging the bruised ego of The Girlie Show’s erstwhile starlet Jenna (Jane Krakowski), Harvard grad writer Toofer (Keith Powell) and everyone else on whose toes Tracey has stepped.

Almost immediately it’s established Pete (Scott Asdit) is back, which is kind of strange. His axing became last week’s plot-turner. Now he’s just back, which is great because he’s a funny character and a good comic straight man in a show that could use it. His nervous, rambling exchange with Donaghy gets the issue out of the way and illustrates this point as he sets up Baldwin’s deadpan “Relax your balls, Pete.”

Can they say that on TV?

The buzz on this show was that it was the SNL concept show with an actual SNL head writer in the lead role. This was supposed to be Tina Fey’s stepping out, and it is. But in an interestingly existential parallel to the show-within-the-show, 30 Rock is quickly becoming the Tracey Morgan Show. I’m not saying that’s a bad thing. Every line he delivers of hilarious, pointed, perfectly timed and always unexpected. His scenes with Baldwin are pure gold.

Laying down the law with the writers, Tracey doles out skit ideas (“I’ve got another character named Ching Chong who loves to play Ping Pong. I just made that up now.”), but not hearing any they throw back at him. Meanwhile, Jenna is in panic mode. She’s freaking out, and she looks to Liz to make everything right. No sooner does Liz assure Jenna she’ll take care of everything we find out Donaghy has renamed The Girlie Show. It’s now TGS with Tracey Jordan.

It’s a minor plot point, but the interplay between Tracey and Toofer, so named we learn because he’s black and he went to Harvard, is great.

Tracey:So how you doing over there Theo Huxtable?
Toofer: I’m doing good.
Tracey: Nuh uh. Superman does good. You’re doing well. You need to study your grammar son.
Frank:Wow, that was embarrassing for you.

Jenna’s faith in Liz is deteriorating. Filming promos for the revamped show, Tracey can’t even remember her name. Tracey’s promo line is hilarious, even though it’s hard to imagine a line as honest and direct as “I’m bringing the black back to NBC.” Give the network credit. At least they don’t use fake call letters like NBS.

This is where Liz digs her own grave. While counseling Jenna, she rips the writing staff, the actors and her boss, which would be fine if Jenna wasn’t mic’d. This plot device worked great for a scene in The Naked Gun, by the way. Fey goes one better on Leslie Nielsen, though.

Liz: I’m just trying to calm Jenna down because she’s paranoid and neurotic, and you’re being here is just bringing out all of her crazy. And please don’t think that everyone hates you. Pete thinks that everybody’s an idiot, especially Frank, who is an idiot. Josh is just afraid that you’re going to get more screen time than him. And Toofer’s just afraid of black people.
Tracey:Which one is Toofer?
Liz: The black guy.
Tracey: Oh.
Liz: My point is, don’t worry about them. You are the only person that the network cares about.

Naturally, she says all this in front of a camera for the cast and crew to see. Justifiably, they respond by throwing things at her, like a computer monitor.

If you were watching closely, by the way, there’s a quick shot of the writers rewatching a clip from last week’s show on YouTube, with which NBC has a much-touted partnership agreement. Meanwhile, the ad for GE’s Trivection Oven, which seemed made up when Donaghy talked it up in the premiere, airs in the second commercial break again. Sheesh on both counts.

By this point, everyone hates Liz, Donaghy is making her “swim in the deep end” and she has the writers’ lunch in her hair. In what may be a recurring theme, this is the part where Tracey saves the day. He offers to throw a party on his yacht to soothe over all the hurt feelings, and everyone is impressed and proceeds to bond with one another.

If you were paying attention, you noticed that Tracey didn’t know what his boat’s Latin name means, and he boasts of taking it to Denver – landlocked, Rocky Mountain Denver. Krakowski shows her chops with an a capella rendition of William Joel’s New York State of Mind, a scene that made me feel old. And we get our weekly glimpse of Rachel Dratch, this time as a frightened maid, hiding in a closet and revealing to Liz that this in fact is not Tracey’s yacht at all.

Sorry Jane, but why isn’t Dratch in a lead role?

The end result is that Donaghy buys the press’s silence on the yacht-stealing incident by offering free jet rides and a Page Six-type layout of Jenna in a Lohan-esque compromising position, which does wonders for her career and outlook.

I wanted more after last week’s at-times mediocre debut – more funny, more plot and more of a sense that this cast of strong, disparate and talented comic performers could jell. Well, episode two was a big leap forward. Kind of like The Office, the cast of 30 Rock is huge but deep. There’s no padding here. I really think this show is going to be a winner now. They’ve got a high-wire to walk, keeping any one of these gigantic personalities from overpowering the show.

But in Fey, they’ve got the brains at the helm to make that happen.