30 ROCK: Gavin Volure

What the what? I thought it was “Velour.” Anyway, the best thing I can say about “Gavin Volure” is that it made last week’s “Night Court” episode look ten times better, and is still the funniest show I’ve seen since then.

But by all degrees of 30 ROCK, this one felt forgettable and sounded suspiciously packed with writers’ room lines. This isn’t typically a problem, or even noticeable since the actors are so adept at spinning gold into even better gold, but tonight some of the dialogue rang loud and false (that Bruce Willis/rock harmonica bit springs to mind). Or we can blame it on my ears, because I feel ungracious for complaining about the quality of this show, which is a small oasis of brilliant in the middle of network TV’s ever-expanding desert of crap.

On the surface, Steve Martin’s agoraphobic and cripplingly wealthy Gavin Volure seemed like the perfect man for our girl Liz, that hater of dating, nodding, smiling, and sibling listing. Alas, her joy (which was mostly relief) in finally finding a man who might share her dream of living as a sexless emotional and physical shut-in was fleeting, as Volure soon outed himself as a tax-evading house prisoner/arsonist who longed to bust free and whisk her away to Canada. But hey, it’s love, right? Lemon-style.

Things got extra snarled as Jack’s investment in Gavin’s nonexistent but can’t-miss wind power/bandwidth/Chinese market scheme unraveled, wiping out Kenneth’s non-Confederate life savings in the process. Thank god Tracy’s life-sized Japanese sex doll was there to save the day, simply by being inanimate.

Actually, I preferred the B story altogether, which had Tracy convinced that his sons were trying to kill him for his new porn video game/sex doll money. The alarm on his face after he flipped over a photo of his adorably innocent tots, only to reveal another photo of them tucked behind it, made me laugh out loud all ten of the ten times I rewound it. Ditto his fluctuating pronunciation of “Menendez” and late-night kitchen entry, where he was greeted by his sons in murderous hockey masks. And his scream of “Stop patriciding!” at the end, as he was being whaled on by a tween with a table lamp? Priceless.

A FEW FAVORITE THINGS

Liz, digging into a bowl of something at the dinner table: “Is this potpourri or chips? ‘Cuz I’m gonna try to eat it.” And then going back for more after discovering it’s not chips.

Dinner party tips: John McEnroe can shout about art any time, but you do not want to be from the world of society.

Kenneth: “Money is the root of all evil.”

Tracy: “I thought that was just a tagline from my movie, ‘Death Bank.’ ”

Gavin: “I’ll send a helicopter to take you to the train station.”

Kenneth, on having to send money back to home: “After years of inbreeding, the pigs are getting violent, and the pig shield around the house has worn thin.”

Jack: “Gavin is a fabulous guy. If I were dating a man, he would be at the top of my list, with Michael Jordan, Denzel Washington, Taye Diggs…. God, do I have a black thing?”

Gavin: “One of these benches is a priceless work of art and the other is an ordinary bench from which to admire it.”

Jack to Kenneth: “Next stop, home ownership! I’m just kidding, the middle class is dying. You’ll be renting forever.”

The quick flashback of Kenneth street-performing to the sweet strains of Axel F.

Yay for the return of big-headed Pete! And the shrewd wheeling-dealing he worked out with Jack for a 12 cent-per-mile gas per diem, apropos of nothing.

Kenneth, touchingly naïve and eternally misguided: “What would this country be if our economy didn’t allow wealthy people to take advantage of rubes?”

Tracy: “There’s nothing to be freaked out about! That’s just a Japanese sex doll in daddy’s bed!”

That’s it for me; what did you think?

— posted by Kari

Kari is a 30 ROCK fanatic and will be taking it out on you, her new imaginary friends.