30 ROCK: The Bubble

Alas, Dr. Drew is no more. But Jon Hamm got a solidly sneaky send-off this week, as Liz discovers her beautiful boyfriend is actually too beautiful for his own good. And hers. Even a Disney prince and potential Calvin Klein underwear model can’t overcome the handicap that is a lifetime spent inside “the bubble” (which according to Jack enables one to “free drinks, kindness, and outdoor sex”), and so the poor man sucks at nearly everything—including tennis, cooking, sex, and apparently his job. (He was a pediatrician, right? Double nards!) And while she’s tempted—as, let’s face it, who wouldn’t be?—there’s simply no way on earth Liz Lemon is going to let a loser beat her in tennis, or strap her on the back of his motorcycle/scooter for an obviously fatal trip up north. So we say Go forth, Liz Lemon, and find someone as “moderately pleasant looking” as you are. We’ll all be safer and/or happier that way.

Also, the realization (and reality) that Jack Donaghy was once a bubble boy himself? Too good for words, but they should have gone ahead and shown that laminated picture he was carrying in his pocket, because it would’ve saved the rest of us a lot of time and effort. (For some reason, the Google returns on “Alec Baldwin + shirtless” include a lot of pictures of The Hoff. So you’ve been warned.)

I also liked but didn’t quite buy Jack’s rookie blunder during Tracy’s negotiation, because if there’s one thing this guy knows how to do, it’s not show his hand—ever. But it did allow Liz to call him on a screw-up for once, even if her Jack Donaghy impersonation quickly devolved into Christian Bale’s Batman. And it let him come face-to-face with Tracy Jr., who rightly blames Jack for being packed off to school with mayonnaise and cigarettes for lunch: “I didn’t come here to hear more excuses; I came here to see the dumbest cracker in all of New York. You gotta fix this, Donaghy.” Also good was the way they’ve set up Tracy’s sons as the two sides of his personality: one casual, affable, and mute; and the other a highly charged attention hog ready to snap at any second.

The B story also put a nice spotlight on Tracy and Kenneth’s relationship, with Tracy tagging Kenneth as his Radar O’Reilly: “Now get in here and rub my feet till you hear a chopper coming.” (Please tell me that reference isn’t lost on the youngsters. Please?) Until now, though, I hadn’t realized exactly how co-dependent that relationship had become, and I love that Kenneth needs Tracy almost as much as Tracy needs him, but not quiet as much as he needs his NBC page jacket.

As for Jenna, I liked the plot in theory, but it might have been stronger if it had gone further and been motivated by something more than another rehash of her jealousy over Tracy’s popularity. I know we don’t want our characters to “evolve,” necessarily, but that beat is starting to feel stale three years in, and there are plenty of other reasons for Jenna to keep behaving like an insecure, narcissistic boob. (Like the simple fact that she’s a “celebrity” and therefore an insecure, narcissistic boob.)

A FEW FAVORITE THINGS

• The return to Plunder.

• Jenna: “Everyone gather around please: Actor Announcement.” Also, Jenna being outdressed by Miss Piggy by 84%.

• Dotcom: “Tracy’s is a tactile, kinesthetic learning style.”

• Jon Hamm in tennis whites!

• Jack: “For years I thought I spoke excellent French: Ffffghgg csdlktj gekjl.”

• Jack: “Be careful, Lemon; you wake a sleepwalker, you risk getting urinated on.”

• Jenna: “My mother’s boyfriend raised me to believe that a woman’s hair is her crowning glory.”

• NYC shout-out to the great Barney Greengrass (AKA “The Sturgeon King”), right here on the Upper West Side.

• Jenna: “Locks of Love turned me down; they said my hair was too processed for a sick person to wear.”

• Kenneth: “I guess I’m only farm strong and not heart strong.”

• Drew’s admission that life outside the bubble isn’t really worth living: “I wanna use ‘ironic’ however I want.”

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