30 ROCK: Apollo, Apollo

“Hello, Dummy.” And with those two little words, my heart leaps. Think it’s a coincidence that this is the first undeniable A+ episode of the season? No way. Dean Winters’ Beeper King is the one guest star we simply cannot get enough of, at least once a year. But it wasn’t only Dennis Duffy’s return that vaulted this episode into the stratosphere; it was Tracy’s spaceman dream tying into Jack’s lost childhood tying into Liz’s softcore phone line past tying into her forgiveness for Jenna’s betrayal and vice versa. Because there is beauty, and then there is 30 ROCK beauty, and my friends, this was 30 ROCK BEAUTIFUL.

Dennis has always been Liz’s Achilles’ heel, the one boyfriend—unloved, unwanted—who keeps showing up again and again, this time to atone for his Web MD self-diagnosed sex addiction: “Former Sex Partner, I’m sorry that my disease has made you a victim of my sexual charisma. I’m sorry that I’ve ruined you for other men.” Doubtful, but still, it’s too bad he’s making the same apology to Jenna via Liz, who answers Jenna’s phone while Jenna is flying high on a Peter Pan rig. And that he would be the one boyfriend of Liz’s that Jenna would choose to sleep with confirms everything we already know about the Beeper King and our favorite oblivious C-grade celebrité; i.e., boobs galore. At the same time, their hookup neatly confirms the order of Liz’s priorities: it’s not the fact that they had sex together that bothers Liz the most, it’s the fact that they had sex in her bed, which is where she sometimes eats.

Jack’s 50th birthday also leads to all kinds of truly great goodness, as he realizes the only thing he left off his childhood dream list was the ability to retain a child’s sense of wonder, which in turn is the only thing Tracy and Kenneth both excel at. Kenneth does it magically, via a Muppets scrim (that wordless, harried, galumphing Liz Lemon Muppet may just be the most brilliant thing we’ve ever seen here), and Tracy does it by seeing his life as one big adventure/fantasy/scifi/action film, in which everything is possible and Tracy Jordan plays all the parts.

These stories wouldn’t have worked nearly as well as they did, though, without also plucking at the ol’ heartstrings—seeing the joy of Tracy’s “flight” connecting with Kenneth’s delight in the default gift of his new space toy, and the return of Jack’s long-lost happy puke coming through the sad glory that was Liz’s short-lived, apparently very hairy acting career. All that, plus Tracy lizzing in his spacesuit and a special, disastrous, Grizz-arranged Adam West birthday appearance? 30 ROCK BEAUTIFUL.

A FEW MORE FAVORITE THINGS

• Dennis’s latest business venture: a coffee vending machine in the basement of the Kmart at 38th and 6th. His deluded outrage over Hurricane Katrina: “What those people were doing to the Superdome!”

• Tracy’s press conference: “If you have a spaceship and are looking for a hilarious astronaut with an irregular heartbeat and thirty million dollars, I am prepared to leave as soon as tomorrow.”

• Jack: “I have a Google news alert for ‘Tracy Jordan ridiculous disaster.’”

• Colleen’s birthday card to Jack: “Jackie, here is some of your junk, it was taking up the space my new boyfriend needed for his golf bags. His name is Paul, and he doesn’t want to meet you.”

• Griswold Talent Management, Representing Excellence.

• Liz peeing on herself at the sight of Lutz getting sucked into the shredder: “Lizzing is a combination of laughing and whizzing.”

• Jenna flying on the set: “Oh my god, why are there so many dead doves up here?”

• Tracy: “What is this, Horseville? ‘Cuz I am surrounded by naysayers! Wordplay.”

• Jenna losing her virginity to the “My Fair Lady” soundtrack, and thus retaining certain British inflections in her speech.

• Jack: “The closest I came to vomiting tonight was when I saw Ann Coulter’s shoulder blades.”

• Tracy, blindfolded, doing pushups in the hallway: “At least it’s a dry heat here in Florida.”

• Jenna: “You’re no longer my Plus One to the Canadian Grammys.”

• Jack seeing price tags on everything, with a grinning Kenneth tagged at $7.

• The solid gold of Liz’s crappy phone sex commercial: “Call us, in English, German, or Polish” at 1-900-OKFACE (Frank: “That’s not even enough numbers!”), her hair/teeth/eyebrows, her sexy pizza feeding/chewing/drooling, her catlike crawling, her tug of war, the fact that her name was Bijou.

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