I have often believed that 30 Rock was the best of the NBC comedy line-up, offering up clever pastiches with smartly written scripts. Despite seeing lower ratings than usual, the current season has been upping the level of ridiculous from week to week, including breakdowns at IKEA and Denise Richards leading a coalition of idiots.
In this week’s episode, Jack is mugged and Liz finds herself a victim of her own strict rule-based way of life, and the show quickly devolves as Liz finds a way to subvert the system by wallowing in filth and pretending to be insane while Jack decides he is the champion that New York needs.
The result of which was Liz Lemon’s crazy old lady make-up and Jack Donaghy hanging by prop gargoyles and contemplating for a brilliant yet subtle homage to The Dark Knight, which becomes more overt by the time the episode reaches its climax and musical cues (and Will Forte running off naked) make it very clear what the 30 Rock writers and producers are going for.
Either way, Tina Fey was one “Why so serious, Jack?” away from winning my heart forever.
