Quick Thoughts: 30 ROCK, "TGS Hates Women"

For the first time since I started watching regularly, I didn't really care for tonight's 30 Rock. There were definitely moments that made me laugh out loud, but only half of the episode worked since there was only two main plotlines.

Jack's plan to set himself up as the successor of Kabletown/NBC made the episode tolerable mostly because it gave Alec Baldwin the chance to really shine. Seeing him reminisce about his boyhood dream of being an oceanographer was a nice change of pace, and it was even better when it was revealed that Kaylie was just playing him, and their verbal showdown was too good. Speaking of Kaylie, Chloe Moretz was impressive, but that shouldn't be surprising to those who have seen her previous work. Unfortunately, there were some moments that were too silly even by this show's standard (Jack's sea shanty and the old guy making dolphin sounds), but even they were funnier than Liz's story.

Maybe it's because I'm a guy, but I did not understand how Liz's feminist storyline was supposed to be funny. I guess the fact that Liz was called out for being a hypocrite could have worked if everything else didn't flop. Also, that annoying Abbey character wore out her welcome way too soon. I got that she was supposed to be a overblown caricature of the schoolgirl fantasy, but the point of having her around was negated by the fact that I wanted to throw something at my TV every time she came on. Then again, maybe that's what the show was going for. Regardless, the whole femolution plot felt under developed, and was only successful at setting Jack up for some killer jokes.

"TGS Hates Women" was still able to make me laugh, but not as much as past episodes. 30 Rock seems to have hit a rough patch over the last couple of weeks, and I hope it's only a temporary blip instead of a downward trend. I'd hate for another great show to start sucking after I became a regular viewer.

NOTE: Apparently, there's this whole jezebel.com controversy that was being addressed by this episode. Since I wasn't aware of what was going on in the blogosphere, that's probably why most of last night's episode was over my head. I may have liked "TGS Hates Women" more if I had known, but that's doubtful.