By Curt Schleier

30 ROCK’s season premiere last week did okay in the ratings – up slightly from its 2006 debut.  But it still finished third in its time slot. So let me make something clear before it’s too late and we have to start some stupid Jericho-like publicity campaign to bring the show back:

This has got to stop.  I’m talking especially now to you Nielsen families.  If you must watch Survivor, if your week is incomplete without Ugly Betty, fine, DVR them and watch 30 ROCK live so it will register on your Nielsen meter.  We – and by we I mean Tina Fey and I – need better ratings. 

Look at this way. Get on the 30 ROCK bandwagon now, before it becomes fashionable and you have the cachet of cool.  Otherwise you’re just another sheep in the heard.  Don’t wait too long, because there is a lot going on:

Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski) is still overweight as a result of her brief Broadway run in Mystic Pizza: The Musical.  So she tries a new diet.  “I only eat paper, but I can eat all the paper I want.” 

Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) gets her an appointment with his always sympathetic physician, Dr. Spaceman.  “Your height and weight,” he tells Jenna, “puts you in the disgusting category. Have you tried crystal meth?”

Jenna is desperate.  She’s considering surgery at the same clinic where the Olson twins were separated until it turns out that the fans of TGS With Tracy Jordan, like her plump and love her new catchphrase, “Me want food.”  So chubs it is.


Meanwhile, there’s word that the head of the network, Don Geis (Rip Torn) is contemplating retirement and the race is on to replace him.  Jack’s nemesis, Devin (Will Arnett), who is gay, gets engaged to Don’s ugly daughter Cathy and tells Jack he’s “Not gay anymore.”

He’s become an adherent of Truth Proctacology, a cult that has sucked all the gayness out of him.  Jack has to do “something to raise my profile.” But it looks like he’s done for when Devin finds out Jack had a heart attack.  In front of Don he pushes Jack to eat red meat, drink plenty of booze and play a vigorous game of touch football. 

Meanwhile, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) feels guilty about all the times he cheated on his estranged wife, Angie.  So he assigns the NBC page Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) a task: “You go to Angie and pleasure her.”


Liz Lemon (Fey) is in the process of getting her life together, which means she no longer needs the wedding dress she bought last week in anticipation of eventually maybe meeting someone in the future perhaps.  So she folds it neatly, and uses it to stead a table with uneven legs. 

Again, I urge you to push the ratings up.  You don’t want to see my dark side.