The Good: Some truly great lines, Very funny, Decent acting, Good DVD bonus features.
The Bad: Plots and character elements tend to be more familiar than audacious.
The Basics: 30 Rock has a somewhat tumultuous fifth season that works hard to restore the characters to pretty much who we know them to be.
I have been told that I am overly hard on 30 Rock. It has taken me quite a while to get in the fifth season DVD set of 30 Rock, but once I managed to get it in, I truly did rocket through the entire season. In its fifth season, 30 Rock struck me as a very odd conundrum. Characters that I liked before, I no longer care about (most notably Kenneth) and some of the funniest performers on the show seemed bored with the work themselves (Tracy Morgan seems “done” with Tracy Jordan for portions of the season and in the later arc where Jordan is off “in Africa,” I discovered I did not miss his presence). Conversely, I found myself quoting and sharing more lines from the fifth season of 30 Rock than I had shared from most of the prior seasons.
The result is that on DVD, the fifth season of 30 Rock is worthwhile and possibly more interesting to those who have had it with some of the prior seasons. 30 Rock sees both a continuation and a rebirth of the show, though the serialized elements ultimately work very hard to restore more familiar patterns for the characters, than actually allow them to grow. So, for example, it does not take long to restore Kenneth to the NBC Page Program or for Liz Lemon to find herself single, though Jack helps her get through some serious psychological issues that have been holding her relationships back.
In its fifth season, the fictionalized version of NBC on 30 Rock is in the process of being bought out by the family-friendly KableTown. This sets off a series of personal and professional crises for most of the members of the show T.G.S. With Tracy Jordan. In the fifth season of 30 Rock, the main arcs include: Liz and the pilot Carol having a relationship, Jack negotiating his new relationship with Avery whom he has gotten pregnant, Kenneth working his way back into the NBC Page Program, and Tracy Jordan discovering life with actual critical acclaim when his film Hard To Watch makes him an Indie movie star.
The problem is, too many of the plot arcs get resolved easily and leave the characters essentially lost. For example, Kenneth makes it back into the NBC Page Program and after that is a virtual nonentity for the remainder of the season. In fact, between Kenneth acting as a sidekick to Jenna when she grifts the local Carvel and him acting as a sidekick to Liz Lemon to try to find Tracy at the end of the season, it is virtually impossible to recall anything Kenneth does in the fifth season of 30 Rock. He references Hill People attacks and that’s a joke that has been done to death on the show by now.
In a similar fashion, Liz Lemon’s relationship with Carol predictably deteriorates. This seems far more a function of plot than actual character. In addition to having a great sense of compatibility, while Liz is dating Carol, Jack helps her discover the root causes of some of her most severe dysfunctions, most significantly, the root cause of her distaste for sexuality. So, when the relationship collapses, it feels much more like the function of having brought on a guest star for whom television is not where he wants to be (in this case, Matt Damon) and the need to get Liz back to a single status. As a viewer who actually cares about the characters, this becomes incredibly disheartening to watch.
In a similar way, Jack’s relationship with Avery has remarkably few consequences for the character. Jack has one issue with negotiating with the nanny, but the presence of Liddy in his life does not really impact him otherwise. Some of Jack’s most time-consuming issues actually come up after Liddy is born and Jack and Avery are married, like the pre-taped Disaster Relief Special and the massive contrivance he orchestrates to get Liz to have a one night stand! So, the characters in 30 Rock Season 5 tend to be changing back to the familiar, far more than growing this season.
Many of the secondary characters in the fifth season of 30 Rock feel truly secondary. The only memorable contribution Cerie has in the entire season is mentioning to Liz how she gets rid of creepy men at nightclubs! “Toofer” might get a first and last name, but his peak is early as part of a conflict Jack Donaghy has with a Congresswoman who is fighting the KableTown merger. Even Frank is given astonishingly little.
That said, 30 Rock Season 5 uses Scott Adsit pretty well. As Pete Hornberger, the beleaguered producer on T.G.S, Adsit is able to portray a much more quiet zany quality than Tracy Morgan’s Tracy Jordan. Adsit plays Pete as earnest and gets away with some of the creepiest lines of the series in season five simply through the remarkably way he presents them.
But not all of the attempts that 30 Rock makes in its fifth season actually work. Sure, the live episode (and the DVD features both the East and West Coast versions of the episode that originally aired live on NBC) is clever and fun, but after Tracy Jordan disappears, his wife Angie gets her own reality television show. A whole episode of 30 Rock is mired in presenting the Queen Of Jordan reality show and it just falls flat.
On DVD, 30 Rock season five is loaded with a decent number of bonus features. In addition to the West Coast Version of “Live Show,” the fifth season DVD set of 30 Rock has decent commentary tracks, deleted scenes, a featurette on the making of “Live Show,” a standalone version of Jenna’s obituary song and the animated Jack Donaghy spots. These add up to enough value to make it worth picking up the boxed set, as opposed to just waiting for these 22 episodes to hit regular rounds in syndication.
For other seasons of 30 Rock, be sure to check out my reviews of:
Season 1
Season 2
Season 3
Season 4
7/10
For other television reviews, be sure to visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing of all the television shows I have reviewed!
© 2012 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
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