Five Suggestions For Season 4 Of Three-Time Emmy Champ '30 Rock'

There's no arguing with some of the successes of 30 Rock: three consecutive Emmys for Outstanding Comedy Series, for one. Making Alec Baldwin and Tina Fey into the closest thing we have to bulletproof comedy stars, for another.

But as the show returns for its fourth season tonight, it faces the sense some viewers had that last season was uneven — that the guest stars were too numerous to the point of fatigue, that the dynamics among the characters were stalled, and that some of the actors were underused or, really, hardly used at all. It's still funny, and it's still smart, but there are a few things it can do in the fourth season to avoid some of the unevenness of last year, just to make sure there's not a loss of momentum.

Jenna, Josh and too many guest stars, after the jump.

 

Don't forget to be a satire about television. One of the things 30 Rock did well out of the gate was to be a television show about television that actually had something to say — not only about NBC, but about television in general. The way Jack meddled in the writers' room, bringing his executive point of view to matters like the writing of punch lines and whether or not they could just do Dilbert wasn't just a shot at a particular network. It spoke to the tension between creative people and business people, and it worked well that Liz had to manage not only Jack's evil side but also his genuine efforts to help.

By last season, very little of the show 30 Rock was about the show TGS With Tracy Jordan. There's always been coverage of everyone's personal life, but the long arc (too long for me) with Salma Hayek as Jack's girlfriend, the class reunion, Jack's dad, Liz's efforts to have a baby .. it's all fine, but the balance is off, and I missed the satire aimed at the entertainment business itself.

Jenna needs work. I think Jane Krakowski is very funny as Jenna, but I also think Jenna is easily the most weakly written character on the show. You really never know what's going to come out of the mouths of anybody else, but with Jenna, it's going to be "petty and desperate for attention" pretty much every time, in every situation. It's also reaching a point where Jenna is so consistently pushed aside (in order to allow her to play petty and desperate) that she actually seems to have little value to the show (to TGS, I am saying), making it hard to understand why she's still there. She's the character I'd most like to see in some kind of different situation — having a successful movie, or a great boyfriend, or something you don't expect from the note she's been playing pretty consistently for quite a while.

Easy on the guests. This has been mentioned by lots of commentators, so I won't belabor it, but the guest stars last season were too much. Jon Hamm appeared in three episodes and was used effectively only in the last one; the Oprah episode was a throwaway; the effort to make Jennifer Aniston play against type didn't really work. It's hard not to keep capitalizing on the show's ability to generate Guest Actor/Actress Emmy nominations, but some restraint is in order.

Use everybody. It's a very crowded cast for a half-hour comedy, and when you're trying to spotlight arguably five main characters (Liz, Jack, Tracy, Jenna and Kenneth) before you even get to people like Frank, Josh, and Lutz, it's an uphill battle. But Josh, in particular, just about vanished last season. It's a big cast, but it's worth it to try to fit everybody in a little bit better, I think.

Don't write "yada yada." By the time Seinfeld delivered its "Yada Yada" episode late in the eighth season, it was transparently laboring to create pop-culture catch phrases, much as Sex And The City eventually did. It's great to write funny lines, and repeatability is divine, but one of the biggest fears I have about 30 Rock is that it's going to become line-driven rather than character-driven. Don't get me wrong — I am a proud and stubborn line-repeater when it comes to my favorite comedies. (Tracy's "Live every week like it's Shark Week" comes in handy all the time.) But the best comedies are still written to mix one-liners with comedy from characters, and 30 Rock will serve its audience best if it's able to maintain that blend.