30 Rock

Max Silvestri traverses the foreign terrain of Twilight , using the Magellans of our modern age, YouTube internet commentators, as his only guide. 30 Rock show-runner Robert Carlock talks about Liz and Jack's non-existent romance, "…I don't think that's what either of them is looking for. They'll both find somebody eventually. He'll give her away at her wedding."  

 

This was the strongest overall Thursday this season for NBC's comedies, and "Sun Tea" brought the evening to a fine close. Not all of it worked, but enough of it did (in that usual "30 Rock" power hitter way) that I was left happy. Hell, if the episode had been 21 minutes of dead air and just the 10 seconds of Kathy Geiss using Teddy Ruxpin in a suit as her lawyer, I would have given "Sun Tea" my stamp of approval.  

Once again, here's a highly selective critical rundown of shows and headlines that stood out during another packed sweeps week. Classic Bizarro Jerry : Whetting our appetite for this Sunday's Curb Your Enthusiasm finale, the penultimate episode set amid the table-read and rehearsal for the faux Seinfeld reunion was a terrific curtain raiser. It lifted the curtain on you-are-there backstage shenanigans that played, like the best of this season, as a mix of caustic Curb farce flavored by Seinfeld nostalgi  

Alter Eco star Adrian Grenier and producer Peter Glatzer were put in charge of choosing items for Wired's Go Green category, and came up with a variety of eye-catching environmental gifts, from a lounge chair made from Boeing 727 exit doors to chocolate-covered nuts and from glassware made of upcycled bottles to a solar-powered floor lamp. The store is open in New York City's Meatpacking District Wednesday through Sunday (except Thanksgiving and Christmas Day) from November 21-December 27. NBC's third G  

From his portrayal of a stereotypical South Asian on a teenage sitcom to his experience as a character on "30 Rock," actor and Northwestern alumnus Maulik Pancholy has certainly seen the roles of South Asians in the entertainment industry evolve over time. Pancholy, Communication '95, spoke to about 150 students in Leverone Hall Thursday about his acting career, as part of the South Asian Student Association's annual fall speaker event. SASA Co-president Jaspreet Banga said Pancholy was one of the best  

We haven't seen as many 30 Rock quotes on Facebook this morning as we're used to (and we couldn't bring ourselves to select "like" for "It's no rules, like check-in at an Italian airport"), because instead of one-liners, this episode was chockablock with great mini-sketches, gags, and flights of fancy. (And yes, we say this partly as a ploy to get you to list your favorite lines.) Most significant of these, of course, is the Cosby sequence, where general anesthesia causes Tracy to dream of himself and his  

30 Rock has been on such a roll lately that it was bound to hit a bump, and it ran into a proverbial boulder this week. I can usually tell how good an episode is based on how many times I have to rewind my DVR to transcribe one of the show's brilliant punchlines. Suffice it to say I watched the latest episode, "Sun Tea," in real time.  

Shows must hate being on NBC. It's not enough that nobody actually watches the shows on NBC, but then the bigwigs force their programs into these silly theme weeks. A month ago, all their shows were about volunteering, and this week they featured stories about going green.