TVSquad

(S03E18) As longtime readers of these reviews know, I like to list a lot of lines from each episode of 30 Rock. Each episode of the show has a ton of great one-liners and jokes, but there are so many that sometimes I feel like I should forget writing a traditional review and just print a damn transcript of the entire episode. It's seems like that's what I'm on the edge of doing every week anyway.

But there's more to the show than just rapid-fire comedy.

I like to try to figure out what each title of 30 Rock means. Sometimes they're pretty straightforward (like last week's "Cutbacks"), and sometimes they're hard to guess, like tonight's episode. I wouldn't have guessed that it was the new title of Jenna's Janis Joplin flick, because Sheinhardt Wig/Universal couldn't get the rights to ... well, anything from her life, including song titles and places that she played, like Woodstock.

It's really great to see the show carrying over two plots from previous episodes: the Joplin movie and Liz's sexual harassment troubles. It would be easy, I guess, for a show as creative as this one to just rip and burn and trash all previous plots and just go for new plots and jokes jokes jokes. The jokes jokes jokes are there, of course, but there's an interesting continuity to this NBC/TGS universe too.

And as I've said before, there's a heart too. This isn't just an ironic, surreal show going for the clever; the characters matter too. You get the sense that Jack really does care about Liz and tries to help her with her weekly problems (and he was right again this week). And you can't help but smile when Liz realizes that she needs to get back to the craziness at the studio because, well, this is her family and her life. Call me sentimental, but I think that stuff is just as important as the wacky/funny.

Oh, and Liz Lemon as one of the Real Housewives of New York City? Scary.

And now, even though I mentioned at the start that I always list too many quotes, here are many quotes:

- "It's pronounced "Weiner Slave." - sexual harassment seminar host Jeff, to Liz, who pronounced it "Winerslaave."

- "You're holding that upside down." - Jack, to Jenna, who thought she scored 100

- "Fine, I'll set aside my feud with Raven Symone for one day. But she knows what she did." - Jenna

- "Lemon, you know you're supposed to go home after your pervert seminars." - Jack

- "Before I go, can I at least know what Frank's hat says?" - Liz, to Jack

- "I don't have to read it. It's loosely based on an evening I had with Isaiah Thomas." - Tracy, about the sexual harassment manual

- "Miss Vieira made me throw it away and said that pretty boys like me shouldn't be filling my head with ideas." - Kenneth

- "I don't know if this is sexual harassment or not, but someone on the Today Show made me eat an unripe banana in front of her." - Kenneth

- "I've never missed a show, even that time that I had that virus they said only raccoons get." - Liz

- "Right now I should be standing in a bathroom stall eating lunch. Oh, I miss it!" - Liz

- "I am not your immediate supervisor, Kenneth. There are perhaps ... 40 people between us." - Jack, to Kenneth

- "He has a ridge on the section of the skull that suggests deviousness." - Kenneth, about Pete

- "Or marry an old rich guy who dies. Clive, I want to say?" - Liz's new lady friend

- "I'm prepared to do a nipple slip if you need one." - Jenna, at The Kid's Choice Awards

- "Mr. Slattery hurt me, and now I'm hurting him. He'll never get mustard. Except the mustard that came with his sandwich." - Kenneth, to Dot Com

- "You can't give up now. Did Jackie Jormp-Jomp give up when those vampires attacked Woodstocks?" - Jack, to Jenna

- "Fine, but I have to pee first." - Jenna, to Jack, who said he wanted TuPac her

- "Good God, what Indigo Girls album is that from?" - Jack, to Liz, who said she was on "humanity leave"

- "Honesty and trust is very important in an entourage. Like that HBO show, John Adams." - Tracy

- "Usually this is the point in my process where Liz Lemon steps in and takes care everything. Heavy is the head that eats the crayons. I'm gonna take a nap. See you in ten hours." - Tracy

- "I used to be a neurosurgeon before I wrote that cookbook with Jasmine Guy." - housewife, to Liz

- "Oh man, this is so disappointing!" - Liz, finding out her housewives group is really a fight club

- "What did it turn out to be, lesbians?" - Jack, to Liz about her group

- "How do you know all these Indigo Girls songs?" - Liz, to Jack