TVSquad

Tina Fey is on a roll right now. She just won another Emmy for 30 Rock (and the show won for Best Comedy), she's getting rave reviews for her impersonation of Governor Sarah Palin on Saturday Night Live, and she might even get a great deal on a new Florida condo from acclaimed director Martin Scorcese. She really has to learn how to hide her awards though.

On Tuesday's Late Night with Conan O'Brien, New Adventures of Old Christine star Julia Louis-Dreyfus was talking about losing out to Fey for the Best Comedy Actress Emmy and came up with the idea (with Conan's pushing) to go up to Fey's dressing room to steal the award (and this after Fey said some nice things about her at the Emmy ceremony!). It's clearly pre-staged, but still funny, and we get cameos from not one but two stars from 30 Rock.

Oh, and the Emmy isn't the only thing Conan takes from Fey's dressing room...video after the jump! How do women run in heels anyway?

After many years, NBC has finally updated the suits that their pages wear to guide visitors around the NBC studios. But you know what? I like the old ones.

Take a look at the new suits on the right. Sure, they're Brook Brothers and they're sophisticated, but they just look like regular suits. There's nothing that stands out about them. It's as if people put on regular nice suits and then added some pins and badges to them. Doesn't look right, in the same way you sometimes see guys wearing three piece suits with a baseball cap.

Now after the jump, take a look at the one Kenneth wears on 30 Rock.

Here come two more lists of the ten actors and actresses that are finalists for Emmy nominations in the supporting comedy categories. As with the other awards, there are some surprises on the list, and some notable omissions. For the ladies, the headline is that last year's winner, Jaime Pressly (My Name Is Earl), didn't make the cut. Surprise finalists include Conchata Ferrell (Two And A Half Men) and Amy Poehler (Saturday Night Live). I don't mind seeing Conchata on the list because she is consistently funny on the show, but I don't know that there is enough to her role for her to actually garner a nomination when you consider the competition.

On the other side of the coin, the defending champ, Jeremy Piven (Entourage), is back. None of the boys over at SNL managed to make the leap from Variety to Comedy that Poehler did.

When you make a living online and a big part of your job is to spend the entire day surfing around a hundred web sites, you begin to think that you've seen everything there is to see on the web. At least the good stuff. But sometimes you come across a site that makes you smile and say to yourself, "this is great!"

That's what I thought when I found the Sound of Young America podcast.

(S02E15) "I'm just gonna be a kick-ass single mom. Like Erin Brokovich, or Sarah Connor." - Liz

30 Rock fans looking for laughs, plot twists, and a cliffhanger in the finale are probably happy. You got all that, plus a guest star (more than one, actually) that I didn't even know was going to be in the episode. And if you're one of the people who was wondering "what the heck does the episode title 'Cooter' even mean?," well, he's the secret to that (and Tina Fey has been using the term for a while now).

But some 30 Rock fans - I would go out on a limb and say most of you - weren't happy to find out who the father of Liz's maybe-baby might be.

(S02E14) "This smells like hill people milk!" - Kenneth, during the drinking contest

Is it just me or was the first part of tonight's 30 Rock a little ... lacking in something? It just seemed to me to be off a little bit, from the change in the opening (no opening scene before the credits, just straight to the credits then the start of the show immediately following) to the lack of really laugh out loud lines (except for Jonathan's singing "I Will Remember You" to Jack and making him a bizarre collage), it seemed to be rather pedestrian, for a 30 Rock episode anyway. Maybe it was because there weren't too many Jack/Liz scenes.

But then halfway through is picked up and got better.

(S02E13) "That was so easy, like taking candy...from one of those guys who gives out candy at gay nightclubs."

Sorry this review is a little late this week. 30 Rock is one of those shows that I have to watch once, take notes, then watch again quickly so I can make sure I didn't miss any good lines. And this episode, like all 30 Rock episodes, had a lot of great lines.

But if there's anything that I took away from this episode, it's this: the porn video game that Tracy invented better be revisited in a later episode, or sold in the NBC online store with the mugs and t-shirts.

(S02E12) "Save it for your iVillage blog, Lemon." - Jack, to Liz

Tonight's episode of 30 Rock had more jokes and one-liners - the kind where you actually smile and laugh out loud - in just the two minute opening teaser than According To Jim and Unhitched have in an entire season (combined). It got me thinking that the show is sort of like the live version of Family Guy: lots of crazy one-liners and non-sequiturs, often punctuated by a bizarre, seconds-long flashback. And I mean that comparison in a good way. There's no other comedy that's running on all cylinders like 30 Rock is right now.

While Liz deals with having Dennis back in her life, Jack looks for a new celebrity spokesman for the Republican party and Kenneth gets involved with an old TV star.

(S02E11) "When you Google 'class A moron', my name comes up first now...so step aside Randy Quaid." - Jack

Is this a happy day or what? No more writers strike, no more hiatus, no more repeats, no more Thursday nights spent crying, wrapped up in a blanket on the couch, eating tons of chocolate, depressed that new NBC Thursday comedies are nowhere on the horizon. Sorry, I may have just told you a little too much information there.

Anyway, 30 Rock is back! It's almost as if this was the season opener, but it's actually the 11th episode of the season (four more new episodes to follow this season), and it features a call back to a joke in an episode from earlier this season.

Mariah Carey totally digs 30 Rock, especially the Kenneth the Page character. She digs him so much, that he stars in her new music video, called "Touch My Body". In it, the actor Jack McBrayer seems to channel Louis Skolnick from Revenge of the Nerds. He shows up at the Carey mansion to fix a computer and then he goes off into La La Land, thinking about his dream date with Mariah Carey. Activities include pillow fights, laser tag, and frisbee.

Maybe I'm grumpy today or something because I didn't find it all that funny. It was quaint, really. The Nerd envisions himself with Mariah Carey doing all her sexy poses and wearing tight/short dresses, like in all her videos. I think the problem is that Mariah Carey didn't do anything different. She shook her booty while goofy things happened around her-- like Jack McBrayer wearing a viking hat during a pillow fight. While I liked the Fiona Apple and Kanye West videos with Zach Galifianakis, I think this one is over-the-top and tries too hard to be funny. The video is directed by Brett Ratner.

Check it out, the video is after the jump:

(S02E10) "I've become one of them. I've been Sodomized!" - Kenneth, explaining how the 21st century Sodom (NYC) has changed him.

OK, so I was wrong. In my review of the previous episode, I mentioned that it was the last one finished before the strike. But this episode is the last episode finished before the strike. No, seriously, it is! I was bummed out after I realized the previous episode was the last (I thought). Now I have to be bummed out all over again.

But it was a good episode to go into the hiatus with, if that makes things better.

(S02E08) "I got a squeezer from an Indian girl on a bunk bed, so I think I got the whole Harvard experience." - Frank

This episode has two plots we haven't seen much of this season: a solid plot involving the writing staff and a return to the whole Tracy/Jenna battle that was a main part of the first season. And that's good to see, since it was tilting to all Liz/Jack stuff or guest star plots. Not that this episode didn't have a lot of Liz and Jack and guest stars (the return of Edie Falco and a really bizarre cameo from political strategist James Carville), but 30 Rock has always shown a knack for balancing all of the plots really nicely. And for once I was glad to see Kenneth for the most part take a little breather.

Oh, and if you're wondering, I'm doing this review Cajun Style.

On the heels of the Saturday Night Live stage show, the Upright Citizens Brigade Theatre in New York hosted a live reading by the cast of 30 Rock, with ticket proceeds going to show staffers who are out of work due to the writers strike.

According to accounts of the show -- most notably, from Rachel Sklar at the Huffington Post and Dan Hopper at the Best Week Ever blog -- every major member of the cast, including Alec Baldwin, was at the reading. An upcoming episode was read for the audience, and Tina Fey asked that the audience members not divulge the plot of that episode because "this show is like Heroes and we don't want to ruin it for everyone else."

(S02E06) "We Parcells are neither wealthy nor circumcised, but we are proud!" - Kenneth, trying to find money to replace Jack's missing pants

This show is less than a half hour long but I have a harder time reviewing it than I do two-hour season finales. How do you review a show that has 25 awesome one liners and a bunch of great comedy bits and scenes without simply repeating everything that just happened to people who have already seen the episode? How do you even pick one funny quote from those 25 lines and put it at the top of the review? The one above might be the funniest, it might not be, who knows. It just stands out to me.

(S02E05) "Saving The Environment While Maintaining Profitability." - Greenzo's slogan for NBC's Green Week

I really don't know how I feel about all of these guest stars this season. On the one hand, they've all worked. It was natural to have Jerry Seinfeld on the season opener (even if he was on just to plug that damn movie) because he was an old NBC star. Carrie Fisher worked because she wasn't hyping anything and is a great character actress. And now in this episode we have both David Schwimmer and Al Gore. They were OK too, mostly because the show around them was so strong, but I can really see this show tipping too far over the line with needless celeb cameos. I really hope that doesn't happen.