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OK, Tina, I get it! I get your shtick! Can we take it down a notch now?

OK, Tina, I get it! I get your shtick! Can we take it down a notch now?

Wait…let me back up.

Tina Fey is extremely attractive. Tina Fey is nice and slim. Tina Fey is highly intelligent. Tina Fey obviously has healthy dietary habits. We know this after three years of seeing her on talk shows, award shows, etc. So this whole running gag on 30 Rock about her being ugly and fat and a nerd because she wears glasses and stuffs her face with junk food just doesn’t fly anymore! It’s getting old. So, until she starts looking like Chris Farley in drag, the believability of the Liz Lemon character is wearing thinner than Fey’s waistline.

Luckily it doesn’t hurt season three of 30 Rock all that bad. When you’ve got the trio of Alec Baldwin (believable as a greasy CEO), Jack McBrayer (really believable as an idiot Southern page) and Tracy Morgan (ultra-super-mondo-believable as a comedian with no off-switch and no censor button), it doesn’t get better than that. Well, it does, but in this context, let’s say that it doesn’t.

Season three finds Jack back at his Head of Programming and Microwaves post with massive cut-backs hitting NBC. While this happens, Liz hallucinates some Oprah-worship, the cast of Night Court reunites, Steve Martin is eccentric millionaire Gavin Volure, Liz goes to her high school reunion to find out she was an unlikable dick, Jack starts an affair with the super-buxom Salma Hayek, NBC buys Telemundo, Tracy goes on Larry King and starts a city-wide riot, the mega-handsome Jon Hamm shows up as a love interest for Liz and the hilarious biopic about famed singer Jackie Jormp-Jomp is prepped for release.

The supposed big season finish is marred, however, with an appearance by that notorious black hole of comedy, Alan Alda, as Jack’s dad who needs a kidney. This leads to a celebrity sing-along benefit featuring a wide assortment of liberal talent in a song that is utterly anti-climactic and sadly, quite unfunny. I really wanted to hear the much-ballyhooed “We Are the Pizza” (by Weird Al, of course) instead. I still hope to.

Bonus features are a-plentiful, with commentaries, deleted scenes, a behind-the-scenes with the (UGH) Muppets piece, table reads, SNL monologues, award show speeches and, best of all, Liz’s late-night ad for 1-900-OKFACE, which, while funny, just goes back to my original point. Liz has so much more than an “OKFACE”.

The Office is a show I have slobbered over for years. But, as I was watching last week’s episode—the one where Jim and Pam finally get married—out of nowhere the cast were doing that obnoxious Chris Brown/YouTube dance down the aisle. It was the antithesis of everything the show ever stood for! I realized, right there, that this show is teetering on the verge of not only losing its way, but becoming completely irrelevant. And it irked me to no end! The writing has gotten lazy—remember the extended vomit gag?—and instead of aiming for that patented comedy of uncomfortability, it seems like they are just happy with appeasing middle America, pushing aside the characters and plotlines you want to see for a contrived romance that is boring and only of interest to the most hopelessly romantic of shut-in dullards. It took The Office five seasons to reach this complacent mediocrity.

The sad thing about 30 Rock is, and I realized this as I watched season three, was that it only took three seasons to this point where I am getting irritated! How much longer can this go on before I give up? How much longer before we all give up? How much longer before NBC gives up? Sure, it’s a critic’s darling but no huge hit and reviews typically don’t pay the bills. So, like The Office, 30 Rock needs to pick up the pace! Get some new writers, kill off some characters, create some interesting plotlines! Do something! NOW!

And Tina, take a course in self-esteem, because every guy in America thinks you’re hot. Even the Jon Hamms of the world. Unless this is the only shtick you know, of course…

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