30 Rock – “Everything Sunny All the Time Always” – review

30 Rock has a bad track record with the love interests for its lead characters. No matter how much the show plays up that a guest character is “the one” (I’m looking at you, Matt Damon), they always find a way to break them up. It’s distressing that they can’t just let anyone be happy. When Jack married Avery (Elizabeth Banks) and had a child with her, I thought “Awesome! They’re going to keep her around.” I must have spoken too soon, because now it looks like they are writing her character out, at least for now.

I’ve got to give the writers props for how they went about getting rid of Avery. It’s not like Jack decided he didn’t love her anymore and broke up with her. They’re still married, and Avery’s still alive. Instead they have Avery captured in North Korea where she’s forced to do propaganda news and marry Kim Jung Il’s son. At the moment it looks like she’s stuck in North Korea. She could still come back, but it wouldn’t be surprising if she didn’t.

Liz has finally decided to take control of her life, straightening out and cleaning her apartment. She feels empowered until she notices a plastic bag stuck in a tree. Since Liz can’t get it down, she feels it’s an obstacle in taking control of her life and becomes obsessed with getting it. It gets so bad she starts hallucinating, thinking the bag is mocking her. Tina Fey does crazy really well, and watching Liz spiral into madness over a plastic bag was a great way to showcase it.

Tracy is back to his usual antics. He finds out that while he was gone, his entourage made an inside joke. Tracy decides to recreate the situation that led up to the joke so he “could be there.” It feels good to have Tracy back. It’s hard to believe how much I missed him, even going so far as to really enjoy the overly dramatic confrontation between him and Kenneth at the end over the inside joke. Also noteworthy was Tracy revealing he’s done propaganda films for Kim Jung Il (it was either that or play a rapping doorman in a Kate Hudson movie).

This episode was pretty strong, offering a lot of well placed smart, goofy and meta jokes. I’m a little sad that Avery’s gone for the foreseeable future, but there’s still hope she could return.