Listen, you need to be watching 30 Rock. If you already are and it feels like I’m accosting you, I’m sorry, but last week was the season two finale, and if you like watching the TV from time to time, you know there’s nothing networks love doing more than axing smart, clever comedic shows in favor of the next version of Survivor, or American Gladiators, or any other ‘reality’ TV show that strays so far from reality you can only shake your head, grimace like you just ate a bad olive, and think, “God, do I want to bring kids into a world that considers this reality?”.

Consider this an introduction and endorsement for the uninitiated to 30 Rock, one of the funniest damn shows on television. There’s also going to be some musing on how DVD’s have affected television series, and finally some waxing poetic about the zenith of primetime TV, and what that meant to myself a few years back.

For those of you who do watch 30 Rock, you know that it is simply a brilliantly written show, with layer upon layer of jokes that venture into any and all territory. Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is the lead writer on a once popular show on NBC that is quickly losing steam. Enter Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin in the role he was born to play), a profit driven, demographic obsessed, NBC executive whose chest swells as much due to his role in the development of a new GE convection oven as it does from working in prime time television.* In an effort to revamp the show’s declining ratings, Donaghy suggests, then insists, and ultimately forces Lemon to cast eccentric pop icon Tracy Jordan, (Tracy Morgan). What was once was a team effort essentially morphs into a one-man show, albeit a more popular and successful one. Fey has admitted that the show is a look into her experiences as the head writer for Saturday Night Live. While it’s not clear who Baldwin’s character is based on, Morgan might very well be playing a dramatized version of his real life persona. If that seems unfair, look up ‘Tracy Morgan interviews’ on YouTube, and you’ll find that Morgan is a talented, hilarious, and quite possibly unstable individual.

What causes me to worry about 30 Rock is the type of humor is does so well. Like Arrested Development before it, there is no laugh track, meaning you have to actually pay attention to what’s said, and even then you might not get all the jokes.** Also similar to Arrested Development is the presence of a continuing story throughout the season, which might throw off the casual viewer. As a neophyte myself, I didn’t tune in to last week’s finale, not because I was worried I wouldn’t be able to follow or understand that week’s plot- each show is a new, tightly woven little package of funny- but because it’s a show that’s best watched in sequential order. The under girding story is easier to pick up, you begin to develop a greater understanding of each character, not to mention you catch all the subtle references to past shows, which gives you that slightly smug feeling of being an insider that no one wants to admit to enjoying. For someone flipping through the channels and landing on the show halfway through, you have no idea who the characters are, and unless you stop to pay attention (who does that when channel surfing?), you might not even figure out it’s a comedy.

This brings me to the role of DVD’s in enjoying a TV series nowadays. Above I mentioned that to best enjoy 30 Rock, you should watch it in order. What I failed to say was that I haven’t seen a one whole episode of either season on TV, because I can’t stand to watch TV shows while they are on TV! DVD collections allow you to knock out a whole season in a single weekend, if you have that sort of couch stamina. While watching the whole first season a few weekends ago, I marveled that I haven’t heard more about this series. Ironically I could be affecting the health of my new favorite distraction. If people don’t watch or become fans of a show until it comes out on DVD, research numbers might lead a network to cancel it. (Some people think this might have been what happened to Family Guy- yet again, we’re talking about Fox, the ultimate champion of scratching smart and funny shows- and that Family Guy was only brought back because the sales of its season DVD’s were so strong.) Bewildered networks are left to deal with hostile fans, mad that their favorite show was cancelled, even though they weren’t watching it when it came on television, only when it hit the shelves in DVD form.

The loss of enjoying a show on a weekly basis brings to my mind the heyday of Seinfeld. When I was in the ninth grade, I was still the awkward new kid, still trying to make friends, bravely (at least in my memory) wedging myself into tables of kids I thought were cool. Jeff and Trey were among the first guys I joked around with on a regular basis, and this was almost exclusively because of Seinfeld. Come Friday at lunchtime, a group of fifteen, 15-year-old boys would lump around a table made for eight, and we’d repeat line for line the previous night’s episode of Seinfeld. If I forgot the bit about Kramer feeding a horse Beef-O-Reeno, Jeff would bring it up. If Jeff forgot the look on Jerry’s face as he ran from the screaming old lady with that marble rye tucked tightly under his arm, Trey did his best impersonation. If Trey failed to remember what Elaine was doing that episode, I was there to tie up loose ends. And after reciting almost every line of the past episode, we’d proceed to break down how genius it was (I remember us mostly saying things like ‘that shit is so funny’ as opposed to analyzing the perfect pitch and syntax of each line; though that’s all we are really saying now when we use slight larger vocabularies, it’s the same thing: “that shit was off the hook!”).

For all of us, our Seinfeld reviews were master classes in comedic timing and writing, even if we didn’t know it. For me, they were instant conversation starters for a shy new kid, and a doorway to some pretty good friendships I maintain to this day. So if for no other reason than the fact that some awkward teenager in some middle school lunchroom needs one opening line of conversation at least once a week, check out 30 Rock.***

*Side note: the show also does a spectacular job parodying NBC, especially the corporate conglomerate side of its existence. There’s one scene in the first season when every character is drinking Snapple and talking about how tasty and delicious it is, and though you know that Snapple most be part of the GE family of brands, and you want to be upset that Tina Fey is in essence pimping its products on the show, they do it in such a funny and likable way you forgive them… And then think about how nice a Kiwi Strawberry would be, right now…

**Hopefully 30 Rock can last longer than Arrested Development, which didn’t stand a change against reruns of ‘When Bears Attack Scrabble Conventions 17’ on Fox. Of course, who’s to say that a show should try to stay on for as long as possible? I’ve always been a huge fan of the British version of The Office, in part because it only lasted two seasons. There are no wasted words or scenes in that series, everything feels fresh, perhaps because the writer’s didn’t feel like they had to hold back, or keep a little something left in the tank. That’s all speculation, I don’t know who decided to make just two seasons of The Office, only that if that was a decision from the get go, maybe it wasn’t a bad one. Part of the beauty of 30 Rock, in my opinion, is that all the dialogue and plot sequences have the feeling of tightness, of ‘just right’.

***Sorry about the footnotes, I recently read some David Foster Wallace, and he rubbed off. I thought I’d use this last note to say that I love Tina Fey like it’s my job, and I have to deny this to my lady friend all the time. Example: Lady Friend [with a slightly mocking smile on her face] “God, you love Tina Fey, don’t you?” Me [trying not to blush]: “No…”