'30 Rock': Welcome to 'MILF Island'

You know what I missed about 30 Rock while it was away? I missed the weird.

And if Thursday's episode -- the first of five post-strike shows that will finish the season -- wasn't as tightly plotted or as manically wacky as the show is when it's at its best, it brought a healthy dose of oddness back to television. And that makes me a happy man.

(Spoilers, spoilers, spoilers. Aaack!)

The staff of TGS, and apparently all of America, is wrapped up in the finale of MILF Island ("20 MILFs, 50 eighth-grade boys, no rules"), the reality show Jack was pitching at the start of the season and which is now a runaway hit. He's on top of the world, and expecting a call from Don Geiss that will all but secure his path to the chairmanship of NBC. Except for one thing: Someone at TGS has said some not-so-nice things about him in the New York Post, calling him a "Class A moron" and saying he "can eat my poo."

Liz immediately announces that she's not taking the bullet this time, and Jack gathers everyone outside his office so he can "turn up the heat" on them -- literally, as it turns out. There's only one problem -- Kenneth (inexplicably hiding behind an American Gladiator Wolf cutout that was inexplicably standing in an elevator car) overheard Liz vent to a Post reporter.

Thus we set off on a journey of back-stabbing (Liz letting Kenneth take the fall), lying (Liz to Jack and, it turns out, Jack to Liz), secret agreements (Frank's attempts to form a "dirtbag alliance" with Lutz) -- you know, like on MILF Island, which is on every screen in the building.

I'm not sure the parallels worked entirely; they were basically just an excuse for Tina Fey to go into desperate-Liz mode ("Your eyes look like my uncle's after he'd drink from the air conditioner," a frightened Kenneth tells her), and for Jack to spin an elaborate deception to get Liz to confess she badmouthed him (he knew it was her because he'd heard her say "eat my poo" before).

Liz finally confesses, naturally, and Jack uses it to get her to write a spin-off show for MILF Island winner Deborah ("she has the bearing of a queen," Jack says).

But the little details were just fantastic: Jack's fake stutter, the back story of his special-ed classmate Gilly, Jerry Seinfeld getting an exec producer credit on MILF Island (a nice callback to the season premiere), the smarmy host's line readings ("The game. Is about. To change!!") and the elimination catchphrase ("We no longer want to hit that -- get off MILF Island") and bikini-doffing ritual.

I'm grading on a fairly generous curve just because I'm glad to have the show back, but those little things made the episode better than its plot.

(Oh, and I'll agree to ignore the lame bit with Pete stuck in the vending machine if you will. Let's just say it's been done before and leave it at that.)

Some more good weirdness, and just plain funny stuff:

• Kenneth, trying to get Liz to fess up: "Everyone knows that the weight of a lie makes your soul so heavy you can't rise up to heaven. [Beat] And you don't look good in jeans from behind."
• Liz's holier-than-thou attitude toward MILF Island, even though she's written things that are just as juvenile (the brief flashes of the fart-engine sketch) and even though she knows way too much about the show for someone who claims not to watch it.
• Lutz's half-hearted attempts to distance himself from Frank: "This is from American Eagle!"
• Jack on Deborah: "Have you heard her story? Before she was cast on MILF Island, she was just a struggling actress living in Los Angeles."
• Lastly, MILF Island's creator is listed as "Brit Ishman." Move the space and you get "British man" -- because all these things come from Britain (or at least somewhere overseas).

Good to have the Thursday comedies back, isn't it? Did the little things in tonight's 30 Rock make up for the less-than-airtight structure?

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