'30 Rock' plays devil's avocado

Tonight's 30 Rock was an everybody-to-your-corners sort of episode, which I normally don't like as much as when the cast is all in close proximity. But our first Pete sighting in lord knows how long, along with a rich vein of Tracy Jordan crazy sort of connecting the disparate threads, made for a pretty satisfying half-hour.

If you're reading these spoilers, there's only one thing to do: Go to your loved ones and hold them.

Part of what kept things workable, I think, was the fact that "Larry King" had fairly simple setups for all three of its stories: Elisa wants have The Talk with a reluctant Jack, Tracy is appearing on Larry King Live to plug TGS and Liz has to retrieve her lost phone from a hard-bargaining cabbie in Queens. Thus plot mechanics didn't overwhelm the funny bits.

And, honestly, I enjoy just about any episode that brings up the Tracy Question. Having him on Larry King (with King proving a capable straight man) and commenting on a bad run in the Asian financial markets was both a nice little sting at the televised blathering on cable news and just damn funny on its own, as Tracy spun increasingly dire scenarios about what the crisis would mean for New York. A sampling:

- "It will be the 1970s all over again. People will get mean, the streets won't be safe, there'll be graffiti everywhere and movies will only cost $3."
- "What everyone needs to do is take a deep breath, calm down and prepare their bodies for the Thunderdome, because that is the new law."
- "I would say the Disneyfication of New York is over. At midnight, your Lexus will turn into a pile of rats fighting over a human finger."

In advising people to "freak the geek out" and pull their money out of banks, Tracy also notes that he's hidden a ton of cash at various locations, including work. That sends Pete (Pete! Welcome back!) and the writers on a desperate search of the studio, guided only by Tracy's enigmatic clue that the money is in the safest place in 30 Rock: Dry and warm, hard on top but soft on the bottom, and ever-changing in location but always in the same place.

That place, we learn, is not a place but Kenneth (specifically, a panel sewn into his page's jacket). Except at the moment, he's not at 30 Rock but in Queens with Liz, who had asked her "friend" to come with her so she wouldn't be alone in an unfamiliar neighborhood at night. Not that it keeps Kenneth from getting tagged or Liz from getting her purse snatched, but still, when your show's star is on TV causing a panic, it's good to have someone watching your back.

Theirs was probably the flimsiest of the three plot threads, but it did give Tina Fey a chance to sing "99 Luftballons" (twice) and for this exchange when she finally comes clean about why she needs her phone back: "Because I have an adult picture on there." Kenneth: "Adult picture? Like you're driving a car or something?" Liz: "No -- it's a boobie picture. And I only kept it because for once, they're both pointing in the same direction."

Guest star MVP Salma Hayek did more sterling work in the episode's other story, in which Jack tells Elisa he loves her to keep her from going to Puerto Rico to see her family and then fails to live up to his promise to spend a week off with her when the market panic hits. Loved the "Jalisa" T-shirt (not yet available in the NBC store, sadly), loved her calling Jack out on his lies ("Like you can dunk a basketball!" "I can, on a regulation hoop") and the way she called him out on his inability to leave work alone: "What, people are going to die? No, you'll just be poor like the rest of us. You'll buy cereal that comes in a bag. ..." Just great stuff.

After viewing Geiss' 20-plus-year-old video message, however, Jack realizes that by god, he actually does love Elisa and heads off to the airport to keep her from getting on a plane to Puerto Rico ("like Ross did on Friends and Liz Lemon did in real life"). Conveniently for him, Elisa has only made it a block or so. There's a proposal of the kind where if 30 Rock were filmed before an audience the crowd would have gone "WHOOOO!!!," followed by one of Hayek's best lines of the night: "OK, but I want a ring so big it gives me back problems."

The reversal at the end was a nice little touch too, as a suddenly commitment-averse Elisa tells him via video that maybe they should take some time apart to think about things. Ouch, and yet, excellent.

More good stuff from "Larry King":

• Liz and Pete implore Tracy to plug the show: "TGS, Fridays at 10:30 on NBC." He assures him he's got it: "NGS, Fridays at T-30 on CB10." (But did you notice he got it right with Meredith Vieira the next morning?)
• Maulik Pancholy has been a little underused this season as Jack's assistant Jonathan, but he had two good moments tonight -- his forlorn "What about Jakonathan?" when he heard Jack was taking time off and the high-pitched scream he let loose upon realizing the video of his shirtless flute-playing (not a euphemism, by the way) hadn't been erased following Elisa's video.
• Two things about Liz rubbing it in that she's had more sex than Jack this year: First, it was an awesome reaction. Second, does that mean Liz and Drew have done it? Guess they've some off-screen time together (which, to be fair, was implied with the dirty pic on her phone) that hasn't been an unmitigated disaster.
• Pete: "Hi Larry. First-time caller, love the show ..." Tracy: "I know that voice! That's my friend Peter Frampton!"
• One more great line from Elisa, after Jack sees her on the street: "Everything has gone cocoa for cuckoo puffs. ... Is that right?"

What did you think of tonight's 30 Rock? Where do you keep your panic money?

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