Jokes about the New York condo market and inscrutable New York Post headlines; as I wrote before, 30 Rock is certainly doubling down on its Manhattan-centrism, and it worked just fine in this episode. But while Liz’s quest for lebensraum was funny enough (especially Dotcom’s attempt to induce white flight in Liz’s gay-hipster-cop roommate), the best bits were around the edges: Teddy Ruxpin the lawyer; the declaration that “I, Bertram Geiss, am still Daddy’s fancy boy”; and, especially, the show’s treatment of the Green Is Universal mandate. 30 Rock is the most overtly political (in the topical sense) of the Thursday comedies, so it would be the one to point out (through Al Gore, recycling his whale joke), that the whole feel-good change-your-lightbulbs message is a greenwash on the real, and not easily agreed-on, political decisions affecting the environment. Serious comment aside, Gore’s reversal in Florida was TV comedy’s gain. And isn’t it cute (and sad) that NBC believes that there are still fans out there who will get Minka Kelly and Masi Oka references?
