It being a Thursday, I got all comfy on the couch for the dynamite hour of TV that is The Office followed by 30 Rock. And when all was said and done, I asked myself a very important question: Am I starting to like 30 Rock just a little bit more than The Office? And the answer is……I just might be. Both shows had great episodes tonight, but, while I laughed hard at The Office, I laughed even harder at 30 Rock.
In January 2007, just about a month and a half after I started watching 30 Rock, I wrote in this very blog that the show could sometimes “be a little uneven, but it hits a lot more often than it misses, and the potential is there for it to be even better.” And currently, the show is realizing that potential. It’s actually been realizing it for a while now. So far this has been a very good season for the show, and tonight’s episode was one of the best they’ve had. I won’t spoil specific details for those who haven’t seen it yet (and get thee to hulu.com or nbc.com if you haven’t yet watched), so I’ll just give some general praise: The characters on this show are all crazy, in their own way. But it never becomes an outright cartoon. They’re still people you care about and are interested in following, even if, for the most part, they’re not exactly people you’re likely to meet in real life.
And the writing on this show is so sharp. Each week, the writers build to this fabulous, often hilarious crescendo, one that is so well-crafted you rarely see it coming. It’s also reminiscent of Arrested Development in a way, particularly in that the show is chock full of hilarious little throwaway moments that zip by fast if you’re not paying attention (like tonight with Tracy’s “angry chair”).
30 Rock is just such a brilliant show. Which is not to say that The Office isn’t. It too had a very good episode tonight, which is key, because this season has been just a *smidge* on the uneven side. (While I love having Toby back, I do miss Holly. She added a new element to the show that we hadn’t seen before, and she and Michael really did make for a pretty cute and funny couple.) The episode a couple weeks ago, for example, where Michael, Oscar and Andy all went to Canada, was perhaps one of the only Office episodes since its uneven first season where I really didn’t laugh a whole lot. A fair number of things fell flat that week.
Watching The Office these days, you sometimes get the sense that maybe, just maybe, the show has already hit its peak, and is starting to slowly come back down to earth a bit. (It’s difficult to believe the show’s already in its fifth season.) With 30 Rock, you don’t really get that feeling. The show’s still riding high, and I’m vastly enjoying watching it do so.
Tags: 30 Rock, NBC, The Office
