Season Finale: 30 Rock-"Respawn"

Liz can never seem to get away on "30 Rock"
Credit: NBC

My thoughts on last night's season finale of 30 Rock are after the jump.

It took me awhile to think what I was going to say about this episode. It was a fairly good episode of 30 Rock, but yet it left me feeling a little empty. There's only so much that I can get from an episode that relies on jokes to get people to enjoy the episode. It certainly had its moments, but some plotlines were not well executed at all. I guess I expected more from a season finale of this show.

Liz can never seem to get away from work or her crazy coworkers. This is an idea that the show has explored many times and this time they did it the plotline didn't land with me very well because it wasn't nearly as good as past times. It was funny but it didn't do much else for me. I guess there's only so much I can get out of Liz learning Spanish, or Tracy being an annoying neighbor, or Liz badmouthing a judge who doesn't have a gavel. The plotline was funny, but that's all it was. I didn't have an emotional connection at all to the plotline. I guess I'm being a little harsh, but I at least wanted a little heart behind it. 

The Jack plotline was full of absurdness and craziness, but it was single handedly saved by a single speech by Kenneth the Page of all people. Kenneth hasn't always been given the best material in the last couple of seasons. He's basically been there to say a line and then do same thing all over again in the next episode. But this scene may have redeemed him as a character because of how awesome it was. That speech was the best moment of the episode purely because of how spontaneous it was and how funny it was. As for the rest of the plotline, Alec Baldwin is very funny but the whole Jack dressing up Kenneth went a little too far towards the absurd, it was funny at first, but it went too far.

There was no need for any other plotlines besides those because the plot involving Jenna working for Victor Garber and the writers playing an endless video game weren't terribly funny. Victor Garber is a funny actor but Paul has never been my favorite character on the show and this was a little too crazy for him. It did have its moments, but I wasn't laughing for the majority of it. The writers haven't been featured for most of the year (the exception was when Tracy Morgan was out) and this shows that there was a good reason for that. That plotline was stupid and very unfunny.

That's it for 30 Rock this season. Overall as a season it was a lot stronger then season four. The show regained its rhythm and made good episodes on an almost consistent basis. There were a few exceptions (like this week) but the majority showed a return to form for the show. I know I may be harsh on it sometimes, but that's because I'm thinking of it as a comedy with the ability to have characters and emotion but sometimes it's just a joke machine, a funny joke machine, but its still based around jokes.

What did everyone else think of this season of 30 Rock?