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Last week, when I was doing my binge recommendation, I suggested watching 30 Rock on Amazon Prime. Well I practiced what I preached. I spent a lot of the weekend watching 30 Rock. Yes, I had seen it all before. I had seen many episodes multiple times. However, it had been years since I had watched an episode. The show ended in 2013. It didn’t last very long in syndication. I feel like it was on Netflix for a while and I watched it occasionally there, but I’m not a big repeat viewer these days. There’s just usually too much new stuff to check out. Right now, though, there is free time to fill, and so I have been watching 30 Rock regularly for the first time in probably five years.
I had intended to just check out one episode. Then I found myself immediately wanting to watch more. A lot more. It turns out 30 Rock is great. Which, I mean, I already knew. It was just so much fun to revisit it, though, because 30 Rock is full of jokes. True, hard jokes. And it turns out jokes rule.
There are a lot of funny shows. Take, for example, The Office. Or GLOW. I laugh watching those shows, but they aren’t that jokey. So much of the humor from The Office is cringe-y or slice-of-life reflections that people can relate to. 30 Rock is packed with jokes. They are broad and silly. There is a ton of wordplay. It’s a show where they are OK with absurd things happening for a joke. Where it seems like every other line is a setup to a joke. It’s a show where a character can say to some ogling men “Take a picture it’ll last longer” before handing them glossy photos of her in a bra. It’s a show where Tracy Jordan and Jenna Maroney can exist almost entirely as joke machines. I love it.
Maybe it’s the writer in me. I love joke-heavy sitcoms. Back in the day, a lot of them were silly or corny. The Addams Family was packed with jokes. So was 3rd Rock From the Sun. They were also high-concept and felt super sitcom-y. 30 Rock is a slicker version of that. It bridges the modern comedy with that old-school joke philosophy. I find that so delightful and rewarding. Jokes are great! Not every comedy has to be a joke machine, but watching such a well-oiled joke machine as 30 Rock do its thing is not just hilarious, but weirdly soothing. It’s a good time to bask in jokes.
