Like A Rock

Here's a piece in the A.V. Club that says 30 Rock has had it. I don't know, maybe. But it's usually pretty hard to tell when a show jumps the shark until after it's canceled. Fans start to see the decline in no time at all.

The piece, by Todd VanDerWerff (really?), makes a lot of claims about varous sitcoms, many of which I find questionable. He thinks 30 Rock hit its peak in its late first season/early second season. Once again, maybe, but I didn't notice a big drop after.

Shows can go toward realism, which allows for depth but limits the plots, or they can go for outrageousness, which allows them to go anywhere, but generally makes the characters thin. (That's me talking, not VanDerWerff.) The general trend in most sitcoms, which may be the opposite of what you'd expect (and I'm not sure Todd would agree) is actually to make the characters more into caricatures as they go along. This is for at least two reasons. First, you start to learn what gets laughs, so you emphasize that part of the character. (Look at Ted Baxter, Cliff Clavin, Homer Simpson, everyone on Seinfeld--in the first season, they're almost normal.) Second, you need to go further afield for plots, and this allows you to put the characters in more ridiculous situations (or do the ridiculous situations create the caricature?).

The thing about 30 Rock is, almost from the start, they were not going for realism. I think the biggest question was would they concentrate on the show within the show, which could allow them to do sketches. They soon dropped that angle (which is one of the reasons they reshot the pilot, replacing Rachel Dratch with Jane Krakowski). Since then, they've been willing to go anywhere for gags--they've got more cutaways than any show this side of Family Guy--and their characters, already pretty wild, have become almost insane. That's why I don't understand why VanDerWerff is concerned when the show forgets that Tracy Morgan's character is a family man. I (and I think the audience) don't care if he's married or divorced or single.

This is the danger of 30 Rock, but also its promise. The lack of mooring allows them to do anything. We like the characters, certainly, but each week they can be reinvented--who likes whom, who's powerful, who's helpless, etc. But the thinness of the characters also means if they stop being inventive they can grow tiresome quickly. Looks like Todd VanDerWerff has had his fill.