Can You Identify the Reason Last Night's 30 Rock was Perhaps its Best All Season?

Maybe 30 Rock's fantastic episode last night, "College," doesn't really boil down to a single winning factor. You can credit the bizarre Jack Donaghy voiceover plot-line and Liz's new nicknames for herself (Bliz-bian, anyone?) with some of the achievement. But one towering decision helped elevate this episode to the level of show's best -- and I fear it won't be a consistent part of the rest of the season.

No doubt about it, 30 Rock triumphed last night thanks to its return to the writers' room. Frank and Toofer's manipulations of Pete (and their mastery of Pronouncify.com) were uproarious, and Pete's freestyle rap about Jack Donaghy and sex parties joyously killed my libido for the next 12 years. When 30 Rock strays into Jack's love life or exploits outside Rockefeller Plaza too long, we lose part of what it makes it a superior comedy -- that caustic revamp of Mary Tyler Moore's WJM newsroom. The show becomes more of a broad character farce than a believable workplace comedy, and that's not always ideal when we're supposed to believe some of these characters are compulsive workaholics. Frank's downtrodden snarl was in fine form, Toofer's elitism soared, and Lutz garnered the biggest laugh of the episode when he told Jack he'd done his best to dissuade his prankster colleagues. ("I told them not to. Let's get outta here, Jack.")

A near-perfect episode, but I'm always game for more scribe shenanigans. Five years on, we're owed more from that sector of the show than one-minute glimpses -- or even a one-minute dance break set to the stylings of Chamillionaire.