30 Rock: Such an important television man.

This week on 30 Rock: Jon Hamm in da house!  Whoo!

Jon Hamm, who looks like a cartoon pilot, is here because Jack isn’t the only one who gets to date beautiful guest stars.  Jon Hamm’s character is Liz’s new neighbor, and his mail keeps getting delivered to her by mistake.  Jenna opens it, because Jenna is in many ways the devious friend we all wish we had, and she discovers that Jon Hamm is a doctor, and is into pies and Caddyshack and is neither gay nor poor.  This is all Liz needs to know.  And when she finds out he looks like Jon Hamm, well, she’s willing to go to any lengths necessary to go to there.

Unfortunately, she looks for inspiration in all the wrong places.  Specifically, Los Amantes Clandestinos, Salma’s grandmother’s favorite Mexican telenovela.  It stars one Hector Moreda, who plays the evil El Generalissimo and looks exactly like Jack (because Hector is also played by Alec Baldwin, only with an awesome drawn-on moustache).  El Generalissimo’s evil ways include lighting children on fire, slapping people’s fathers, and impregnating young women with the devil.  The problem is, as a child, Salma’s grandmother worked in a silver mine without proper ventilation, and as a result her mind is squishy like the hacky sack.  So now she hates Jack, because she hates El Generalissimo, follow?

So Jack has Sheinhardt buy Telemundo (even though NBC already owns it?  Whatever.) and orders Liz to write a script for Los Amantes Clandestinos that kills off El Generalissimo.  Sensing an opportunity, Liz steals some tips from El Generalissimo’s evil seduction methods and uses them on Jon Hamm.  That part works, sort of, but Hector Moreda goes off script and refuses to die.  So Jack goes to talk to him, and we get a fabulous scene of Alec Baldwin playing off of himself, in which they do the Patty Duke Show song with an alcoholic twist.  Alec, as Hector, is super-gay, but he would totally switch for Salma. (You think I’m paraphrasing but I’m not.) Now that he’s on Jack’s side, Hector comes up with a genius plan to transform El Generalissimo into a character all Puerto Rican grandmothers will love, and it succeeds.  Salma’s abuela is now Jack’s biggest fan.

But Liz is still using the old-school Generalissimo as her role model in her campaign to win Jon Hamm’s love.  She learns, via mail theft, that he trains seeing-eye dogs, so she creates a fictional lost dog, Buster, and enlists Jon Hamm’s help to find him.  Then she invites him to a dinner party, except oops!  Jon Hamm’s the only one there.  He sticks around anyway, because, as we’ll learn in a minute, Jon Hamm’s not all that bright.  But all looks like it’s going well, even when a dog who looks much like the imaginary Buster is delivered to Liz’s door by Oswald, who lives in the basement and so has all the nails.  Jon Hamm finally figures out Liz’s trickery, though, when he asks for an aspirin and, despite being a doctor, takes a pill from a bottle in Liz’s bag that’s clearly labeled “Rohypnol.”  He immediately collapses and scurries around on the floor for a while, and for real, just watch the episode.

After all this, I assumed it was going to end like the one with the little man who worked at the UN with Kofi, and that Jon Hamm would reject Liz for what was, in some respects at least, an honest mistake. (After all, it’s not like she gave Jon Hamm the roofie on purpose.  And that little kid really did look like the little man from behind!) But Jon Hamm agrees to go out with Liz again at the end of the ep.  Yay!

Man, are we going to have multiple episodes with both Salma Hayek and Jon Hamm?  I think my TV will melt from all the beautiful.

Also, this week’s Tracy C-plot is awesome.  TGS has acquired a new crop of interns, you see – only they’re guys who are in their 20s and 30s and wear expensive suits.  They’re interning because they used to be investment bankers, but they were laid off in that economic crash that Nancy Pelosi caused.  They hassle Kenneth, which tells me all I need to know about them.  But they adore Tracy, and bring him out drinking and drugging with them every night. (That’s how Liz wound up with that bottle of Rohypnol, in case you were wondering.) Tracy is nowhere near being able to keep up with those guys, but he can’t let anyone know he’s getting too old to drink yards of beer every night.  So, to give the interns something to do, he takes over Lehman Brothers.  Awesome.

Other things we learned this week:

• Metrocards are a real thing.  You use them on the subway.
• Some nurses are hot.
• Only the special tourists at 30 Rock get to see Conan without his wig.
• When you quote lines from movies, that’s not racist.
• You shouldn’t end a sentence with a preposition at.

(Many thanks to Google Image Search for its help with this week’s review, by the way.  It’s amazing to think that the world ever functioned without Google Image Search.)

Season 3, Episode 10: Generalissimo (originally aired February 5, 2009)

For more on 30 Rock, click here.

Thursdays at 9:30/8:30C on NBC

Photographs courtesy of NBC