30 Rock: Donaghy Saves GE, Marries Your Mom

Yay! Devon Banks is back on 30 Rock, which is fabulous news for just about everyone. Bum bum bum!

Devon, who was foiled out of his GE job by Jack last season, is now living it up in the Obama Administration (he had to find something more powerful than GE, and American Idol doesn’t start back up until January). So he bonded with Malia and Sasha. Does this mean Tina Fey is now blacklisted at the White House, I wonder? Well, in any case, Devon could’ve been the ambassador to Ireland, the world’s gayest country, but instead he offered to chair a secret task force on the deceitful practices of the microwave industry, and summons Jack to D.C. via Chinatown bus so he can wave around the gavel he brought from home. Jack, facing certain undoing now that Devon has weaked his testimony, attempts to revolutionize the microwave world by inventing the Pontiac Aztek, but finally descends into the crevasse: he taunts Devon into forcing GE to take government bailout money. Now Devon will be Jack’s boss. I didn’t quite follow the reasoning as to why this was good for Jack, but I don’t care because it means we get to see more Devon.

Meanwhile, Liz should be on top of the world with the release of her new book, Dealbreaker, but instead she’s having her usual round of problems with Tracy and Jenna. Tracy – and, actually, every man Liz encounters this week except Jack – is holding Liz personally responsible for his relationship issues. Hey, who is she to tell them not to have jobs that involve wearing nametags, or practice Jedi moves in the park, or own diamond necklaces that say “Open Marriage”? Given that a big chunk of the book is apparently based on Tracy, though, he takes revenge by moving into her apartment (well, what’s he supposed to do, he can’t find his houseboat), adopting a plethora of homeless dogs from Kenneth, and, finally, making a porn film based on Liz’s life story (don’t worry, he ultimately decides it’s disgusting and scraps it). And Jenna’s still angry about that whole new cast member thing from last week, even though said new cast member has yet to materialize, so she agrees to play a moon scientist in a student werewolf movie (spooky! scary!), i.e., a sexy supernatural werewolf movie in the vein of Twilight and True Blood that for tax reasons is shooting in Iceland. But since Iceland only gets a minute of darkness each night, they’re filming the movie one minute at a time. That’s about as far as that storyline goes, but we get an awesome scene involving Jenna and a flashlight and a dude in a werewolf suit that makes it worth it.

Other things we learned this week:

• The Obamas are making Sasha invite everyone to her party. Yes, even Zach S.
• Among the offenses perpetrated by GE employees uncovered by the task force investigation are Jack’s betting company money on horse races using a system based on horse penis size, an official company clown, and Devon’s own Cabaret-themed Halloween party on Fire Island.
• Dr. Spaceman, absent thus far this season, is at least succeeding in his professional life with his newly released book The Cigarette Diet.
• Jonathan (aka “that fancy little fellow outside”) has struck Devon’s fancy. This can only mean good things for us viewers.

Lines that I would really like to use in my day-to-day life, if I lived in a parallel universe where I had Tina Fey’s wit (note that 60 percent of these are Tracy’s):

• I mean the figurative elephant.
• I’m gonna kill you with a bazooka.
• The donkey died. You’re the donkey now.
• I will take the top half, for that is the part with the face.
• Also, my girlfriend is mad. In Canada.

Season 4, Episode 2: Into the Crevasse (originally aired October 22, 2009)

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Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal, Ali Goldstein