30 Rock: That is one gay lion

Salma is back this week on 30 Rock! But, sadly, not for long.

As you’ll recall, Salma ran off to Puerto Rico two months ago after Jack proposed to her in a fit of recession-fueled madness. Now, she’s returned, and Jack is just as ready to go through with it as ever – she’s the One, after all (that’s a new term the very creative Jack just made up). But Salma is having doubts about his proposings of marriage, and she doesn’t have the strength to tell it to his head. So she tells Liz she has a terrible secret. And it’s not, as Liz suspects, that she’s the mother of those Michael Jackson kids.

Via Google, and an indiscreet member of the housekeeping staff, they find a website (which is very worth reading by the way, despite the disturbing animation) that identifies Salma as La Viuda Negra – the Black Widow. Then Salma confesses her dark tale while wearing a What the Frak T-shirt (and thanks to J.B. Perlow for telling me what that means): she killed her first husband. (He cheated on her, and she killed him in a fit of passion. She’s a Catholic; she takes the bonds of marriage very seriously.) But Jack already put his wedding announcement in Cigar Aficionado, and anyway he figures things could be worse – after all, somewhere, some man is on a JDate with Monica Lewinsky – and he’s ready to forgive Salma her sins and go through with the wedding. But he isn’t sure he’ll be able to stay faithful, and thus stay alive.

So he gets Tracy to take him out clubbing, to see whether he can resist the temptation inherent in Tracy’s lifestyle, seeing as how Tracy’s life is like Enron circa 1999. But Tracy reveals a secret of his own: despite the show he puts on and his fully-functioning alcoholism, he’s never cheated on his wife in their 20 years of marriage. He gives out Brian Williams’ phone number to all the interested ladies he comes across. (Mr. Williams does not appear to have a problem with this.) This prompts an epiphany for Jack, but when he goes to tell Liz about it (because Liz doesn’t have much to do this week for once, other than working on her night cheese and cuddling up with her Slanket), he discovers that Salma has followed him, and has already worked herself into an unjustified jealous rage over Liz. So obviously, engagement-wise, Jack and Salma are not going to forge ahead. Bye, Salma. See you in that vampire movie.

Our subplot of the week, in a welcome break from the Tracy-Kenneth antics that have dominated this season, revolves around the epic question of whether Jenna is a sociopath. Thanks to the show’s pranksmen (Frank, Toofer, etc.) almost getting Lutz killed, Jenna meets a hot EMT who has always liked her and yet isn’t gay, or even bicurious. When he has to leave before they can exchange contact information (apparently hot EMTs don’t know how to dial 411), Jenna is distraught – until Pete unwittingly suggests that she arrange another medical emergency so the hot EMT will have to come back. Jenna slips some strawberries to the allergic Kenneth, but the wrong EMTs show up. After the pranksmen teach her a lesson and Jenna admits to feeling genuine remorse for having tried to kill her co-worker (she’s just a girl, standing in front of a boy she poisoned, so this other boy would go to town on her), she’s downgraded from sociopath to extreme narcissist. But then Kenneth the martyr chooses to eat some more strawberries, so that Jenna might have a chance at true love. Kenneth winds up legally dead for five minutes, but the hot EMT turns out to have a kid, and therefore, Jenna is no longer interested. Sucks to be you, Kenneth.

Other things we learned this week:

• Liz’s grandpa killed some folks at Kent State.
• We’ll never get to try out WigGo.com – Sheinhardt Wigs’ user-generated video content site. Sadly, all anybody posted on it were penises.
• Liz is very spirited, like a show horse.
• Kenneth’s real name is Dick Whitman!

Lines I resolve to use ASAP:

• You’re wise. Like a genetically manipulated shark.
• No judgment in brainstorming!
• How are you so quiet when your parades are so loud?
• This hurts more than my foot Botox.

Also, there’s still no Jonathan. Did Maulik Pancholy get another job or something? What could possibly be better than being on 30 Rock? (Maulik Pancholy’s IMDB profile is amusing, by the way. He’s played two characters named Samir, two named Sanjay, and one named Flirtatious Waiter. And now that I see it listed there I totally remember him as a T.A. on Felicity.)

Season 3, Episode 19: The Ones (originally aired April 23, 2009)

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

Photographs courtesy of NBC Universal and Jessica Miglio