Closing Down the Joke Factory

“A wacky pure joke machine.”  “A mechanical joke-delivery machine.”

Wow—what is this show? Something that churns out funny lines like that’s its job?  Sounds great—exactly what I’m looking for.  And the critics seem to love it!  Like this guy Nathan Rabin at the AV Club—check this out:

this season feels like a send-off worthy to one of the best, most original comedies of the past twenty years. 

One of the best comedies of the last twenty years!  High praise indeed.  What show is this?

Wait, what?  It’s not the same show that Nathan Rabin said this about last year?:

The titles of the episodes and guest stars and plots might change, but otherwise, the show tends to do the same goddamned thing week in and week out. It’s stuck in a perpetual loop, doomed to repeat the same gags in episode after episode.

I’m confused.  And this is the same guy who said this about the same show, not even a year ago?

The show has been on the air forever. Exhaustion set in a while ago, yet the series carries on all the same. “Nothing To Lose” consequently possesses the strange quality of being at once tired and full of strained, artificial energy.

And this, again from last year:

I would like to start off this review with some very good news. God willing, this will be the very last 30 Rock review I will ever write.

Wait, I’m even more confused.  But you just wrote another 30 Rock review!  Nathan, you disingenuous bastard! 

So in the course of one year you’ve gone from being disgusted by the show to thinking it’s a “wacky pure joke machine” and one of the best comedies of the last twenty years?

What’s that you said?  That the “wacky pure joke machine” line was actually a criticism?  Oh, right.  I forgot.  This is the AV Club.  Where the reviewers ceaselessly contradict themselves and where a comedy having “jokes” and a thing called humor is a mortal sin. 

Let’s see what Nathan had to see, a mere eight months before anointing 30 Rock one of the greatest shows of the last twenty years. 

It is an episode almost entirely devoid of plausible human behavior or genuine emotion, a wacky pure joke machine that, like too much of this season, misfires the vast majority of the time.

The greatest distillation of the AV Club comedy philosophy.  What’s in?  “Genuine emotion”!  What’s out?  Comedy!  Jokes! 

The AV Club—where being a “pure joke machine” is a bad thing.

Let’s go on:

On a different show, this revelation might spur moments of genuine self-reflection or pathos. It might be cause for Jenna to grow as a character or as a human being.

That’s not the kind of show 30 Rock is at this point.

And for that, I’m eternally grateful.  Let me repeat: genuine self-reflection, pathos, growth.  Not what made 30 Rock one of the best comedies of the last twenty years.  Nathan, bubbalah, have you even seen 30 Rock?  This isn’t the self-help section here.  30 Rock has never been remotely interested in any un-funny “self-reflection or pathos”—it has been interested, from season one to season seven, in being really fucking funny.  That’s why it’s one of the best comedies of the last twenty years.

At this juncture, 30 Rock is the kind of show that's less interested in exploring Jenna’s self-loathing depths in even the most perfunctory manner than it is in putting her in blue make-up for the sake of a Smurfs joke

Halle-fucking-lujah!

So what, according to Nathan, would be better than jokes?

I know I have whined repeatedly about 30 Rock turning into a mechanical joke-delivery machine over the past few years

I know—enough with the jokes!  I just did a full Pilates workout, and it really hurts to laugh.  Also, I’m a little worried about the mechanization of humorous labor that 30 Rock has been pioneering.  I don’t want to live in some Terminator-like dystopic future in which even our sitcoms are written by machines. 

but “Meet The Woggels!” is thankfully an episode with a soft, squishy heart beating underneath some very sharp jokes about racist Australian children’s entertainers, sexual walkabouts, and inter-generational warfare.

Soft, squishy hearts—these AV Club guys are really fond of their vaguely revolting metaphors.  Remember Todd’s “larger, warmer whole.”  We now have a new contender! The soft, squishy heart.  Maybe that’s what’s inside the “larger, warmer whole.”

Like most episodes of 30 Rock, it was ultimately all about the jokes, but it was also on a fundamental about relationships:

That’s the actual sentence.  So not only is it making a totally asinine point, it’s making it with typos. 
In conclusion, I’d like humbly to suggest two new slogans for the AV Club—the smart folks there can decide between them.

1) The AV Club—where the comedies don’t have jokes
Or,
2) The AV Club—where idiocy and incompetence meet.

And thanks to 30 Rock for seven great seasons.