30 Rock: Season 7

So here's the final shortened season of 30 Rock, a show about which I've written plenty over the years. Suffice it to say, the final season hit all the right notes and the show went out on top, which is more than too many other shows can say, particularly after seven years. Which reminds me - seven years? I know I jumped into 30 Rock two years in, but still, where did those seven years go? With most other long-tenured shows, you can recall them in chunks and eras. Casting changes, tonal shifts, memorably good or bad story arcs. None of this is the case with 30 Rock, which from start to finish has been a gag-a-minute show with consistent characterization and very little aspiration to be anything beyond funny. I don't mean that negatively, either. Some of the funniest shows on TV - Always Sunny, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The League, and Archer, to name a few - strive for humor without even a hint of heart. But those shows are all on cable networks. Maybe it's not even a fair comparison, as the people in those shows are, for the most part, rotten to the core, while those in this show are simply cartoonish. All I'm saying is that 30 Rock never tugged on heartstrings the way many of its basic network peers (The Office, Modern Family, Parks and Recreation, Scrubs - hell, even Community) did or still do. This was a workplace comedy without any workplace romances, a smart sitcom that was as comfortable going for obscure reference gags as it was schilling out lowbrow slapstick.

It was never my favorite show on television, and realistically I only ever gave it a chance because I watched so much other Thursday night TV and felt like bridging the gap between 9:30 and 10:00 in my pre-DVR days. I will not "miss" 30 Rock in any sense of the word this upcoming year. I never thought the show was worthy of the sheer extent of praise and love it received, particularly from the Emmys, but hey, that's TV people loving TV shows about TV people for you. Still, here I sit after seven seasons, and I can't really think of a negative thing to say about 30 Rock. That's not true. The first season was terrible. But growing pains aside, that's six quality seasons from a show that never wore out its welcome. The list of shows that can boast the same accomplishment is very small indeed. The Sopranos? Breaking Bad, if you consider its two-part fifth season to be two separate seasons? I dunno, anyone out there have any others for the list?