NBC's '30 Rock' lives it up with a live episode

NEW YORK — "30 Rock" went live. Thank goodness for film.

This much-hyped, much-awaited departure into live-ness was a one-time-only (one hopes) stunt by "30 Rock," which any other week is one of TV's funniest shows.

Instead, last Thursday's episode was an overheated slice of self-indulgence and excess. It was "30 Rock" transformed into a shrill, gags-filled sitcom, complete with a studio audience roaring its approval.

Any other week, the zany intricacies of this NBC comedy make a half-hour episode seem like a comedic Swiss watch or ship in a bottle.

Instead, the live version of "30 Rock" seemed vaudevillian.

Was it meant to be a sitcom parody, an ironic send-up of the sort of comedy show most "30 Rock" fans would scorn?

As one sitcom chestnut, the episode found Liz Lemon (the harried producer of a variety show, played by Tina Fey) upset because she was turning 40, and no one remembered. Sound familiar?

Meanwhile, Tracy Jordan (the flighty star of Lemon's variety show, played by Tracy Morgan) wanted to burst out laughing during the show-within-a-show, because "breaking character" was what the stars of "The Carol Burnett Show" used to do and their audience loved it.

And Jack Donaghy (the slithery network boss, played by Alec Baldwin) was suffering because he'd pledged to stop drinking and wasn't happy to be sober.

"Does it seem weird in here to you?" Donaghy asked Lemon at the top of the show as they stood in his office.

Maybe he was asking because, for a change, he was sober. Maybe he was asking because the world he was inhabiting looked different from the filmic look of "30 Rock" any other week: "Everything looks like a Mexican soap opera," he said.

In any case, the studio audience howled. The show was off and running.

Originating from Studio 8-H (home of "Saturday Night Live"), this live "30 Rock" seemed like an unfortunate mashup of itself and "SNL."

Being live, it accommodated at least one topical (though not very funny) exchange.

"The Chilean miners are all out, and they're very angry about what you've been saying about them," Kenneth the Page (Jack McBrayer) told Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski), the vain co-star of Lemon's variety show.

"So I guess they're geniuses for getting stuck in a mine!" Jenna snorted.