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30 Rock: "Corporate Crush" Review - IGN

  • ️Robert Canning
  • ️Tue May 15 2012

As Jack falls for Floyd, Liz becomes the third wheel.

With the solid episode "Corporate Crush," 30 Rock seems to have hit its storytelling stride. Instead of the stand-alone episodes that populated the first half of the season, the last few outings have provided several continuous plotlines, mostly centered on Liz and Floyd's burgeoning relationship. As a result, each new episode continues to build the 30 Rock world into a place you're eager to return to each week to see what has developed.
This episode started with three major plotlines carried over from last week: Liz and Floyd have started dating, Jack's salute to fireworks has backfired and Tracy has come to terms with being a descendant of Thomas Jefferson. Seeing Liz and Floyd together as a couple was beyond adorable. They were clearly made for each other, with their senses of humor fitting together like a ball and glove. Better still, the scenes showing us what a perfect couple they have become were brilliantly realistic and relatable, especially the "reverse, reverse, skip, draw four" lay down of their two-person Uno game. Putting Liz's personal life into the forefront was a smart move. (Does anyone even remember what "TGS" stands for?) An added benefit of this has been a lot less screen time for the not-quite-sure-what-to-do-with-this-character Jenna Maroney.

Jack, meanwhile, suffered the results of his botched fireworks spectacular and had control of the microwave division taken away from him. It was then suggested by his boss, (Rip Torn again as Don Geiss), that part of Jack's problem may be that he was the only unmarried executive in their division. This sent Jack into a depression which sent him into Christie's auction house-- he goes to Sbarro when he's angry, the New York Stock Exchange when he's horny. There, he runs into Phoebe-- an avian bone syndrome sufferer-- who had once helped Jack sell off his ex-wife's jewelry. Phoebe clearly has a thing for Jack and it's easy to see these two will eventually be paired up.

Tina Fey as Liz Lemon
But first, Jack found himself crushing on everybody's new favorite man: Floyd. Floyd isn't just perfect for Liz, he's perfect for, well… everybody. With Jack in his weakened state, he was quick to latch on to Liz's beau. The "unwelcome third wheel" is a fairly standard sitcom device, but as 30 Rock has done so masterfully in the past, it was given several fresh twists. The best by far was Jack's incessant text messaging that escalated to unwanted phone calls to then suddenly being at the front door of Liz's building. The writing and timing of that sequence was one of the best things any half-hour sitcom has done all year.

The only disappointment in this episode was Tracy's pursuit of getting his Thomas Jefferson movie into production. He utilized the staff to produce a trailer as a way to entice Don Geiss to invest in the project. This had potential, but the execution was weak. Tracy insists on producing and releasing the film himself, so we hope things become funnier as this story continues.

In the end, Jack gets over his man-crush and is swept away by the fragile Phoebe ("Careful, my bones."). Then in a surprising move, Jack asks her to marry him. As utterly disastrous as this marriage would likely be, we're dying to see what a Donaghy wedding would look like. As we near the season finale, we're happy to see that 30 Rock has begun their drive towards a big finish.

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30 Rock

30 Rock: "Corporate Crush" Review

Official IGN Review