“25 Super-Hot Moms, 50 Eighth-Grade Boys.  No Rules.”

This is the premise of Jack Donaghy's fictional NBC summer reality series, MILF Island, whose season finale is the focus of tonight's post-strike return of 30 Rock.  MILF Island is a sad commentary on the current state of network reality fare and it produces unspeakable hilarity in 30 Rock's triumphant return.  Would MILF Island, hypothetically, be any more morally reprehensible than The Moment of Truth or A Shot of Love at Tila Tequila?  Probably not, and this makes the episode that much better.  What we see of MILF Island is quite Survivor-esque (instead of extinguishing the losing MILF's torch, for instance, the MILF's must burn their bikini tops), with most of the action taking place at “tribal council.”  It's good to have 30 Rock back.

Jack Donaghy happily watches his brain child's season finale, expecting a call of congratulations from Don Geiss.  He gleefully wonders aloud if Geiss will call him “Jackie Boy” on the phone.  Everything is going great for Jack, who believes MILF Island's success will put him in the pole position to take over Geiss's job, except for one thing: a gossip blurb from that morning that has one of TGS's employees tearing Jack to shreds.  The blurb, which came in the papers that morning, comes from an anonymous source, and Jack employs Liz Lemon to find out who said these cruel things.

Liz tries to find out which one of her employees made the statements, but to no avail.  Kenneth, however, knows exactly who said them: it was Liz.  Once Liz realizes it was indeed her, she has a crisis of conscience: should she confess or try to pin the blame on one of her writers.  The rest of the episode involves every TGS employee taken away from their joint MILF Island viewing party and sent to sweat it out outside of Jack's office. 

30 Rock is one of those anti-sitcom sitcoms that succeeds in part because of Tina Fey's willingness to be unredeemable at times.  She's human, she doesn't always do the right thing, and as a result 30 Rock feels realistic despite revolving an episode around something called MILF Island.  Alec Baldwin is always in fine form, and his childish giddiness in receiving Geiss's praise and forcing Lemon's confession is awesome.  All in all, a very successful return for 30 Rock.


-Oscar Dahl, BuddyTV Senior Writer
(Image Courtesy of NBC)