“Cleveland” spoilers below:

Things that happened

Floyd the Flower Guy is up for a promotion, but loses it to Alan Grackel, a black guy in a wheel chair. This is a good life lesson for all: you will always lose when you are up against a handicapped visible minority. Always. The frustration of losing this promotion, as well as the frustrations of living in New York — Floyd the Flower Guy and Liz get searched on the subway, watch an old lady make derogative gestures, watch another old lady be violated and watch a man spit into Liz’s mouth – gives Floyd the inspiration to take a vacation back home, to Cleveland. Liz isn’t really for it, but work is insane, Jack is insane and Tracy is insane, so to avoid all that, she goes.

Jack is so in love with Phoebe, he whisked her off to Paris, where their love life is a little lackluster. As in, he fell asleep during sex. He wants to make it up to Phoebe, so he spends his background scenes finding ‘drugs’ for ‘Tracy’ and convinces Liz to take Phoebe out on a girls’ day, complete with the never-present Jenna. Phoebe and Liz don’t really get along, which was expected. What was not expected: Phoebe is a gold-digging American whore. On a night she can’t go out with Jack, Jack’s assistant gets Liz to follow Phoebe who is ‘lecturing’ at ‘Columbia’. Really, she’s dating an 85 year old man. When Phoebe confronts Liz about this, the truth is semi-revealed. Only semi, because in all actuality, Liz comes across as a crazy jealous girl.

Tracy is trying to finance his ‘brilliant’ film Jefferson. The bank turned him down. Also, Michael MacDonald refuses to let Tracy cover his songs and Temple University canceled a speaking engagement. Why any university would want Tracy — who was once thought to be illiterate and didn’t know what an anagram was until this episode – is beyond me. This leads Tracy to the only logical conclusion: The Black Crusaders are after him!! The Black Crusaders are a secret society of important African-Americans whose sole purpose is to stomp down African-Americans who give black people a bad name. All this turmoil causes Tracy to turn off all six of his cell phones, quit TGS and go to Cleveland, where he will never be heard from again.

While Liz and Floyd the Flower Guy are in Cleveland, they have a super amazing time, complete with its own musical montage. Floyd also gets a job offer and finds a house. He asks Liz to come with him. She seriously considers it, but after retuning to the insanity of NYC, she decides against it. Floyd takes the job anyways. Uh-oh.

Will Jack find out the truth about Phoebe? Will Tracy ever be safe from the Black Crusaders? Will Floyd and Liz try the long distance thing? We’ll have to tune in next week to see!

Things that were good

• As my good friend (and by good friend, I mean harshest critic) Myles pointed out last week, this show is getting harder and harder to watch as stand-alone episodes. I want to know the answers to those questions.
• I also really want to go to Cleveland now.
• I felt Jenna was used appropriately in this episode—she played a good foiler for Liz without being overly annoying. However, she is still far too “blonde” and one-dimensional to be worthy than any more screen time than this.
• I’m glad Phoebe is shaping up to be evil! I felt it last week, and now I feel vindicated!

Things that were not so good

• Yes, this show is drawing you back week to week, but some of the stuff that goes on is a little too wonky for my liking — especially with them continuing from week to week. Phoebe, with her short-term memory and hollow bones makes a great one- date deal for Jack, but Phoebe with her short term memory and hollow bones makes a tiresome recurring gag.
• I want to see more of the writer’s room and more of Kenneth!!
• The SNL influence of Fey’s writing is really evident with the supporting and recurring characters — she is doing a good job with Jack and with herself, but the characters surrounding them still feel too much like bits. I love them, but they are bits. I don’t know yet if this is because of Fey’s limitations as a television writer or because of their lack of screen time. I also feel this show would work better as a more ensemble-type set-up — not unlike The Office has currently — as opposed to all-Liz-all-the-time.
• This episode was okay. Not great, not terrible, just okay. There needs to be more innovation from episode to episode. It already feels like Fey is falling back on shticks and Alec Baldwin’s performance to carry mediocrity to memory-lane.

Worth watching if….

….this episode set up a lot of new, potentially complicated and hopefully rewarding plot lines. If you plan to watch any more of 30 Rock between now and the season finale, you should probably start with this one. Also, if you haven’t started watching this show at all, the plots building up to this episode are relatively simple and you’ll catch on in 30 seconds. However, this is probabyl make or break time for this show — they can either coast to the end, with decent but unremakrable epiodes like this, or step it up and end the season with a bang.

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