Alec Baldwin hosts Studio 360

This weekend 30 Rock's Alec Baldwin will try out a new gig, substituting for Kurt Andersen as the guest host of Studio 360, which happens to be one of my favorite radio programs.

Among Baldwin's guests will be actress Laura Linney, who ends her Broadway run Saturday as a scarred war photographer in the play Time Stands Still, by Donald Margulies.

Update: Here's Baldwin's interview with Laura Linney. I think he did a great job. They should have him on again!

Studio 360 is an hourlong arts and culture show out of New York City that's been on the air since 2000. Here's a list of stations that run the program, usually on Saturday or Sunday. You can also listen at the Web site or download it as a podcast.

Andersen, a novelist, often interviews people connected with the theatre. And I highly recommend his series on American icons, examining The Wizard of Oz, Superman and the Lincoln Memorial, among other cultural touchstones.

Here's an interview he did with Bill T. Jones, director and choreographer of the Broadway musical Fela!

"We are the World"

Am I the only one who had an irresistible urge to go to YouTube immediately after watching the 30 Rock season finale?

In 1985, a musical supergroup came together to lend support for famine relief in Africa. Often parodied and often imitated, "We Are the World" remains a classic. Look at how young everyone was!

30 Rock returns

One of my favorite tv shows, 30 Rock, returned this week. Yay! I definitely need some more humor in my life.

The season opener did not disappoint, even though it seemed like the writers were trying to cram an awful lot into a little over 20 minutes. Tina Fey, who certainly has helped make Saturday Night Live must-see tv again this fall, was at the top of her game.

There were some great lines and two hilarious plot strands: Fey's Liz Lemon desperately trying to impress adoption agency representative Megan Mullally, and Alec Baldwin's Jack Donaghy clawing his way back up from the mailroom to the executive suite.

As an extra special bonus, one of my blogging buddies, Kari from Persistent Cookie, has a new gig as the 30 Rock correspondent for Give Me My Remote. It'll be fun having someone to discuss the show with every week. And, we've got Oprah appearing on what I know will be a very special episode. Can it get any better?

In the New York Times, Alessandra Stanley calls 30 Rock a "clever update, not to say rip-off" of The Mary Tyler Moore Show. (And she means that as a compliment, I think!) I can see the parallels: single woman trying to make a career behind the scenes in television, surrounded by a demanding boss and quirky coworkers.

Of course, Tracy Morgan is the vain and self-absorbed Ted Baxter character played by Ted Knight, and Alec Baldwin would be the counterpart to Ed Asner's brusque but kindhearted Lou Grant. But who's Gavin MacLeod's understanding confidante Murray?

America's new top dog

Some things to be happy about today:

Tina Fey will host the first post-strike Saturday Night Live, on Feb. 23. As a big fan of 30 Rock, I'm very excited. Ben Silverman, the co-chairman of NBC Entertainment, told The New York Times, “It’s a political year, so we want to jam it with ‘SNL.’ We hope to have as many as six or eight more this season.” And according to TV Guide.com, there are plans to shoot five or six more episodes of 30 Rock, to air in April and May.

Joel and Ethan Coen are going to make a movie of Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union, a murder mystery set in a fictional Jewish homeland in Alaska. Ok, that book has been sitting in my to-read pile for far too long. Now, I really have to get cracking on it. I hope this revives efforts to film one of Chabon's earlier novels, the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.

In a boost to underdogs everywhere, last night an adorable beagle named Uno became the first of his breed to win best in show at the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show in New York City. His handler, Aaron Wilkerson, said afterward, "He's my best friend."

One more piece of the rock

I was happy to read that one of my favorite series, 30 Rock, is coming back with a fresh episode tonight. Unfortunately, my joy will be shortlived. It's the last show in the can before the writers' strike shut down production.

Here's how the New York Post describes the plot:

Jack (Alec Baldwin) and his new girlfriend, C.C. (Edie Falco), trying to make their long-distance relationship work, all while Jack negotiates a megadeal with a German cable conglomerate.

Liz (Tina Fey), meanwhile, invests in real estate, but first has to deal with the angst-ridden experience of appearing before a co-op board to lobby for an apartment she really wants.

Behind-the-scenes, the always peppy Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) gets hooked on caffeine (he calls it "the devil's temperature") from the cappuccino machine Tracy (Tracy Morgan) buys for his show staffers.

As I've said before, I think 30 Rock is even funnier this year than it was in its first season. The cast seems to find themselves in even more outrageous situations, the writing seems witter, the satire sharper.

Despite winning an Emmy for best comedy last season, 30 Rock has struggled with low ratings. I really think show hit its stride in the fall, and it would be a shame if this week's episode was the last one in a strike-shortened season.

More "30 Rock" love

I loved NBC's "30 Rock" when it debuted last year, and I think the show, which won the Emmy for Best Comedy, is even funnier this year. The writers have really outdone themselves with hilarious plots, some of which definitely have a ripped-from-the-headlines quality to them.

Some of my favorites include the episode where Alec Baldwin's Jack takes over an inner-city Little League team in New York's worst neighborhood (An inspired allegory of the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I kid you not!) and his passionate love affair with a Vermont congresswoman, played by a very funny Edie Falco.

I also laughed very hard at the shows where Tina Fey's Liz suspects that her neighbors across the hall are terrorists, (Hey, if we don't laugh, the terrorists win), when she invites her idol, a comedy writer played by Carrie Fisher, to be a guest writer on the show, and when her family comes for a visit.

I'm already looking forward to buying Season 2 on DVD. I might have to stop by the NBC store on my next trip to New York City to pick up a Kenneth the Page Talking Bobblehead. (With 12 catch phrases!) And there's a great interview with Tracy Morgan on the USA Today blog Pop Candy. Morgan has reached No. 18 on blogger Whitney Matheson's list of the Top 100 People of 2007.

Morgan, despite his spoiled, self-absorbed celebrity persona on "30 Rock," comes across in the interview as a pretty likable guy, and a very caring dad to his three sons. He tells Matheson that although there's some room for improv, the show is largely scripted. Despite the writers' strike, the cast members have been staying in touch. (They all went out for sushi last week).

About the strike, Morgan says, "We're family. We're just gonna ride it out, and we just hope it all gets resolved. We just wanna get back to making good TV, that's all we want to do. I just feel like we're being deprived, and somebody has to think about the humanity and get these people back to work. There's a lot of people out of work right now, and it's really devastating."

I hope the show can get back into production soon. If the first part of the season is any indication, I have a feeling that "30 Rock" is going to have a terrific second half.

Rock solid

At the Emmys, when "30 Rock" co-producer Tina Fey thanked the show's "dozens and dozens" of fans, she was talking about me. Last fall, I started out watching both "30 Rock" and Aaron Sorkin's "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip." While I soon gave up "Studio 60," I stuck with "30 Rock" all season.

For me, Sorkin failed at injecting some drama into the behind-the-scenes machinations at a late-night television program, a la Saturday Night Live. Maybe the subject matter, a sketch-comedy show, is just better suited to, well, a comedy. And "30 Rock" is pretty hilarious. Fey succeeded by making her characters, including Alec Baldwin's hard-charging executive and Tracy Morgan's pampered star, outsized and recognizably human at the same time.

While "30 Rock" garnered lots of critical praise last year, it wasn't quite a bona fide hit with viewers. I'm sure NBC is hoping that its Emmy win as best comedy will help. They've also lined up a series of guest stars, including Jerry Seinfeld last night and Edie Falco, in her first post-Sopranos outing, as a love interest for Baldwin.

So far, the critics are generally optimistic about the show's sophomore season.

USA Today's Robert Bianco calls "30 Rock" "a kind of sketch show version of The Mary Tyler Moore Show — one in which everyone's playing Ted. That can be fun for a while, but eventually sitcom viewers tend to want to root for someone. Fey needs to prove she can give the show a central character who can reliably and empathetically anchor the jokes in place, which is one of the requirements that distinguishes a sitcom from a sketch."

The New York Times' Allesandra Stanley believes that the premiere had "many funny moments but strains too hard to meet heightened expectations." While she says there were some "awkward missteps in the show, "30 Rock" deserves viewers' patience.

The Newark Star-Ledger's Alan Sepinwall, noting Jerry Seinfeld's guest-star turn, calls "30 Rock" "arguably the funniest show NBC's aired since "Seinfeld" ended." Sepinwall concludes that while "broadcast TV in general and NBC in particularly aren't nearly as powerful as they were back in the "Seinfeld" glory days, "30 Rock" is a strong reminder that the networks still have some great shows to offer.''

Newsday's Diane Werts compares the show favorably to Paddy Chayefsky's brilliant skewering of television news in the film "Network." She says that "in an era when so many TV comedies lie there limp, waiting for you to figure what could possibly be funny about all this, "30 Rock" moves. It glides, actually, or maybe hops, from crisp scene to crisp scene."

After the premiere, Fey and Jack McBrayer, who plays Kenneth, the NBC page, hosted an online chat where they answered questions from fans. Fey says she won't be replacing Conan O'Brien in 2009. "I would be terrible at that job! I don't like people and you have to talk to people for that job. I am painfully shy." And as for why Kenneth is always so cheerful, McBrayer divulges this secret: "I smile because Lorne Michaels made me get cheek implants, so I have no choice but to smile! It's in my contract." Who knew!

To hear Fey talk about "30 Rock" and about her groundbreaking role as the first female head writer on "Saturday Night Live," check out this 2006 interview on National Public Radio's "Morning Edition."