30 Rock, How I Will Miss You

Since it was the debut of 30 Rock that first inspired this blog, it seems only right to post about its end. Before 30 Rock and Liz Lemon, I never knew there were other women out there like me, who loved Star Wars and ham, who often didn't know which part of the dress was "front" and who would much rather stay home and watch "Mad Men" than go to any weird parties where people talked to each other.   What a relief to discover I was not alone.

And then to find out that this show was not just a great piece of news for my self-esteem but also ridiculously inventive, brilliant and breathtakingly funny -- well, how fabulous was that?

I will admit with shame that I skipped a season or two somewhere during 30 Rock's run, when it seemed that the humor had become less clever and inventive and more cold and mean...and not funny. Which was kind of a deal breaker. Call me old fashioned but I like my humor funny.

So I've been quietly compiling this last season on my DVR, wondering if I should even jump back into the pool. But then the reviews for the finale started coming in and fueled by nostalgia, I got up at 5 a.m., put on my earphones and watched it in the bathroom where my sleeping son wouldn't sense me playing with what he has clearly decided is his iPhone. (This is how I watch TV now. It takes me six days to watch a whole Castle between brushing my teeth and flossing.)

All of this is my long, out of practice way of saying the 30 Rock finale was perfect in every way imaginable. There was a Brian Williams joke. Great Tracy Jordan jokes. Pitch perfect satirical tear-down of mommy message boards. Lutz finally got his revenge (Blimpies!), Kenneth proved his immortality and even Jenna was funny, as she finally experienced heartbreak with the removal of her dressing room mirror. But best of all, there was my dear Jack Donaghy's shipboard confession of platonic love -- a speech that managed to be poetic, beautiful, charming and still include the phrase "scale bone mountain." Everything I had loved about 30 Rock was perfectly encapsulated in that one short scene.

I will miss you, 30 Rock. But I promise you this -- I will use the word "hogcock" in a sentence (out loud and not just in my head) at least once this year. It's the least I can do for a show that gave me so much.

Odds and Ends: TV renewals galore, the Martha Stewart of Star Trek interiors, 19th-century robots and Tracy Jordan

+ The verdicts came in on a whole bunch of nerd-favorite TV shows this week and, well, there's good news and there's bad news. But mostly, good news! Going against fate and all things holy, "Dollhouse" actually got renewed for a full second season. Of course, it'll still be trapped on Friday nights but goodness, who among us really thought FOX would renew a Whedon show in our lifetimes? Now I know how people felt when we went to the Moon for the first time. In other good news, "Castle" got renewed as well, prompting Nathan Fillion to tweet, "I can't remember the last time I had a second season of ANYTHING. I don't know if I remember what to do. Step one: go to Canada. Relax." Step Two? "See Star Trek a second time." In other news, "Bones" got renewed for two seasons and "The Big Bang Theory" will return next year as well -- not a shock there! And now for the bad news, "The Sarah Connor Chronicles" got canceled. I didn't really watch the show, but the absence of robots from the TV screen is a loss any way you look at it.

+ This man in Leicestershire, England has turned his flat into a dead-on replica of the "Star Trek: Next Generation" Enterprise. The newscaster sounds shocked that it cost him four thousand pounds -- given the detail, I'm astonished it cost that little.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

+ io9 has an interesting item about William Douglas O'Connor, friend of Walt Whitman and apparently the author of the first "robot revolution" story. Called "The Brazen Android," it revolves around the creation of an omniscient brass head. The story, which was started in 1857, is available in its entirety as an audio book here.

+ And finally, to brighten your day, a list of everything Tracey Jordan has said this season on "30 Rock." My personal favorite? “I watched Boston Legal 9 times before I realized it wasn’t a new Star Trek.” Hee.