30 Rock was indisputably one of the greatest comedies of all time. It might not have been as avant-garde as Arrested Development, as culturally/linguistically timeless and influential as Seinfeld, as deconstructive as Community, as relatable as The Simpsons, as stylistically groundbreaking as The Office, or as incisively satirical as South Park or Chapelle's Show. But 30 Rock blended elements of all of the above while redefining the limits of meta-humor and churning out high-quality jokes at a breakneck pace unparalleled in the ghosts of television past and present. It's my favorite show of all time, which makes it all the more irksome to hear the common refrain that the show "lacks character development". Now, the importance of character development to a sitcom's value is debatable (see: Seinfeld vs. Friends) - and there's no doubt that 30 Rock was more concerned with making a work of comedic art than a character-based comedy. But is it even true that the show lacks conventional character development? Is it really fair to characterize 30 Rock as a pure joke machine with static characters? I would emphatically argue otherwise.
Liz Lemon: We get to know so much about Liz through her work life that it's easy to let her workplace persona consume our characterization of her. I would argue this obscures very real development of Liz's interpersonal relationships. We learn in season 3 that Liz's adolescence was one of isolation and misunderstanding: while it's a bit of a chicken-egg argument whether Liz's snark made her an outcast, or her alienation fermented her caustic wit, the result is Liz developing humor and sarcasm as a defense mechanism. This trait might allow her to flourish as a comedy writer, but it also subverts her at the worst possible times during many of her informal interactions. More to the point, Liz's succession of boyfriends reveal the very real insecurities behind her constant self-effacement. It almost becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy that Liz can't do better than the likes of Dennis/Drew/Wesley, and when she does either fate refuses to cooperate (Floyd), the relationship catalyzes a volatile erruption of sexual demons (Carroll) or it literally is too good to be true (Astronaut Mike Dexter).
With 30 Rock's ability to craft successful jokes, it would be easy to let stick Liz into this stasis for #7SeasonsAndAMovie but this show never took the easy way out. Our 6th season brought us Criss Chros, the only multi-season Lemon fling who was a genuine character that merited emotional attachment above that towards a mere plot device. Criss, for all his faults, never allowed Liz to coast on her insecurities and aversion to commitment, whether that be in form of admitting love or following through on adoption. We as viewers were often conditioned to believe that TGS was Liz's home and its cast/staff her children - and it's to 30 Rock's credit that the show never allowed its female lead to be defined by socially imposed expectations of domesticity. But it also represented a slick piece of character definition to first expose then blossom Liz's ability and desire to nurture a kid (or ultimately, kids) in her own image just as she did with Tracy and Jenna. Truthfully, I'm glad Liz didn't change too drastically from the underground comedy nerd who prefers working on her night cheese over taking oxygen shots at all the Brooklyn clubs, but Liz's growth as a more balanced, nurturing character was a well-struck emotional chord.
Jack Donaghy: On the surface Jack Donaghy is the stock shark you probably loved to hate in 2008. He's also an honest-to-god Horatio Alger Jr. character who truly believes that success is purely a function of work and that laissez-faire capitalism creates the most deserved and socially efficient distribution of utility. This mentality is to a large degree self-serving, but it's also informed by his story of overcoming barriers erected emotionally (by his mother) and financially (by his lack of a father) - if Jack can work the day shift at the cemetary and graveyard shift at the days inn to pay through Princeton, then why can't everyone spin the free market into the American dream? Colleen Donaghy had to be ruthless and opportunistic to survive - she made sure that Jack acquired these traits via both Darwinian and Lamarckian means, which may have benefited him in the climb up the mountain but isn't as useful at the peak. That's why it's so important that Jack eventually meet the TGS gang.
Pre-NBC Jack had no time for the sort of empathy and generosity required to therapize Tracy, buy Jenna's way into her mother's heart, and attempt to push Frank towards self-actualization. Jack always understood what it means to grow up with an abrasive mother and absentee father, but seeing others' plight first hand motivated him to spread his sympathy symbiotically. For as much knowledge as Jack might have passed to Liz, without absorbing a bit of her humility his relationships with Celeste Cunningham, Elisa Pedrera, Nancy Donovan, Avery Jessup and Hank Hooper would've disintegrated before they even materialized. Kenneth is the one person in the world whose tell Jack could never read, which makes him the perfect person to teach Jack that sometimes it's ok to do the right thing over the profitable thing. It's a sign of true progress that Jack would outwit his rival via a heartfelt birthday card, and then use the resulting gains to give NBC to the simple pig farmer who happens to love television - as episode 100 reminds us, the pilot, pre-Lemon Jack would never mix such compassion and business Denoting Jack's contemporary hallucination as "sideways" Jack is one of the great misdirects the show has ever done - it implies that sideways-Jack veered off laterally, when the reality is that the Jack we know and love took a brilliantly developed detour from the trajectory he was on in the pilot.
Jenna Maroney: Jenna is shallow, narcissistic, manipulative, insecure, and bonkers. Or is she? Ok, well yeah, she is. But a little open-mindedness goes a long way towards understanding Jenna's frail psyche - the root of which we finally get to see when we meet Verna Maroney. Jenna's more similar to Jack than the first three seasons would lead us to believe - Jenna is also a rags-to-riches success whose exacting, abrasive, and in Jenna's case avaricious, mother and nonexistent father lit a fire in her belly that rocketed her to the top but also left its share of scars. Perhaps Jenna's lack of parental affection doesn't excuse all of her actions, but it at least earns some understanding of the constant attention and acceptance she craves from herself and others to compensate.
Given Jenna's self-absorption, it was reasonable to assume a give-and-take long-term relationship wasn't in the cards - until Paul came around. Of course, the obvious caveat is that Jenna falling for Paul is a corollary to Jenna once again falling for herself, this time quite literally. But it's still a significant step forward for the old Jenna Maroney to acknowledge someone else as being worthy of her name and face, let alone her love and affection. Jenna's relationship with Paul may have started out as an affair with herself, but ultimately it forces her to adapt and grow in ways that the enablers in her show business career never did. It takes a lot for Jenna to accept Paul's need for other celebrity impressionist forms of self-expression, cooperate with his requests for occasional normal-ling, and ultimately realize that she's happier committing to Paul than engaging on a sexual walk-a-bout - because all these breakthroughs require Jenna Maroney loving somebody else more than she loves herself.
Tracy Jordan: One of my favorite parts of 30 Rock was the way in which they endlessly leveraged redundancies in human language that arose from literal interpretations of colloquialisms to carry out sublime puns. It's thus fitting that Tracy was the best at delivering these misdirects given how often he zagged when expected to zig. He's a devoted family man who preserves his marriage by having dozens of fake affairs (vicariously through Brian Williams). He's a target of the Black Crusaders who also perfectly delivers some of the show's stunningly trenchant quips on race, especially in the entertainment and corporate world (my guess is the crusaders never watched "The C-Word" when they went after him). He's often guilty of female objectification yet treats Sue with the respect and care of a daughter when added to the entourage. The most notable change in Tracy's characterization is related to his EGOT career and critical acclaim, which ironically traces back to the one constant in his life: his childhood. Starting from the pilot we learn about Tracy's rough neighborhood and single-parent home - for a while, he literally can't talk about it, often through willful forgetfulness. But this only serves to make his accomplishments in producing "Hard to Watch", about said childhood and neighborhood, all the more remarkable - i mean, he made Jenna Maroney's heart grow two sizes (And i guess the Oscar was decent)! Given how quickly his stock rose and how out of place he was among the posh yuppies of film's snobbish upperground, it's not hard to see why he burnt out and felt the need to "escape" to Africa and return to the television show within the television show (that helped raise TV's stature in relation to film in the critical/artistic world). But at least this introspection helped Tracy overcome his mental block to communicating the effect of the past on the present! It's a truly heartwarming moment when Tracy explains to Liz how his father's abandonment left him wary of goodbyes - in part because of how painfully resonant his words are on their own, but also because Tracy no longer needs Jack to be his mouthpiece when discussing his relationship with his father.
