30 Rock: “I Do Do” (4.22)

“I Do Do” picks up right where last week’s episode ended, with Liz still in the middle of stalling for Jack and him trying to explain to Nancy Donovan. Before she’s left the stage, Jack has made his decision to stay with her and she goes along with it. This is only the beginnig of the episode, though, and we’ve got to fill the rest of it goshdarnitt! Before long, she runs into Avery Jessup at one of the day’s later weddings and things go awry. Apparently Jessup is pregnant and sees fit to reveal this fact to Nancy in a bathroom, because that’s what you do sometimes or something. So Nancy comes out, confronts Jack with the truth and he turns around and chooses to stay with Jessup for good. The cynic in me suspects that this came about largely because Elizabeth Banks’ schedule isn’t quite as busy as Julianne Moore’s, but in any case we’ve finally got a definitive answer: Jack will be staying with Jessup and her newly announced future child. The show pulled the big pregnancy twist and somehow it doesn’t seem nearly as contrived on-screen as it does in this description.
Also skipping between weddings and struggling to figure out her romantic future is Liz, who skips out on the mediocere British guy for a pilot played by Matt Damon, who’s kind of like astronaut Mike Dexter but better. All of her high standards are rectified by this upstanding individual, who not only has the same disdain for humanity as Liz, he’s also also everything else she could have wished for. Take that, completely unlikable Wesley Snipes. Liz has magically hit the metaphorical jackpot and wound up with the perfect guy—who can wait to see how this ends horribly at the beginning of next season?
Then, in a plot that has little to do with any of this but is an enjoyable diversion nonetheless, Kenneth finds out first that he’s being promoted, then that he’s being transferred to L.A., then finally that he’s lost his job due to self-sabotage in an attempt to stay in New York. Kenneth trying to do a poor job as a page is entertaining, but him drunkenly (on what, exactly, since he doesn’t drink?) telling everyone off and in fact showing his love is even better.