30 Rock is back, people. I thought the first two episodes of this season were just okay, but this week’s installment is chock-full of laughs and great story lines. Liz is still searching for a new cast memeber for TGS, and Jack insists she find the person in the “real America,” which means a trip to Kenneth’s hometown, Stone Mountain, Georgia. (Although, we learn that when his family first came to America, they lived in a town called “Sexcriminalboat.”) As Liz and Jack roadtrip down South, Liz talks about her sandwich-based theory of humanity. Of course, it’s a sandwich containing deep-fried bits of pig that keeps her praying to porcelain god during most of the trip. So Jack scouts at the local comedy club and finds—and hires—ventriloquist Rick Wayne and his dummy, Pumkin. He then proves Liz’s point that everyone is the same all over the country (the point being that, everyone is pretty much an asshole), and the ventriloquist never makes it to the TGS set. Jack McBrayer makes another cameo this week, as woman in the audience of the comedy club (I’m assuming she must be Kenneth’s cousin or something). The camera cut to this character way too much. It would’ve been a better gag if we just noticed her in the background. After his appearance in last week’s “Microwave” song flashback, I’m wondering if we can look forward to McBrayer cameos more often. It’ll be like playing “Where’s Waldo” each week!

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Tonight, both NBC comedies Community and Parks and Recreation have Halloween-themed episodes—which might render them dubious propositions, but the former, at least, is worth watching while you think about the concept for your Halloween costume. The quick-witted comedy about community college students is pulling out of its pilot stage and into the pure pleasure zone. Chevy Chase, who I worried might be underutilized or never fit in on Community, is hitting his stride tonight when the gang of oddballs at the school throw a Halloween/Day of the Dead party.  In this episode, Chase echoes his role in Modern Problems, which, if you haven’t seen it, is essential rental viewing. And Joel McHale’s selfish, shallow Jeff ends up showing a bit more substance, which doesn’t render the show quaint so much as realistic—and lends Jeff a bit more believability. There is something life-affirming about the collection of kooks that one meets in community college—I can even vouch for that. Oddly enough, the show is starting to play less silly and is the better for it. One of the best things about this comedy is that it never wastes a minute. There’s nothing so much as a subplot in the densely joke-riddled Community, but that’s just fine with me—it never has to awkwardly switch gears, it moves too fast.

Community airs tonight at 7pm on NBC.

Okay, last night’s episode had some great lines, but I thought the episode in general was a little all over the place and, as a whole, not super hilarious. I can usually count on at least five of my Facebook friends including a 30 Rock quote in their status updates the morning after a new episode airs, but these past two weeks? Nothing. Is the best comedy on television losing steam? It’s a little too early to tell.

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Perhaps you are a Pythoniac from way back (guilty as charged), perhaps you enjoyed the comedy group’s reunion on Jimmy Fallon earlier this week (missed it), perhaps you have no idea what I am talking about (you didn’t hang out with the smart kids in study hall, obviously). Those of us who can recite the Dead Parrot sketch in our sleep (”Remarkable bird, the Norwegian Blue, idn’it, ay? Beautiful plumage!”) should be psyched—and well, we are because what else is on, anyway? Football, Mad Men? IFC gives the seminal comedy outfit its due tonight with the first installment of the six-part Monty Python: Almost the Truth (Lawyer’s Cut) a behind-the-scenes history of the series (October 18–23 at 8pm) which includes incredible background on the group and the origins of the show, the evolution of the sketches, in-fighting and its eventual disintegration. There are remarkable interviews with John Cleese (who reveals that his family name was Cheese before his father changed it), Terry Gilliam and the gang—archival interviews with Graham Chapman are even enlightening. The Python party continues with episodes from the original season one starting tonight at 10:30pm with Python films sandwiched in between at 9pm—tonight it is Live at the Hollywood Bowl. I would write more, but I need a few minutes to practice my silly walk.

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Watch Monty Python’s team on stage in a recent Q&A discussion.

There’s one question I’ve been asking myself since its second season premiered two years ago: What the hell happened to Rachel Dratch??? In the original, unaired pilot, Dratch played Jenna (a role now brilliantly played by Jane Krakowski) but once the series aired, she was regulated to cameos in each episode. One week she was a butch cat wrangler, the next Barbara Walters. It was fun waiting to see who Rachel would be each week, but by the second season she was gone forever.

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When in Rome... Betty becomes someone else.

I’ve been putting off this post. I’ve been worried that exclaiming over the fragile, lovely thing that is a well-made Mad Men episode might scare the delicate little creature off. But since writing a few weeks ago that the first six episodes of the third season had me wondering if the writers had lost the plot, I’ve found the last three episodes satisfying. Okay: very satisfying.

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I screened the first four episodes of season three of Californication, which premeries Sunday on Showtime, after stumbling into a motel room from various intoxicating events at last week’s Kentucky Bourbon Festival. And that’s exactly how this show should be viewed–half in the bag and in a whimsical state of mind. Star David Duchovny, now a year removed from his stint in sex-addiction rehab, remains the perfect actor to inhabit the role of Hank Moody (and he’s got the Golden Globe to prove it), a be-careful-what-you-wish-for wish-fulfillment fantasy for guys who find the notion of being a witty, celebrated, layabout novelist who puts the “lay” in L.A. while smoking his weight in weed and grooving to Warren Zevon somehow appealing.

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Fox canceled Family Guy in middle of the show’s third season. Some probably wish the decision had stuck. But in one of the great Lazarus stories of television history, the button-pushing, flashback-happy cartoon roared back thanks to fan protest and DVD sales. Now it’s on approximately 58 times a night.

It took me, and I’m guessing most of America (and especially the executives at Fox), several years to warm to the show. Or at least submit to it. The animation got better. The Simpsons got a little worse. It’s only competition is Robot Chicken and Two and a Half Men. I watch a lot of TV. Why not Family Guy?

So as a moderate watcher of the original, I can report that Guyaholics should be satisfied by The Cleveland Show. It’s basically more of the same, and nowhere near as unwatchable as American Dad. All the Seth MacFarlane tropes remain—holding on shots that aren’t funny at all for painful lengths until they beg for a chuckle; race jokes; toon nudity; talking animals; mocking the disadvantaged, etc.

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