Workin' on my night cheese: 30 ROCK returns tonight!

30 Rock has a lot to live up to when its 4th season premieres tonight on NBC. Still an award-winning critical darling and heir to Arrested Development's you're-just-not-clever-enough-to-get-us audience, the ratings-challenged show returns to a beleaguered network that recently canceled a critically acclaimed series to make room for five nights of Jay Leno. As Tina Fey put it in her Emmy acceptance speech this year: "We want to thank our friends at NBC for keeping us on the air even though we are so much more expensive than a talk show."

"Tweaking the network that carries it is one of the many pleasures of 30 Rock,” writes Alessandra Stanley of the New York Times, "and right now pointed jabs at corporate blunders and executive misdoings are all the more apt and amusing."

Indeed, 30 Rock is at its best when it digs its teeth in and focuses on smart corporate satire and character development. Last season was admittedly a little uneven, relying far too heavily on stunt casting while ignoring many of its extremely talented regulars. NPR's Linda Holmes offers some spot-on advice for how season four can steer clear of those pratfalls. If such advice is heeded, we could easily be looking at a fourth Emmy for Best Comedy Series in 2010. I can't speak for everyone, but I want to go to there.

NBC renews its commitment to killing television.

I've wanted to blog about Southland's cancellation for days, but it's been a busy week. In the meantime, NPR's Monkey See blog already captured my complete sentiments better than I ever could: "With 'Southland' Axed, NBC's Depressing Surrender Is Almost Complete."

Easily one of the best mid-season replacements of the spring, Southland was the first primetime drama on NBC since West Wing worth more than a passing glance (I count the promising-but-flawed first season of Heroes as just such a "glance") and almost made up for the Boomtown fiasco. I was wary to commit to Southland at first, but when NBC announced that it was picking up the show for the fall, I breathed a sigh of relief.

The problem, however, is that NBC simultaneously gave up on the 10pm time-slot by programming five hours of Leno per week. After producing just six episodes of the new season, NBC decided the show was too gritty for 9pm and summarily canceled the show before those six episodes even had an opportunity to air.

This all boils down to a fact most of us have known for some time: Jay Leno is bad for the production industry. Bad for writers, bad for crews, and bad for creatives across the board. Meanwhile, Leno continues to laugh his way to the bottom of the ratings.