'30 Rock' Season 6, Episode 15 Recap - 'The Shower Principle'

"30 Rock" is by no means a bad show. It is, however, a show in the middle of its sixth season, and it is starting to show the occasional signs of aging. Some of the storylines seem similar to those of past episodes. The characters always repeat the same mistakes and, with a few exceptions as of that past few episodes, generally don't learn from those mistakes and change. But can you blame the writers? They've been doing this for six seasons.

That may have been the inspiration for "The Shower Principle," both on Jack's and on Liz' side of the story. Liz finds herself in a perpetual rut when she goes to do her taxes: her accountant reminds her that over the past three years, or more, she has come in with almost the same story. To be fair, she has gone from buying a deep fryer to make onion rings to eating the lettuce underneath said onion rings, but still she complains that it's "the same thing every year."

Sure enough, she is able to predict with accuracy, based on her journal entries from last year, which problems she will get from Jenna and Tracy, and she "pre-solves" them with varying degrees of success. This even allows her to meditate... with varying degrees of success.

She is interrupted by Jack, who is dealing with his own problem: he needs his "shower moment." He has to come up with an idea for Kabletown to grow it into the mega conglomerate that he wants it to be, but in using the "shower principle"--that is, attempting to distract one's self in order to allow the brain to come up with the proper inspiration--he comes up short.

Soon, he realizes that he needs Liz to give him his shower moment (no, not like that), as he is usually inspired when he is distracted by solving all of her problems, like which shows to DVR. That gets him to realize that the solution is to make Kabletown couches (I can only assume they'll be Kabletown Kouches, because K sounds are hilarious), for some serious vertical integration.

Kenneth attempts to get his page job back (prompting another "we've already done all of this!" from Liz), but it doesn't look like he'll be getting it quite yet... especially not with Kristin Schaal killing it as the new page, Hazel. Her character is really starting to come together as the writers find her quirks, one of which includes trying to convince Jenna that she's cursed in order to become the new best friend to Liz.

So, was this a complaint from the writers? An admission of guilt? A commiseration with fans that yes, we realize that we're sometimes treading well-worn territory with these storylines? Perhaps all of the above are true.

Notes & Quotes:

- "Have I never washed this sweater?"

- 5now Dog5. Awesome.

- "Meditate perfectly!" --Jack, meditating

- "Is he going to murder me? Eh, okay."

Frank's hats of the week: Emoticon Illiterate