'30 Rock' Season 6, Episode 8 Recap - 'The Tuxedo Begins'

Ever wanted to see Alec Baldwin in a cape? Today's your lucky day.

Yes, this episode of "30 Rock" got just weird enough that, for a second or so anyway, Jack Donaghy actually appeared with a flowing Batman cape. It all starts when Jack gets mugged on the way to work, and starts developing a whole new persona: he wears his tux everywhere, becomes even more of a 1%-er than usual, and plans a run for the mayor's office (that last part sound like anyone you know?).

While Jack begins that journey, Liz goes another way: fed up with the lack of decent human respect in New York, Liz starts acting like a crazy old lady after accidentally discovering that wearing a costume from one of the TGS sketches and coughing like crazy on the subway opens up a whole row of seats for her.

This, of course, leads to a confrontation between Liz, who now resembles the Joker, and Jack, whose tuxedo has become something of an emblem, as they argue about order and chaos in the city. And that's when Jack's CGI cape comes in for a second or two (I guess that's all they could afford). It's about as weird as it sounds, but this show has been going in that direction lately. Maybe the writers are just really excited about "The Dark Knight Rises" later this year?

The only people who aren't totally weird this week are Jenna and Paul, who accidentally fall asleep without doing anything weirdly sexual with each other. They take this to be a new fetish, "norming," in which they do things like shop at Bed Bath & Beyond... in front of EVERYONE.

Eventually they learn that they just love each other, Liz learns that people do like rules and order, and Jack regains his manhood by throwing Liz into a pile of garbage. Yeah. It was a weird episode.

Notes & Quotes:

- "Say, where does a young prostitute get started in this town?"

- "Maybe you were asking for it, dressed like that."

- "How black was this dude, on a scale of Lisa Bonnet to Dot-Com?

- "Hopefully it's not an important pard of my blurn!"

- "I'm pregnant with a kitty cat!" "Those are my popsicles!"