2. Cancellation of the day: Sorry, Kate Gosselin, your money train is at an end, as TLC has just canceled " Kate Plus 8."  Don't worry, I'm sure you will find other ways to exploit your children for cash ... maybe have the younger ones try out for "Toddlers & Tiaras"?

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At a gala for the National Dance Institute Tuesday night, Alec Baldwin told Vulture, "I will tell you one thing. And that is our show next year is our last year of the show." Baldwin has repeatedly maintained his intention to jump ship when his contract expires next year, but this was the first public mention of the entire works going belly up. "Our contracts are expired [in 2012], and Tina is gonna have a big career directing films and writing. She's going to be the next Elaine May. She'll be great," Baldwin said.

Fey, who's got enough Emmys, Golden Globes and Mark Twain awards to suggest that she doesn't need to aspire to anybody else's career, certainly has plenty she can do outside of the Liz Lemon domain. The New York Times this week called her new book, "Bossypants," "dagger-sharp" and "extremely funny." She was in two movies last year, as a beleaguered bridge-and-tunnel type in "Date Night" and as the voice of Roxanne Ritchie in "Megamind." She's an accomplished screenwriter and producer. Baldwin's right, even if absolutely nothing else she's ever done -- and I'm including "Mean Girls" here -- touches the genius of "30 Rock," she'll still be great.

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"If you want to make an audience laugh, you dress a man up like an old lady and push her down the stairs. If you want to make comedy writers laugh, you push an actual old lady down the stairs."

That was Tina Fey in 2004, talking to Virginia Heffernan in the New Yorker about how mean the writers of "Saturday Night Live" could be. At the time, how could readers have known what we know now -- thanks to the multiple glowing reviews of her new book "Bossypants" (excerpts of which appeared in the New Yorker) -- that the joke isn't about the mean-spirited humor of pushing the elderly, but the compunction of women to push each other down flights of stairs (or, even worse, to fall down on purpose) to prove that they can make it in the boys' club of comedy.

But let's back up to 2001: Tina was already head writer at "Saturday Night Live," the first woman Lorne Michaels had ever hired for that position. So, you know, score one for the ladies. This was also the year that Tina's crew won a Writer's Guild Award for their 25th Anniversary Special. Behind the scenes, Tina was killing it.

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That said, I was pleasantly surprised a few times with the 2010 Emmy nominations, and was, per usual, irritated just as often. Tony Shalhoub, again, for real? (eye roll) "Two and a Half Men" taking up valuable space in any category? (bigger eye roll) And why Aaron Paul of "Breaking Bad" didn't submit his reel in the lead actor category is confounding and shameful -- Bryan Cranston is, arguably, the star of that show but this was Paul's year. His performance as the now-sober meth cooker Jesse Pinkman was, in a word, eviscerating.

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Liz Lemon is recession America's Carrie Bradshaw.

The frazzled "30 Rock" star, played by series writer and creator Tina Fey, is a heroine for the moment when an entire country feels like it just dumped a gallon of water on the floor while trying to change the office cooler tank (which Lemon did, in Season 4).

The parallels between Lemon and Carrie aren't subtle: Single career women married to Manhattan, forever orbiting a suave, older executive type while searching for love in all the wrong places and remaining the incisive, sarcastic voice of reason among a wacky circle of friends. Fey herself described Liz Lemon as a bumbling version of Carrie in an interview with People magazine last fall.

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Fey has recently come under critical assault. What's surprising about the form it's taking is that the mob gathering to pull Fey from her pedestal is not made up of withered cynics irritated by her ubiquity, but by a group of once-enthusiastic female fans who helped hoist Fey to great heights and are now mutinying. The ardor and (occasionally personal) ferocity with which these critics are tearing down their former muse may say more about the intensity of longing for a perfect feminist idol, and about the degree of idealization many of us young feminists have projected at Fey, than it does about any change in the star herself.

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So when their friends (Mark Ruffalo and Kristen Wiig) drop the bombshell that they're splitting up because they no longer wish to be merely "excellent roommates," the Fosters venture to shake up their own rut with a big night in Manhattan. And when a case of mistaken identity spirals out of control, they soon find themselves on an adventure that is part "Out of Towners" and part "After Hours," with a soupçon of "The Warriors'" urban odyssey. Can they rekindle their love, avoid getting killed, and get home in time to take the kids to school?

There isn't much in the deeply formulaic "Date Night" that's innovative in its execution. Will everyone in New York City be a wacky, scenery-noshing character? Will there be scenes of screaming people in speeding, screeching cars? Will "Night at the Museum" director Shawn Levy keep the action humming along at a light, superficial pace? As Tina Fey's best-known alter ego might say, you betcha!

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Paired with her Vogue cover last month, which showed her in a similarly daring neckline, one might think the funny lady was going for an image overhaul. But she preempts any speculation in a comment Esquire published today on its Web site: 

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Ditching her glasses and gaining a haircut that would inspire pity from Kate Gosselin, Lemon lurched her way through an Ellen-like opening, but the true horror came when she stepped in front of the cruelly revealing high-definition camera. What unfolded next takes an already funny idea and turns into the most surreally hilarious gag in ages.

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Yes, "30 Rock"(9:30 p.m. Thursdays on NBC) is back at last, and in fine form. Although it's been a great fall for new comedies, with ABC's "Modern Family," NBC's "Community" and HBO's "Bored to Death" all blowing the comedic offerings of the past few years out of the water, there's truly something special about Liz, Jack and their rag-tag crew of vainglorious underlings.

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By the time you're in your 30s, love gets slower and fatter and it doesn't always escape, but it smells worse when you catch it. Instead of tumbling head over heels in mad pursuit, you sometimes find yourself wondering, mid-chase, "Am I really hungry?" or "How viable are his long-term career goals?" or "Wouldn't it be nicer to take a nap right now instead?"

I'm with Cupid

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In 1969 two young men, John Rendall and Ace Bourke, bought a lion cub from the exotic pet department at Harrods in London; they named him Christian. When the cub grew too big to keep in their apartment, they reintroduced him to his natural habitat. In 1972 Rendall and Bourke returned to Kenya to find their lion. The video captures the emotional reunion. The lion wraps his paws around his old friends while Whitney Houston's "I Will Always Love You" swells in the background. This particular YouTube clip (one of several) surfaced in July 2008 and was viewed more than 17 million times -- it is one of the most magical cinematic meetings of animal and human ever.

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Much like Virginia Heffernan's 2003 New Yorker profile, Dowd's piece depicts Fey as a sober, hard-driven, deeply principled woman who is a galaxy removed from the pill-popping icons who came before her on "Saturday Night Live." When Dowd asks Fey what's the wildest thing she's ever done, she replies, "Nothing." This is, after all, the woman Colin Quinn nicknamed "Herman the German." Lorne Michaels compares her to Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. Fey's husband discloses the story of the worst trouble he ever got into with her: He went to a strip club.

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And hey, it's possible. You could argue that, in a cast of narcissists, neurotics and megalomaniacs, the true protagonist of "30 Rock," which premiered its third season on NBC Oct. 30, is Kenneth Ellen Parcell, a truly decent human being incapable of the sarcasm and irony that erode the lovable but deeply flawed Lemon. McBrayer's scenes with Baldwin -- not to mention his scenes with Tracy Morgan, as the off-his-rocker star Tracy Jordan -- have become nothing short of classic television, the most gratifying comic exchanges on a network since "Arrested Development." Not bad for a kid from Georgia with a funny accent.

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Debbie Walsh, director of the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers University, explains that's not because there is a record number of women running. There are just seven women running for Senate this year, including two -- Kay Hagan and Elizabeth Dole in North Carolina -- who are running against each other. The record for women running for Senate was set in 2006 when 12 women received the nominations of the major parties. This year, there are 133 female candidates from major parties running for seats in the House. The record there was set in 2004, when 141 women won their primaries.

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Our perverse Palin-mania revealed a deeply felt need for a humorous escape from a broken government and financial system that the two presidential nominees pledged to fix. Because the present reality is this: Now is a very unfunny time for America. U.S. troops are fighting two very different wars in two very different countries, and neither campaign is succeeding as promised. Many Americans are uninsured, left to battle catastrophic illness on their own. Oh, and the American economy is in the crapper.

Given their angst and frustration, it is no surprise that liberals have been enjoying the loudest (and last?) laughs during our current, pioneering age of dark, ironic humor. The chuckles produced during the George W. Bush era by a veritable legion of satirists and comedians, ranging from Fey to Jon Stewart to Chris Rock, have been particularly therapeutic. Unfunny times demand the tonic of humorous distraction.

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Watch the sketch in which McCain appeared below. As a special bonus, below that, check out Ben Affleck in a sketch poking fun at MSNBC's Keith Olbermann.

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