Was Condoleezza Rice's cameo as herself on last night's 30 Rock biting satire, or one those moments where the show just spontaneously stops making sense? We lean towards the latter. The set-up was that she and Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin) used to date, and he had to go back and ask her to intervene after his new wife was kidnapped in North Korea. OK, makes sense. Rice used to be Secretary of State, and Jack's a Republican and a bit of a rake. In theory, we even understood why she challenged him to a piano/jazz flute musical duel. (Rice is also an accomplished pianist.) What we're unclear on is why the scene needed to run nearly a minute in length, an eternity on a 22 minute sitcom. Was it an abstract Iraq war metaphor? It was even more jarring because Rice and Baldwin clearly weren't on the set together. We did like that joke about drinking with Karl Rove on Valentine's day though.

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Ray Gustini