Tonight’s NBC comedies were so good, I thought I’d write about them. I love all these shows so much, and yet that rarely gets an outlet here. Let’s change that.

30 Rock was the weakest half-hour of NBC’s two hour comedy block. That’s less a knock on 30 Rock than it is praising the other shows. In fact, this was also one of the best episodes of 30 Rock this year, which also means it’s one of the best of the last two years.

The addition of Elizabeth Banks went over much better than the addition of Julianne Moore. The fact that she didn’t have to do a bad Boston accent helped with that, but Banks seems a better fit to the show, with a stronger history in comedy. I hope she’s back for a few more episodes before the inevitably send her packing.

Jenna’s subplot is slightly more entertaining than usual, but only slightly. It’s surprisingly hard to lampoon an absurd celebrity self-centered actor without it getting dull and repetitive fairly quickly.

Liz’s search for someone to pick her up from oral surgery was a fun way of exploring Valentine’s Day, though they went a little too on the nose with the multiple explicit comparisons to the search for a Valentine’s Day date.

But I’m willing to ignore any and all issues I have with that particular plot because of the closing scene with all of Liz’s ex-boyfriends as Jamaican nurses. I think I could watch that forever.

Good cap to the night, and a sign that maybe the writer’s have found their groove again.

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Some nice things in this episode:

• Despite their overuse of the card, Liz’s complete obliviousness to existence of front clasp bras was pretty great.
• ‘My stepson is my cyber-husband’
• What was up with that weird pause over the Julia Roberts line? Was that a jab at side-swipe comedy?
• http://jdlutz.com/karen/proof/
• ‘Prime Minister Wen wants a weak Yuan, do we?’
• ‘We’ll be right back after this ad aimed at the elderly.’
• ‘It’s one of those kids from Glee isn’t it?!’
• ‘One time, I ran over an old lady in Arizona and just kept driving!’
• ‘She was on Maxim’s ‘I’d Rape That’ 100′
• ‘Otherwise known as Jane Sadwoman.’
• ‘Don Cheadle on a bed of rice!’

I learned a few things the hard way on my first comic-con pilgrimage. In this ongoing series I’ll be documenting the things I did wrong and how you can avoid them should you ever go to comic-con. (Or maybe I’ll never write one of these again; I’m fickle that way.)

One of the first mistakes I made was over-scheduling the various panels of interest without taking into account the other events that go on at comic-con: most especially the exhibit hall. The exhibit hall is where you go to see all the booths set up by various exhibitors. If you want to see the latest collectible busts of Hellboy, you can head over to the Sideshow Collectibles booth; if you want to buy 30 Rock t-shirts and Dwight Schrute bobble heads, you head over to the NBC booth; and a quick stroll through Artists’ Alley gives you a broad look at a large range of artistic abilities and sensibilities. I went to the exhibit hall every day of comic-con for at least an hour, usually more, and even though I’d walked the length of it numerous times I saw something new every time I walked the aisles. You could quite easily go to comic-con and simply explore all the exhibit halls have to offer for the duration.

But even exploring briefly in between panels results in a multitude of choices, and all of them tantalizing. Here’s the problem. I went to comic-con vaguely aware of the exhibit hall, but I had my mind set on seeing the panels. That said, I went there with 500 USD in my wallet planning to spend every penny and maybe more, but as I strolled the exhibit hall aisles I realized that didn’t have any room to bring this stuff back with me.

In my zeal to bring every awesome shirt I had to prove my geekiness to other geeks, I packed a duffel bag packed nearly to the brim for a four day trip. I could probably shove it full of any trade paperbacks I purchased on the floor, but comics are much more fragile and would likely get crumpled along the way. No bag and board would solve this problem.

Then let’s factor in other purchases like posters, and movie props, and statues, and even original artwork. They’re all too big or to fragile to withstand being shoved in with my clothes for a plane flight, especially when your bag gets remanded to airline security for a random security check where the word “gentle” is not in their vocabulary (but that’s a story for another time).

So I ended up not buying all that much. Oh I still spent hundreds of dollars buying trade paperbacks, but I couldn’t pick up any of the comic-con exclusive versions of comics I like or posters or prints. That said, I did pick up a great print of art by Mike Sosnowski called The Culprit for my niece because I thought she’d like it, but by the time I got my bag back from airport security, the print was horribly crumpled and I would have been better off ordering it from his website.

So if there’s anything you do in preparation for comic-con, you should plan for the swag. Bring an extra piece of luggage for your gifts that you can bring as carry-on to ensure its safety on the flight, or be willing to swallow the costs and ship your purchases to yourself in well packed boxes. Whatever option you choose, one proferred here or one of your own devising, just be aware of the problem before you go or it could put an unnecessary restraint on the reckless spending inherent in an event such as this.