'30 Rock' recap: When Holidays Attack!

On this week's 30 Rock, "Christmas Attack Zone," Jack dared to invite his hippie pacifist father Milton (Alan Alda) and his "bare-legged cripple" mother Colleen (Elaine Stritch) to Christmas dinner at his home with the weird stairs. It was high time he and Avery announced their pregnancy, seven months in. Jackie knocked up a Protestant? Oh, the horror! What would Colleen's chums at the Death Shore Retirement Community say?!

Lemon inexplicably hung out for more than five minutes in Colleen's Christmas Attack Zone, eventually accompanying those buncha jagwagons to the hospital after Colleen faked a heart attack. False alarm! It was a Druid Solstice Miracle! As Jack basked in the glory of his bickering parents, I loved the way Lemon mouthed "Merry Christmas" on the way out of the hospital room -- it mirrored some of their cutest work-based moments as she's walked out of his office. But Stritch and Alda really made this episode great. Caller ID arrived in Vermont just in time.

Meanwhile, Tracy, a serious ac-tor, had to plan his own holiday attack. Russell Crowe was having an auction to benefit the victims of his own mood swings, so the least Tracy could do was host a screening of his new, very sad movie Hard to Watch at a local shelter. Quiet, battered women! A man is talking. Luckily, Kenneth a.k.a. KLMNOP was able to snap Tracy out of his Sean Penn phase and convince him that laughter is the best medicine (that isn't already prescribed to him). Time to roll The Chunks 2: A Very Chunky Christmas!

Best visual of the night (besides Tracy's blinged-out POVERTY necklace): Jenna and Paul in their Two Black Swans costumes at Elton John and Tom Ford's annual New Queers Eve party. I'm so glad Lynne Swann and Natalie Portman could work it out. Everyone should get to eat shrimp off an old gay dressed as Baby New Year during the holidays. "O Holy Night," indeed.

Just remember, everyone....

Happy whatever-you-believe in, too.

NEXT: My top 10 quotes, even though every 30 Rock episode is like one big quote. 

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