Why Does The New York Times TV Critic Suddenly Dislike Tina Fey?

The New York Times is rarely a bastion of backlash, but for Tina Fey — whose NBC comedy 30 Rock had its fourth season premiere last night — TV critic Alessandra Stanley will make an exception. In her review yesterday, Stanley was especially pointed with detailed (if contradictory) jabs at the much-loved comedienne, who almost achieved invincibility with her unassailable Sarah Palin impression.

For the Times critic, though, the charm has worn thin, at least on 30 Rock. Stanley sounds conflicted when she writes:

But the other striking thing about the new season … is the acting limitations of its star and creator, Tina Fey. Ms. Fey is one of the funniest comedy writers on television and a gifted mimic (Sarah Palin), and she is at her worst playing a comic version of herself.

Stanley doesn’t buy Fey as Liz Lemon — the “hapless single head writer of a late-night sketch comedy show” — noting that the comic distortion of Fey “doesn’t track.” She prefers the feisty version of Fey (“fearless about mocking politics, the entertainment business and NBC”) to the pathetic side of Lemon who “dresses badly, is a junk-food glutton, can’t get a date.” To hear Stanley tell it, those afflictions are unnatural and implausible for a “thin, beautiful” actress.

Though it’s perfectly reasonable to prefer a biting Fey to a bumbling one, it is curious logic to cite the impossibility of her awkwardness given the constant self-deprecating and autobiographical nature of her comedy. And just last year, Stanley was praising the dissonance in Fey’s character: “Fey cultivates a “sexy librarian” look on 30 Rock, with foxy glasses and décolletage that slyly defies the show’s premise that her character, Liz Lemon, is a homely nebbish,” she wrote in Vanity Fair.

Is 30 Rock hitting a slump or is Stanley just falling out of love?