Sketchy Comedy.(Comedian Tina Fey)

Correction appended.

Upon winning the second of three Emmy Awards at this year's ceremonies, in September, Tina Fey, the creator, star, and one of the executive producers and main writers of the sitcom "30 Rock"--and by then YouTubularly famous around the world for her impression of Sarah Palin on "Saturday Night Live"--said, "I want to thank my parents for somehow raising me to have confidence that is disproportionate with my looks and abilities," adding, "Well done--that is what all parents should do." That statement captured a little something of Fey's kind of humor and what one guesses (because one, not knowing her, doesn't know for sure) is a decency and a generosity that served her well when she became the first female head writer at "Saturday Night Live," in 1999, and had to manage a mostly male staff, and that serve her well now, as the top dog of "30 Rock," in case there are any male writers or comedians still out there who find it difficult to work for an assertive woman. And, you know, there just may be some: last week--and this is 2008, mind you--the Wall Street Journal ran an article titled "Ways Women Can Hold Their Own in a Male World," which began, "Joining a male-dominated industry, like engineering, computer science or construction trades, can be intimidating."

As Liz Lemon, who's in charge of the writers of a "Saturday Night Live"-like show-within-a-show, Fey is the central character of "30 Rock," running around the office--often literally, in the way that female sitcom characters are prone to do--fielding complaints from the writers and directives and sexist remarks from her boss at the network, Jack Donaghy (His Awesome Majesty Alec Baldwin, the King of Comedy), and dealing with wacko behavior from the unhinged star of the show, Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan). Liz is in her late thirties and single, and occasionally a plot thread having to do with her personal life is woven into the show; a recent trope is her desire to have a baby, a desire that is tinged with desperation, thanks to Donaghy's warnings about her "Big Ben-sized biological clock."

Fey has surrounded herself with a cast that has one spectacular member and a couple of really good ones, but that averages out to only fair. Her own performance falls into the not-so-great category. It may be that in her effort to keep the show from being a star vehicle--such things have a tendency to crash--she is too generous; although she's onscreen a lot and is game to do anything for a laugh, I sense that part of her is keeping her distance from the fray. Jerry Seinfeld appeared to do the same thing on his show--make way for his fellow-performers--but then I found him cold, too. Fey's intelligence comes across, of course, but it's a kind of managerial intelligence, a high level of competence. That sort of no-nonsense--or very-little-nonsense--approach was appropriate for Fey's onscreen role on "Saturday Night Live," as co-anchor of the fake-news segment "Weekend Update." In that part, she was meant to be the smart professional--the grownup, who could give smooth handoffs to her nutty co-anchor, the giddily anarchic Amy Poehler, or, before that, the comic nonentity Jimmy Fallon (who will inexplicably take over the plum Conan O'Brien spot on NBC when O'Brien prematurely takes over the "Tonight Show" from Jay Leno next year). It was refreshing to see a woman on "Weekend Update"--when Fey started, there hadn't been a female anchor since Jane Curtin did it for a few seasons in the late seventies--and, as a bonus, Fey was better at it than her two immediate predecessors, Norm MacDonald and Colin Quinn. She was not afraid to have an edge or to skewer public figures, but something beyond that is required of the main character of a sitcom.

Liz Lemon is obviously inspired by Fey's nine-season career at "S.N.L." (and, as if the in-joke needed more underscoring, Liz's fictional show is on NBC, as is "30 Rock" itself, and "S.N.L."). "30 Rock" doesn't ...