And just like that it’s gone.

The funniest show on TV is now a lot like most other shows on TV. That is, it’s not on TV anymore. But Thursday’s surprise, though brief, return of 30 Rock was a refreshing reminder of what we’ve been missing.

In the intriguingly and suggestively titled “Episode 210″, Jack and C.C. (Alec Baldwin and Edie Falco) grapple with the demands of their careers and their relationship. Liz (Tina Fey) weighs a plunge into real estate ownership. And Kenneth (Jack McBrayer) gets hooked on caffeine.

Oh, and there’s a musical number that is ironically unironic.

Jack is wooing German cable operators for the purchase of their network. Oh, those stingy Bavarians. But Jonathan (Maulik Pancholy), his assistant, is excited about his huge doo-doo, or so Liz misconstrues. C.C. just waits patiently, because that’s what she and Jack do. They put business first.

Unless C-SPAN is watching, in which case Congressional hearings are called to make movie plans. (The Fred Claus reference tells me this was meant to air a month ago.)

Jack doesn’t have time to be Liz’s life mentor anymore, even though her financial outlook is centered on two remaining bike payments and name-a-star that turned into a gassy giant. Buy land, Lemon, he tells her.

Liz: Real estate. That’s something you do when you’re married and you have a family.
Jack: Sure, wait for that and your first home will be in the floating city of New Chicago.

Meanwhile, Tracy (Tracy Morgan) is looking to make amends after the incident with Napolean, the robot and the eyepatched Jenna (Jane Krakowski). Yeah, it might have been a dream, but the cappuccino’s on him. And the cappuccino maker is on Kenneth’s desk.

Who hasn’t slammed their laptop closed as a colleague catches them perusing salacious Web sites at work? Me neither. But Liz’s online apartment hunting is nothing like the adult sites Jenna recommends: for women by women. Anyway, even Jenna owns several properties, including a 9th Ward prison she leases back to the government. Ka-ching! And Frank (Judah Friedlander) has got a chicken ranch in Nevada he thought was a brothel. But Jenna’s business manager has an apartment Liz might like in real estate, and a speedboat and truck full of cigarettes too.

Jack is suffering through German sit-coms about as funny as Howie Mandel, and C.C. is swamped in D.C. Sure, the president will only veto her crazy social programs, he tells her. The founding fathers never intended for the poor to live into their 40s.

They agree they need to meet halfway, literally.

So he delegates the Euro-boob-tube fare to Liz, who spent her junior year studying sparrows in Frankfort. The effort this show goes to show rather than tell is staggering: a bushy-coiffed Liz snapping photos in a German sparrow museum.

Kenneth can’t abide the coffeemaker on his desk anymore. Hot liquids are the devil’s temperature. But New York is the Big Easy, Tracy geographically misinforms him. Boundaries are made to be tested. That’s why he and his wife stopped using a safe word (like “foliage”, I guess). Kenneth doesn’t want to have any regrets, but those are for horseshoes and handbags. Turns out, Kenneth likes coffee. A lot.

Tracy: Woah, slow down there Ken. Coffee’s not like alcohol. It’s pretty addictive.
Kenneth: It’s like my heart’s trying to hug my brain.

Liz loves the apartment almost as much. It apparently comes with a condescending European narrator. She put a bid in and has to go before the co-op board. It’ll be like a blind date, only they won’t steal her mom’s necklace while she’s in the shower.

In Hockassin, Pa., the geographic halfway point between New York and Washington (pastimes: smacking around nosy out-of-towners and going to the doll museum), Jack and C.C. meet up at a coal mining country betting parlor. They’ve given up so much to get where they are, his karate demonstrations, her Lilith Fairs. But he’s going to make her his night job, and he’s going to love her like his boss is watching. Odd.

Hockassin is a paradise. They fantasize about throwing it all away and staying, lobbing their cell phones at a duck to prove it. The locals aren’t thrilled.

Due to meet the co-op board, Liz delegates the German sit-coms to Kenneth, who is in top caffeine-rattled form. He learned German from bible study, because if you’re not reading the bible in German you’re not getting the real “shtookta va toytung” of it. (Ed note: This is merely an approximation of whatever the heck it was he said there.) The scene reminded me of the Airplane movies.

Things don’t go well with the co-op board. The guy from Gilmore Girls and The Lost Boys (Edward Hermann) isn’t impressed, anyway.

Liz: We have so much in common. We’re all white. Funny story, I was on a plane once with Brett Favre’s cousin.
Mr. Gilmore: It says here you have an outstanding student loan.
Liz: Yes, it is outstanding. No, I can explain it. The theater program at my school lost its accreditation, so I thought I didn’t have to pay for it anymore.

She’s desperate, assuring them she’s ready to own her own home. And she’s a great neighbor. Just ask anyone – except Rahim, the guy she turned into Homeland Security. Oh, and there’s something coming out of her nose.

We get the first Gladys Knight mention at 10:28 in. Some guest spot. Did you know they replace the Pips every five years like Menudo? Jenna urges Liz to play it cool with the co-op board even as Jonathan is losing it. The Germans are a day early and his chance to be king of the assistants is at stake. Too bad Kenneth is preparing by getting hopped up on cappuccino and watching a pillow with a smiley face instead of the German sit-coms.

Looks like it’s going to come down to Liz’s command of the German language.

Liz: Gentlemen. Mr. Donaghy is not in the positions to worry himself this occurrence. But your business makings are much importance to his heart.
German: Return Germany…Tell the…time…Hubcap(?).

Still, she manages to close the sale.

After a pig slaughtering, ham-free breakfast in Hockassin, the morning shift siren blows and Jack and C.C. are heading back to work. Their love is a urine mirage in a desert of fear, our narrator declares.

Kenneth has hit rock-bottom, so Tracy’s taking the cappuccino machine away. Kenneth promised his mom when he left for New York he’d kill any McKenzies he found, and he wouldn’t change. But he’s seen PG-13 movies, bought sunglasses and even tried a Jewish doughnut.

Kenneth: I’ve always been told that New York was the 21st century city of Sodom. And look what’s happened. I’ve become one of them. I’ve been Sodom-ized.

While he detoxes, Liz is knocking back the vino and making psychotic spurned girlfriend calls to the co-op board. “I am going to the hospital and I hope you’re happy,” she says from the bathroom floor before breaking into Alanis Morissette and hitting the treadmill while drinking wine and boasting of buying black apartments.

The next day’s upshot: She confused the German words for buy and sell. Blerg, indeed.

Jack was wrong. You can’t have it all. Success and true love both require all you’ve got, so you have to choose. And he chooses C.C. But he finds himself at the betting parlor alone (second Gladys Knight mention, 15:42). C.C. calls and tells him that if she came and saw him she’d change her mind. It seems she missed a crucial vote on recreational whale torture, the Lott-Specter bill, while they were together.

While she recounts tales of her childhood, he takes a call from his boss, Don Geiss. When he clicks back she’s asking something about children and whether he agrees. Busted. It’s sad because they love each other and they both believe sex is a competition. Maybe in another life they’ll get it right.

In New York, Kenneth is in overalls, saying goodbye and thanking Tracy for teaching him about the nonreproductive aspects of sexuality. Who’ll help Tracy tell white people apart or be Grizz’s speed-dating wing man? There’s only one thing to do: sing.

The ensemble rendition of “Midnight Train to Georgia” has to be the most surreal two-and-a-half minutes in the show’s 31-episode history. Best line: “I missed it. (He missed it.) I missed that midnight train to Georgia. It was 11:45., and I was misinformed about the time.”

Interspersed with Liz’s run-in with the co-op board on the street and Jack’s recrimination that she made the same mistake with Floyd (Ouch!) that he might be making with C.C., it defies all expectations and somehow just works. Kind of like the show in general.

The first Gladys Knight appearance comes at the 20:41 mark and lasts a total of seven seconds.

Gladys Knight: Hello, I’m trying to take a nap. What’s going on out here?

Tracy: Nothing, Gladys Knight. Sorry. Sorry everyone.

The episode fades to black, taking the season with it. There are no more episodes in the bank. 30 Rock will be back when the writers are back. Hope you DVR’d it.