Bababooey! The Beeper King is back!

I can’t decide who’s a more pathetically tragic figure: Liz Lemon or Michael Scott. I do know which one is easier on the eyes, though. So does Dennis Duffy, the erstwhile pager salesman-turned-ripped-from-the-headlines-hero, who’s back in Liz’s life at a bad time, since any time’s a bad time for Dennis to come back round.

Tracy Morgan, the new black face of the GOP? Her couldn’t do worse than a washed-up has-been from the Golden Age of TV, right? That’s for blackmericans to decide for themselves, whatever they are. Who knew Dot Com was so erudite?

“Subway Hero” was classic 30 Rock in that it packed more jokes, bits, one-liners, throwaway gags and visual comedy into 22 minutes than the any other show on TV (though The Office was surely a close second last night). We dived again into Liz Lemon’s (Tina Fey) frailties and insecurities, her romantic past and her misconceptions about love and came up laughing but still a little sad for her.

Even at it’s most ridiculous, this show never loses its heart. Fey is assuming a status, not just in nerd-dom or pop culture, but in the American zeitgeist that is unique. The next Mary Tyler Moore? At least.

Jack (Alec Baldwin) is organizing a John McCain fundraiser and wants to avoid another sausage fest so he turns to Liz (Tina Fey), who wonders what the Committee to Reinvade Vietnam listed on the invite is all about.

McCain is rounding up all the cool Republican celebrities. Like who? Chuck Norris? No, Jack snubbed C-Norr by joining another dojo. (You know the smackdown is coming for that crack, Donaghy.) Liz doesn’t make political donations. She’s waiting for campaign finance reform, and she’s saving up for a new humidifier, the same model keeping Larry King alive!

More important, Jack wants her to book the Subway Hero on TGS. She doesn’t know who that is because she doesn’t watch the news. Food Network doesn’t have news. Every show wants the guy who pulled another person off the tracks. But they have an advantage: Liz.

Jack flips on the TV where Mayor Bloomberger is putting a medal around Dennis “The Beeper King” Duffy’s (Dean Winters) neck. Given the chance to voice his thanks, Dennis instead gives a 1994-era shout-out to Howard Stern.

Liz dumped him because he’s a Dateline predator. Exonerated Dateline predator, Jack corrects her. That was all a big misunderstanding, like the Giuliani campaign.

So Liz meets Dennis at a 99 cent store ribbon cutting. Fitting. “Hey Dummy,” he greets her, even more fittingly. He knew she’d be back, convinced it’s fate. They’re like Ross and Rachel, only not gay, he says.

“Can I borrow those giant scissors?” she asks, gesturing menacingly at his chest.

Who’d have thought he’d be a hero. He was sure his his crappy band would have made him famous. She thought being a sex predator would have done it. Offers are flowing in from news and dancing programs, but he can’t say no to her? Ugh, he’s tousles her hair.

After watching him as Charley Dixon, Sarah Connor’s spurned fiance on Fox’s Terminator series, it’s tough not to see Winters him as a serious actor now.

Up at 30 Rock, Bucky Bright (guest star Tim Conway) is waiting in Jack’s office! He’s a big-time TV talent from the 40s, 50s and the fall of ‘72. Jack harshly dismisses him, especially when he finds out Bucky was the best they could do for the McCain fundraiser after Bruce Willis and Jim Belushi fell through.

Kenneth (Jack McBrayer), though, is starstruck, not that Bucky could get Kenneth to vote Republican for him. Choosing is a sin, so he just writes in the Lord’s name. The GOP counts those votes, Jack points out.

Oh the stories Bucky could tell about 30 Rock, and Kenneth would love to hear all about the good old days. Things were different then. They wore tailored suits with inside monogrammed pockets for your opium pipe and swithcblade. Huh?

In the writer’s room, Jack introduces Dennis as the bravest New Yorker since Bernie Goetz. Liz isn’t amused. Dennis has the Stanley Cup, with which he is teaming up to fight illiteracy. Frank (Judah Friedlander) could never do what Dennis did. Frank has watched seven people die in subway stations. Dennis, on the other hand, is the Derek Jeter of subway heroes.

Jenna (Jane Krakowski) is concerned for Liz. She was there when Liz and Dennis met and knows they have a weird connection. Munching on Sabor de Soledad cheesy poofs, Lize gets a lecture on making good choices in men and food. I was surprised how nice and normal Jenna was, though I like her better when she’s weird and self-centered.

Looking for a replacement, Jack turns to Tracy to be the new black face of the GOP. Tracy can’t do it. Does hot support cold? Does rain support the earth?

Then again, Tracy likes lower taxes, gun ownership and state’s rights. Plus, Lincoln was a Republican. Dot Com, however, points out today’s Republican party would be unrecognizable to Honest Abe. Why’s that guy always gotta be the smartest guy in the room? No wonder he’s still single. But so eloquent.

Getting the tour from Kenneth, Bucky explains what sandwich girls were. They sound like fun.

In the writers room, Dennis is regaling the crew with stories about mocking joggers. “We used to call this the Jew Room,” Bucky observes, dropping my jaw squarely to the floor for the 435th time since this show debuted.

Liz realizes her attraction to Dennis isn’t right, even as she piles on Toofer (Chris Powell) and stuffs her face with Sabor de Soledad poofs.

That night, Elizabeth Codworthy Lemon—not her real middle name—got spotted by the press at dinner with Dennis and was misidentified as Sally Field. It wasn’t a date, she protests. It was business. She always pays when she and Dennis go out because of convoluted reasons she doesn’t have to explain.

Meanwhile, Bucky never went home, instead staying the night wandering the studio until he ran into a giant, sad lesbian named Conan. Make that 436.

Tracy’s in a quandary about his politics. Sticking a screwdriver into his skipping CD player, he lands himself in purgatory with Nixon (played by Jack). Sammy (played by Toofer) is there too and wants the GOP back to its Jewish roots. Weird. Tracy wakes up inspired. He’s in on the GOP campaign, and he’ll get started as soon as he screwdrivers his wallet out of the toaster.

The real Jack, meanwhile, turns to Dennis, but he can’t help McCain. He’s a navy man and Dennis almost joined the Marines once. Mmmkay.

Across the way, Liz tells Jenna she likes that Dennis makes her laugh. Jenna says she knows better than that, but Liz thinks she might be an idiot. Instead of eating right she uses her oven to warm her jeans in the morning.

Dennis explains his thinking to Jack, whose cologne is distilled from the bilge water of Rupert Murdoch’s yacht. Dennis sounds like a man who knows what he wants, and what he wants is Liz Lemon. When Dennis grabs on to something he doesn’t let go, like a killer whale going nuts on its trainer at Sea World.

Liz, meanwhile, says that when she is with Dennis, life is easy. She doesn’t have to shave, bathe or be clever or nice. That’s what love is.

No it’s not, Jenna counters. Love is hiding from who you are even when you sleep, wearing makeup to bed, going downstairs to the Burger King to poop and hiding alcohol in perfume bottles. Just, wow.

Love sounds hard, Liz says. Being with Dennis is easy. You get numb and sleepy—like when you freeze to death. Blerg.

Jack is observing all of this, mind you.

Dennis keeps calling Liz dummy and ignoring her advice. He thinks overthinking was his problem. (Yeah, nope.) Suddenly he’s proposing to Elizabeth Sarah Lemon (still not her middle name) on a Manhattan sidewalk in a Terminator T-shirt and a porkpie hat.

Liz just envisions herself blissfully freezing to death.

“No! No way!” she protests, to the crowd’s disappointment. H’s not the guy they think he is. Actually, he says, he could get any girl in the crowd he wanted, and not just the fatties and the but-her-faces (as in, “She’s got a nice figure, but her face…”).

“Shut up crowd,” he flails. “I command you as the subway hero.” Liz calls him out for the loser he is.

On set, Tracy’s struggling with selling Jack’s version of The Dream and the non-word blackmericans. That’s why he’s here, Jack assures him. They’re never going to vote Republican, he and Jack agree, but Tracy can sell the idea of staying home.

No other show on TV could get away with Tracy’s public service message, paid for by the Committe to Reinvade Vietnam, telling black people to stay home and don’t vote. I mean, wow, you can’t do that. Can you? No, you can’t. I think. No. But they just did it.

And with that he’s off to unscrew Nixon’s Wikipedia page. Jack has moved on from the subway hero to a bird that dialed 911 and yelled Fire because it didn’t know the word Rape. Dennis’s 15 minutes are up. He’s not doing it for Liz, he assures her. Of course not. On a related note, the pocket deep fryer would totally sell.

Kenneth finally tells Bucky he can’t take any more peacock-eating stories. He loves television too much. But Bucky says making something beautiful like TV means making it weird first. Kenneth’s not buying it until he ponders his errand to buy some Human Growth Hormone so Mr. Jordan’s tigers doesn’t realize he’s aging. Umm, yeah. Weird.

Suddenly Kenneth is all grown up, pointing out the weirdness of modern TV to Bucky, like Liz dating a Dateline predator. She is one mouthy sandwich girl.

Bumped for a bird, his dream of winning Liz back dashed, Dennis has a classic song to write.

Down on as subway platform, he tells her about his heroic deed and how the acclaim showed him what his life could have been. He even took the firefighter exam, but it was biased against the Irish. (Rescue Me reference?) Being with her and being a hero are the two greatest things that ever happened to him, if only he could get it back.

If reality TV has taught us anything, Liz assures him one week after realizing she’s no better than the top MILF on MILF Island, it’s that you can’t keep people with no shame down. And then she realizes he’s gonna try and save her, if only that oncoming train was on a different track.

Jackass.