Can Tina Fey Really Have it All This Fall?

Even though 30 Rock ended in January of this year, Tina Fey has been busy. Like, REALLY busy. It was announced this week that Fey is producing a new comedy that was picked up by NBC; the untitled project will be a workplace comedy about a woman who goes home to Fire Island to reconnect with her father. This project, which will be executive produced by Fey and 30 Rock co-showrunner Robert Carlock, is being produced by veteran 30 Rock writer-producer Colleen McGuiness. So, yay more ladies making TV!

And now, in news that I can only imagine had Fey saying "Suck it, nerds," Fey had yet another show picked up this week, this time, by Fox. Co-producing with 30 Rock co-showrunner Matt Hubbard, the other new comedy (also untitled) will be about a women's college that starts accepting men for the first time. So, yay more shows about ladies!

While this is all fey-tastic news, I do have some doubts. When 30 Rock first aired, I was about as fangirl as they come. I mean, the first two lines of the show are: "Hey, buddy there's a line," - Fey to a guy at a hot dog stand, to which he replies, "There's two lines." SO beautifully meta. 30 Rock worked for a long time on a lot of different levels, but at a certain point in the narrative, the characters morphed into strange caricatures of themselves, and became gimmicky, with ploys to win back the audience like a two-coast live episode that fell flat. It seemed like Fey's attempt to harken back to her SNL success, and unfortunately, it didn't work.

Which is why I'm nervous about Fey's two new shows. Though the first, a "workplace" comedy, covers common ground for Fey, the second about a women's college has me iffy, especially since her film with Paul Rudd about a college admissions advisor, Admission, got hopelessly lukewarm reviews. Who knows, maybe this is her shot at college-dramedy redemption?

I'm not saying that Fey is too big to fail, and I'm really gunning for her shows to be great — I'll watch them even if they're not. But with the household name she's created for herself as Liz Lemon, she's got a lot to live up to. Blergh.