If you think about it, what "30 Rock" did by going live last Thursday is more mind-bending than it first appears. It's a real recorded, but now live, NBC show written by Tina Fey (Liz Lemon) about a fictional live NBC show written by Liz Lemon (Tina Fey), based on Fey's work on "Saturday Night Live."

Thus, Liz Lemon, the harried, gauche yet immensely charming head writer is also Tina Fey the harried, gauche yet immensely charming head writer, and her show has suddenly shifted into exactly what it used to pretend to be—the transformation is complete. 

The live episodes (they did an East Coast and a West Coast version) gesture towards the awkwardness of their own undertaking. They are peppered with purposeful mistakes to ensure that, in the case that the show doesn't quite pull it off, at least it will be in on its own joke. When there is a quick scene change and Fey can't make it, Julia Louis Dreyfus (Elaine from “Seinfeld”) stands in for her. The only thing that could make the episode even more reference-heavy and too clever for its own good would be having Sarah Palin as the Fey stand-in.

Presumably, people find the arts so satisfying because they read, listen to music, and watch movies and television (and especially reality television, as misguided as that might be) in order to escape their own reality, yes, but also to see it reflected back to them in more palatable and comprehensible terms. In going live, "30 Rock" accomplishes both of these mental positions at once because it portrays another reality for the viewer to escape into, yet also breaks down the fourth wall by referring to its own constructedness and, even more poignantly, reminding the viewer of the other thing that waits beyond that wall--their own life.

Thus, the live show allows for a simultaneous experience of fiction and reality, but the reality is dressed in a helpful layer of fiction that allows it to go down more easily. It's psychological or philosophical depending on how you look at it--a cheaper form of therapy or just another attempt to answer the question that sounds continuously at the margins of our minds: “what does it all mean?". In its recorded form, "30 Rock" can be slick and perfectly executed, but in its live form, heavy with self-reflexivity and an awareness of its own vulnerability, like leaked un-photoshopped images of celebrities, it reminds us of our own humanity.