‘30 Rock’ Reunion Review: A Few Laughs, a Lot of Blergh

There is comedy, kind of, in watching Tracy Jordan read you a list of ad-sales talking points. But it’s still, ultimately, only as fun as being read a list of ad-sales talking points can be. (Dealbreaker! Shut it down!)

And the copious in-house promos, which would have been unremarkable at an industry confab in Radio City Music Hall, broke the rhythm and undercut the satire with dead-earnest flogging. Since so many spots were for programming that is theoretically available only in a misty future when normal-ish life returns — a sitcom with Kenan Thompson and Don Johnson, the 20[who knows?] Tokyo Olympics — it lent the whole production a surreal undertone of forced optimism.

I watched the special twice on Thursday night, once live, once with my family, who wisely fast-forwarded through the ads. It played better the second way. But you could also see more sharply how the special deteriorated as it went on, as if the writers had a half-hour of material and an hour to fill.

In theory, “30 Rock” was the perfect brand for the job. From 2006 to 2013, it bit the hand that feeds as lustily as Liz chomps into a block of night cheese. It cast company talent in gently mocking cameos, as the special did with stars including Khloé Kardashian and Jimmy Fallon. It made comedy out of real-life corporate mandates, as in “Greenzo,” an episode about an environmentalist mascot that came out of an actual network-wide “Green Is Universal” programming requirement.

When the show moves from biting to gently nibbling the hand that feeds, you lose a certain energy. Beyond that, the special showed that, however gut-busting “30 Rock” remains in reruns, its arch, lighten-up-Francis comedy is a product of a very specific era that does not time-travel well.

We already saw an example of this when the show shelved several old episodes that featured blackface, the ’00s “edgy” comedy writer’s go-to answer to “What’s the most excruciatingly inappropriate thing we can have a character do?” (It’s telling that so many examples — in “The Office,” “Community” and “Scrubs” as well — came in marquee NBC sitcoms.)

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/17/arts/television/30-rock-reunion-review.html