Note: This is an “I want to go to there”-free zone
Over the course of its silly-glorious seven-year run, 30 Rock in-jokingly skewered every cultural and media taboo with what might be called an air of welcoming insiderism.
Over the course of 100 minutes at Radio City Music Hall, the 30 Rock 20th Anniversary reunion did pretty much the same thing, all while mildly flexing that 14 years after the show went off the air, yes, they did kind of predict everything.
“So much of what wrote actually came through,” said a (fittingly unidentified) member of the writing staff.
Tina Fey got the gang back together Sunday night down the block from the real 30 Rock with exactly zero cast members from Milf Island (but plenty of other surprise guests) on the exact 20th anniversary of the show’s debut. She actually wasn’t going to do anything to mark the moment until Jack McBrayer, at a lunch she had with him on a trip to LA last year, suggested maybe they do some kind of reunion. “I think he meant, like, a cast dinner.”
But here they were instead inside Radio City Music Hall in front of 6,000 screaming fans finishing every line and going crazy for every what-am-I-a-farmer, what-is-this-horseville, how-do-you-do-fellow-kids, Bijou-adult-hotline water-bug-on-a-channel-changer reference, and ten more that cut even deeper. If you’ve ever looked at Comic-con and said “I don’t know that I could ever get so crazy about that stuff but I’d go nuts if a Peak TV-era singlecam show got everyone together to throw down some Eastern eggs,” this was your event.
Quick disclaimer, on that score, before more of the details. If you are a 30 Rock superfan, as I am, you get it. You’ve seen the whole series 3, 4, 5 who-knows-how-many-times through. Everyday situations and lines remind you of bits that you feel compelled to quote, and you jump out of your seat when an obvious opportunity isd missed. You spend half your socializing time trying to convince people who never watched the show to do so and the other half shaming and quietly judging them because they never will. And you hold the belief, at bottom, that there are two kinds of people in the world, 30 Rock stans and people whose life went terribly off track. Or as someone I once knew said, with apologies to John Waters, “if you go home with someone and they tell you they don’t ‘get’ 30 Rock, kill them.”
Quick additional disclaimer. This reunion was weirdly stealth. OK, they didn’t want to stream or record the proceedings. Makes sense. Gotta buy a ticket and be there. But the organizers also didn’t even seem to want press coverage; a LiveNation rep told me after I asked that “this event is not for coverage for review.” Fortunately, Vivid Seats still exists. (Fey did ask the audience not to shoot video, because “we’re not shooting it either” and it would “glitch like a Hall of Presidents video.” The request was delivered lightly and respectfully, and everyone in the room that this reporter could see, including this reporter, obliged, at least for most of the night.)
Fey promised an “overly ambitious grab-bag of nonsense,” and the audience got nothing less (or more). The evening brought a series of 30 Rock-themed sketches, like Jenna singing a medley of her famous songs despite the lack of a cam-a-ra (Jackie Jorp-Jomp and the rural juror got their due) and McBrayer presiding over a game show in which Fey and Tracy Morgan had to finish their lines from the clips less Lutz, standing next to them, get tazed. Morgan didn’t do so well, prompting Fey to jibe “did you even watch the program? The least he could have done with the reunion approaching was Google himself.
The whole shebang was staged to benefit the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, which Fey joked was a make-good of sorts after Tracy Jordan messed up that commercial so many times. Like Tracy, the reunion cast apparently didn’t rehearse it.
In addition to nearly every series regular, plenty of 30 Rock‘s many guest stars appeared — Conan O’Brien kicking off the night with a characteristic self-deprecating bit about how he lost out to less worthy men like Jon Hamm and Jason Sudeikis to play Liz’s love interest; Tom Hanks giving an award for fan-chosen best guest (Elaine Stritch); Brian Williams setting up a standout sketch involving Jack making jokes about the modern Trumpian climate (more on that in a second); John McEnroe getting somehow in the mix for reasons that are entirely unclear (though he did not praise any kidz got singing); and Hamm, as Dr. Drew Baird and complete with hooks, part of a Scott Adsit-hosted sketch involving “Liz Lemon’s Boyfriends” in a throwback Bachelor No. 1 type show with a fan as the contestant. (Dr. Drew lost to Dennis Duffy. Conan was on that too, though Adsit kept wondering why he wasn’t Matt Damon.);
Then there was the prediction stuff. You have to admit, the prescience is a little wild. The reunion ran through a diverse set of examples, including Jerry Seinfeld digitally replicated in dozens of NBC shows from S1, which it paired with headlines about Tilly Norwood, and Dr. Spaceman’s Surgeon General-finale triumph, intimated as foreshadowing the Robert Kennedy Jr. madness. Among many others. (Chris Parnell gave a pretty solid in-character monologue btw.)
Many cast members were just excited to be there — Kevin Brown, who played Dot-Com, even came early to a pre-show fan event, hanging with his daughter and warmly answering questions just because. The sight of him without Grizz reminded of all that was lost and, indeed, a tribute to the late members of the crew and the real-life Grizz Chapman, who died earlier this year of kidney disease, offered a poignant palate-cleanse from the hijinks.
Even some who weren’t on the stage turned up to the theater, including Lonny Ross, the “Josh” actor who was on the first three seasons but was not invited to nor, at least as he told some fans in the Radio City hallway, even comped a ticket for Sunday night’s reunion. (Can’t hook a dude up?) He paid $2,000 to get in on his own.
The best sketch of the night had Maulik Pancholy as Jonathan telling Alec Baldwin as Jack the major news event of every year at his desk as the calendar flips and Baldwin responding as Donaghy would have.
To answer the big question: the famous Romney-Reagan Republican does NOT turn out to be a Trumper, but not for the reasons you’d expect. No, he opposes the president for another reason: Trump is bad at business.
“I mean, he lost money operating a casino.” Baldwin said as Jack. “That’s like not getting a handjob in theater camp,” one of the more politically gasp-inducing moments of the night.
Donaghy also took aim at Jan 6 protesters, sort of. “Animals. When I defecate on Nancy Pelosi’s desk I look her in the eye.” And he roasted a mogul in a manner that may be a little too doc-timely. Asked if he wants to know the 2024 election tally as the night unfolds, Jack says, “No. Elon showed me the final results weeks ago.”
Also, Donaghy sat in front of a number of other in-character cast members and recalled how they ended up in the Epstein Files. (Jenna pretended to be a “Belarusian teen runaway” to get the attention of Ghislaine Maxwell.)
The evening ended with Lin-Manuel Miranda coming out in front of a large group of musicians and dancers to sing a duet with Morgan of “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah” as the crowd lost it.
Men did not become wolves on this night, but we all were a little changed, or at least had one more 30 Rock artifact to lord over those unwashed non-fans.