A special new episode has good moments but is marred by corporate synergy and political correctness.
How would your favorite TV show have handled a coronavirus plotline? It may or may not be a fun question. But as society remains understandably preoccupied with the disease, well . . . it’s something to talk about, anyway. Earlier this year, Tina Fey, the creator, writer, and star of the NBC show 30 Rock, contributed an entry to a pop-culture “symposium” on that question for her show, whose series finale was in 2013. And last Thursday, she had the chance to do it for real. Sort of.
Yes, technically a real episode of 30 Rock, the joke-a-minute satirical sitcom loosely based on Fey’s own time as a writer for Saturday Night Live, did air last Thursday. But many viewers — myself included — were unable to watch “30 Rock: A One-Time Special” until a day later. Many local NBC affiliates treated the special episode as essentially an advertisement for Peacock, their parent company’s new streaming service, which they view as a potential competitor. So they refused to show it. The special played on other NBCUniversal-owned networks, such as USA, a day later. It all seemed silly, confusing, and, for 30 Rock fans, an arbitrary obstacle to viewership.
Until you actually watched the episode. For though it was an impressive feat logistically, and revived some of the old spirit of the show, those local affiliates were on to something. Moreover, some of the episode’s content served as an unfortunate reminder of how quickly the comedy landscape has shifted beneath the feet of even those who thought they were on solid ground.
Let’s start with the good stuff. From the opening minutes, this special episode pulls off the trick of both transcending the limitations imposed by the coronavirus and incorporating them humorously. We start with an awkward confrontation over mask-wearing in New York City in which Liz Lemon (Tina Fey’s 30 Rock alter ego) squanders her seemingly justified (for once) moral superiority in characteristically misanthropic fashion. Jokes about video calls manage to be fresh twists on what was already boring in real life and commercials and other media. And much of the dialogue is at once topical and completely in keeping with characters as we know them (Kenneth Parcell, ever-earnest as portrayed by Jack McBrayer, complains that his colleagues have “tested negative . . . for friendship”). It’s a neat feat to manage to play the coronavirus for genuine laughs, and a viewer appreciates the sheer novelty of new content that does so.
Thankfully, not all of this special episode took place over a video-call format simply recorded to screen. There were also some creatively executed, almost regular-seeming live-action scenes, as well as flashbacks and cutaway gags that were normal for 30 Rock when it aired in our pre-coronavirus idyll and thus are not out of place here. The cast and crew, largely scattered and isolated from each other, achieved this through a process described as “bananas” in a title screen preceding end-of-the-credits outtakes. But for all that, the actors involved seemed to slip right back into their old roles despite the passage of time and the striking change of circumstances. Tracy Morgan’s return as Tracy Jordan (yes, that’s his character’s name) is as zany as ever and especially welcome given that Morgan was almost fatally injured in a car accident shortly after 30 Rock’s series finale.
All of this is true, at least, when the episode allows these reunited characters space to breathe. But this happens less than it should have. The NBC affiliates were, in a sense, right: This special only barely qualifies as an episode, serving to a considerable extent as an advertisement for Peacock. 30 Rock has not shied away from meta commentary in the past, fashioning entire story arcs out of thinly veiled (or comically exaggerated) commentaries on NBC’s own business dealings, even mocking its own ratings. That was probably the intent here, with the thin narrative mostly involving attempts by Lemon to revive the show-within-a-show she writes on 30 Rock. But with real commercials and promotions written into the special’s plot, the fourth wall gets broken with a cross-promotion battering ram. (Here, it is necessary, sadly, to badmouth synergy.) Making fun of your own corporate kowtowing doesn’t make it any less real — nor does it distract from the obvious reality that this was not the 30 Rock reunion special Tina Fey would have made if coronavirus were the only thing she had to write around.
What would such a special look like? We can be less sure of that now, given our present moment, than at any time since the end of the original 30 Rock. A few weeks ago, as undirected passions continued to sweep through our cultural and pop-cultural landscapes demanding fealty to certain ideas and correction of others, would-be censors landed on some past episodes of the show that failed the 2020 test. The episodes in question involved forms of blackface. Never mind that, in at least one instance, it was used to demonstrate the invidious and depraved nature of one character (the narcissistic Jenna Maroney, played by Jane Krakowski). And never mind that, even if you agree that any use of blackface for comic purposes is offensive, it is possible to acknowledge it for what it was without denying that it ever happened. But Tina Fey wants you to forget all of it, for she has now scrubbed these verboten episodes of 30 Rock from all streaming services.
It’s worth clarifying that 30 Rock was hardly a reactionary show. Its politics basically mirrored Fey’s in being left of center, though its best character may have been Jack Donaghy (portrayed by Alec Baldwin, blessedly not impersonating Donald Trump for once), a delightfully hyperbolic capitalist shill who on many occasions bests the conventionally liberal Lemon. Yet Fey cut her teeth in a far more equal-opportunity comedy environment than the one we now apparently inhabit, hence some of the show’s more politically incorrect humor in its heyday. This special gestures at some of these changes: The aforementioned Jenna has been “canceled,” and Lemon remarks that “the late 2010s was a very different time,” at one point proclaiming, “Take that, mid to late 2000s!” But these references are throwaway gags at best; at worst, they are a reminder that the bounds of acceptability have changed more swiftly and more drastically than many of the drivers of our culture would like to admit.
So while it was fun to be back with the 30 Rock gang for one more go, and they ably confronted the logistical and comedic challenges posed by social distancing in the age of coronavirus, corporate branding and political correctness kept this special from reaching the heights of 30 Rock in its prime. Reaganing, this ain’t.