30 Rock reunion special failed to mask the stink of NBCUniversals hour-long ad for itself

July 21, 2024

Hoping we’re either as dumb as we look or not as smart as we seem, NBCUniversal tried to pawn off an hour-long advertising selfie disguised as synergized entertainment on its prime-time network Thursday night — a pitch for a (so far hypothetical) 2020-21 TV season, disguised as a “30 Rock” reunion.

Sentient viewers are so inured to advertising that it apparently only works now if you pretend to be cynical about the entire industry — an inside joke about an inside joke, in which the joke was really on anyone hoping for a satisfying hour with our old friends who used to produce and star in “TGS,” the comedy sketch show at the center of “30 Rock,” which, you’ll recall, was itself already a spoof of working at NBC in an environment like “Saturday Night Live.”

The point of bringing “30 Rock” back from the dead, briefly, was to tout a season of prime-time shows that have not yet gone into production, because of the covid-19 pandemic shutdowns, as well as the Olympic Games that have been postponed a year and a fall sports season that takes no small measure of optimism to regard as a sure thing. This was NBCUniversal shoving its hopes and plans down our throats, in the form of commercials for its vast array of programming and its new streaming platform. The Peacock has landed. On your face.

Peacock’s part of this equation ruffled the feathers of a lot of NBC’s affiliate stations, which understandably view the new, all-encompassing streaming NBC platform, which was repeatedly touted to viewers of Thursday night’s special as a free service, to be an undermining threat to their business model of getting people to watch NBC the traditional way, with traditional advertising. Many affiliates chose not to air the special; in the Washington market, that was no problem, because WRC is directly owned by NBCUniversal.

From "Parks and Recreation” to “30 Rock,” many ensembles have been reuniting for special reunions amid the pandemic. (Video: The Washington Post)

The “reunion,” such as it was, showed some of the old “30 Rock” spark while trying to both acknowledge and disavow the soul-sucking premise of it all. Liz Lemon (Tina Fey) is summoned by her old boss, Jack Donaghy (Alec Baldwin), to reboot their fictional live-comedy sketch show, only it turns out to be Jack’s ruse to get back in good graces with Kenneth Parcell (Jack McBrayer), the delightfully dopey former NBC page who rose to become president of NBCUniversal.

Liz persuades her old writing staff to reassemble, as well as her star performers. Tracy Jordan (Tracy Morgan) tells her he’s no longer an actor, having read the entire dictionary in front of a green screen so that he can appear in endless future movie projects, but he agrees. Trickier is the fate of Jenna Maroney (Jane Krakowski), who has been culture-canceled for defecating in Mandy Moore’s Thermos and then giving an insufficient online apology. Liz tries to find replacements for Jenna (including Khloe Kardashian) but, as always, Jenna (who has become a skilled Zoom bomber in quarantine) prevails.

All of which makes perfect sense if you loved the original “30 Rock” and speak its love language. Between the painfully tongue-in-cheek segues to more ads for all things NBCUniversal, there were some brief laughs.

Liz on the phone to Jack: “Ow! Did you just slap me?”

Jack: “I have the iPhone 40.”

Or, Jenna to Tracy: “We’ve always been a perfect team.”

To which Tracy replies: “Like peanut butter and dog pills.”

Seeing McBrayer again as Kenneth is enough to make any “30 Rock” fan’s heart go pitter-pat; even better to watch him play a second role at the same time, as Kenneth’s besotted assistant, Vivica.

This form of hard sell is nothing new at a typical, closed-audience network event — such as the upfront presentations usually held in the spring to stir enthusiasm with big advertisers for the new TV schedule; or at the summertime Television Critics Association press tour, where the networks try to convince the media that all the new shows are going to be wonderful. The people who attend such events are used to the sarcastic approach, in which network executives use comedy to laugh off last season’s failures and make light of the fact that they are in sales mode.

“30 Rock’s” sardonic skills in the meta department couldn’t overcome the corporate stink of it all, even with such winking-at-the-camera lines as Baldwin saying, “Thank God advertisers are some of the smartest and most physically attractive people this industry has ever seen.” Wash your hands all you want (and wash them you should!), it just won’t come off.

Late in the hour, the whole thing collapsed into an actual presentation of NBC’s new prime-time shows, which will premiere ... someday. They include the comedies “Kenan” (starring SNL legend Kenan Thompson) and “Young Rock” (based on the youthful exploits of Dwayne Johnson); a magic-meteorite drama called “Debris”; a new “Law & Order” spinoff that brings back Christopher Meloni; and, of course, “Mr. Mayor,” a new comedy from Fey and “30 Rock” co-creator Robert Carlock, starring “The Good Place’s” Ted Danson.

“Are these all real shows?” asked the other viewer in my household, not quite knowing.

“Yes,” I replied, and then appended a question mark to my answer: “Yes?”

And then, as soon as the special was over, I received an email purporting to be an enthusiastic quote from the chairman of NBC’s “advertising and partnerships” division, boasting that the special has ushered in an entirely new era in advertising.

Is this real, I wondered, or is her name a reference to some old “30 Rock” gag I’ve long forgotten?

The existential crisis rages on from there: What did we just watch? What is television? What isn’t? And most of all: If NBCUniversal achieves perfect viewer/advertiser singularity, what are they going to do to us next?

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