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Here’s What Happened Inside the Weirdly Stealth ‘30 Rock’ Reunion
Note: This is an “I want to go to there”-free zoneOver 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 on Sunday night, the 30 Rock 20th Anniversary Reunion did pretty much the same thing, all while mildly flexing that more than 13 years after the show went off the air, yes, they did kind of predict everything.“So much of what we wrote actually came true,” said a (fittingly unidentified) member of the writing staff from the stage.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) — and on the exact 20th anniversary of the show’s debut besides. She actually wasn’t planning on doing anything to mark the moment until Jack McBrayer, at a lunch she had with him on a trip to Los Angeles 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 and water-bug-on-a-channel-changer reference, and ten more that cut even deeper. If you’ve ever looked upon Comic-con and said “I don’t know that I could ever get so crazy about Marvel but I’d go nuts if a Peak TV-era singlecam got everyone together to throw down some Easter Eggs,” this was your event.Quick disclaimer, on that score, before 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 is missed. You spend half your socializing time trying to convince people who never watched the show to do so and the other half 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 has gone terribly off track. Or as someone I know once said, with apologies to John Waters, “if you go home with somebody and they say they don’t ‘get’ 30 Rock, kill them.”Quick additional disclaimer. This reunion was weirdly stealth. OK, Fey, Robert Carlock & Co. 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 made a press-pass inquiry 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 whole series of 30 Rock-themed sketches, like Jenna singing a medley of her fictional songs (despite the lack of a cam-a-ra), Jackie Jormp-Jomp and the Rural Juror and all the others, while McBrayer presided over a game show in which Fey and Tracy Morgan had to finish their lines from the clips lest 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 was Google himself.In the hallways of the stately venue, meanwhile, fans had no trouble recalling all the zingers, or debating their favorite episode. (The correct answer, obviously, is “Brooklyn Without Limits.”) Merch stands were populated with shirts like “The Problem” and “Solvers,” and their proceeds, like the whole shebang, benefited 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. Tracy didn’t exactly prepare for that spot, and the reunion cast, Fey said, followed in that spirit. “No one has seen this show before — including us, because we haven’t rehearsed it,” she said. In addition to most series regulars, 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 star (Elaine Stritch, obvi); 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 unclear (though he did not praise any kidz got singing); and Hamm, as Dr. Drew Baird replete w
