{"id":486181,"date":"2026-02-23T19:20:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:20:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/486181\/"},"modified":"2026-02-23T19:20:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-23T19:20:10","slug":"tracy-morgan-and-tina-feys-new-show-feels-like-the-true-heir-to-30-rock","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/486181\/","title":{"rendered":"Tracy Morgan and Tina Fey\u2019s new show feels like the true heir to 30 Rock."},"content":{"rendered":"

The most uttered phrase in the first season of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins is three short words: \u201cDon\u2019t film this.\u201d Reggie (Tracy Morgan), a pro football star whose career was ended by a gambling scandal, is planning a comeback 20 years later, and he\u2019s decided that the best route to recapturing the public\u2019s affection is to produce his own biographical documentary\u2014a subgenre that\u2019s become so ubiquitous that he\u2019s able to pick and choose from a wide range of predecessors. (He wants his, he explains, to be more like Pharrell\u2019s<\/a> than J.Lo\u2019s<\/a>.) The problem is that the Oscar-winning documentary-maker he\u2019s hired for the purpose keeps doing his job. It takes a minute to discover just why Arthur Tobin (Daniel Radcliffe) is willing to devote himself to such an uncooperative subject, one who shoos his cameras away the moment things start to get interesting. But you get the sense that success for a documentary filmmaker looks very different from the way it does for a former sports icon. Two decades after the scandal, Reggie is still living comfortably, if not extravagantly, off the proceeds from his brief career. The most Arthur\u2019s Oscar has gotten him is a teaching gig at the University of Maryland Center for Documentary, Anime, and Pornography.<\/p>\n

If you didn\u2019t know that The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins was created by 30\u00a0Rock veterans Robert Carlock and Sam Means, you\u2019d probably have guessed it from that last joke, or maybe the one a few minutes into the pilot when Reggie, trying to prove that he\u2019s not just a dumb-as-rocks athlete, exclaims to the camera, \u201cBooks are brain movies!\u201d (You\u2019d be wrong, however, to assume any connection with the vintage British sitcom The Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin, about the daydreams of a repressed middle manager.) Without Tina Fey\u2019s name as co-creator, the show is technically less of a direct descendant than Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt or Mr.\u00a0Mayor. But of all the series released under the Carlock\u2013Fey banner, this feels the most like a true heir to 30\u00a0Rock\u2019s sensibility, which is to say it\u2019s familiar in the best of ways.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

\n Nick Ripatrazone
\n It\u2019s a Classic American Kids\u2019 Pastime. Why Are Parents Getting Tasered, Punched, and Arrested Over It?
\n Read More\n <\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

In practical terms, Reggie probably takes specific inspiration from the 30\u00a0Rock episode \u201cQueen of Jordan,\u201d a stand-alone reality-TV spoof that grew in part out of network pressure to cut costs. Reggie Dinkins doesn\u2019t look as if it was made on the cheap, exactly, but Arthur\u2019s assignment to capture the real Reginald Dinkins in his home environment leads to a lot of scenes set in a nondescript New Jersey house and its immediate environs. I don\u2019t mean to suggest that NBC hasn\u2019t put any resources behind the show, whose first episode debuted in a prime-time slot following an NFL playoff game. (The pilot will re-air tonight at 8\u00a0p.m. Eastern and will be immediately followed by the second episode in the show\u2019s regular 8:30\u00a0p.m. Monday time slot.) But when Arthur gets the news that the league won\u2019t allow them to use any footage of Reggie\u2019s professional career, you\u2019re meant to be in on the joke that the show is solving a financial problem as well as a narrative one.<\/p>\n

Reggie isn\u2019t as much of an unhinged loon as Morgan\u2019s Tracy Jordan; his fame lasted long enough to make him rich, though not so long that the constant coddling of fans and hangers-on cooked his brain for good. But Morgan doesn\u2019t seem particularly concerned with differentiating the two, nor are the show\u2019s writers. And you know what? That\u2019s fine. The relatively subdued style of a mock documentary keeps Morgan at a relatively subdued level\u2014think a 6 rather than a 9\u2014but allows him enough loopy eccentricity to fully drive his documentarian up the wall. Arthur is desperate to find an unseen side to this once famous figure, but Reggie\u2019s version of acting like a regular person is putting on a tuxedo to cook breakfast\u2014a breakfast that turns out to be a badly charred roast turkey.<\/p>\n

\n Tracy Morgan and Daniel Radcliffe make a delightful comic duo, their shared anxieties vibrating on wavelengths that amplify one\u00a0another.\n<\/p>\n

It doesn\u2019t take long to understand that Reggie isn\u2019t unable to reveal his true self to the camera so much as terrified to. He still can\u2019t show his face in public without getting booed by his former supporters\u2014Jets fans are not ones to let a grudge go easily\u2014and even his former coach (Corbin Bernsen) still has an axe to grind 20 years later. But he\u2019s surrounded by people who know his better side: his ex-wife and current manager Monica (Erika Alexander), who bears no ill will toward Reggie or his fianc\u00e9e, Brina (Precious Way), an influencer half his age; his teenage son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall), who seems to like being a child of divorce because it means his dad\u2019s always buying him expensive apology gifts; his former teammate Rusty (Bobby Moynihan), who now lives in his basement and functions as a one-man entourage.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

The U.S. Had a Crazy Strategy to Beat Canada for Men\u2019s Hockey Gold. I Can\u2019t Believe It Worked.
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This Terrible New Olympic Event Must Be Exiled From the Games Forever
\n <\/a><\/p>\n

The heart of the show, though, is the relationship between Reggie and Arthur, an odd couple united in their quest to show the world they\u2019re not as much of an embarrassment as people think they are. Arthur\u2019s professional humiliation, which involves a tennis-ball-related tantrum on the set of a Marvel movie, is private at first. (The show is no more preoccupied with explaining how the implosion of a major Hollywood blockbuster could go unnoticed than with justifying the continued presence of a camera crew after Reggie temporarily kicks Arthur and Co. out of his house.) But eventually, the on-set footage leaks and goes viral, and it becomes clear their only path to redemption is each other. Arthur isn\u2019t a constant presence, and sometimes the show just lets us sink into watching his footage without thinking about who might be shooting it. But Morgan and Radcliffe make a delightful comic duo, their shared anxieties vibrating on wavelengths that amplify one another rather than cancel each other out.<\/p>\n

While it never pushes into Documentary Now!<\/a> territory, The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins does get off a few well-placed jabs at nonfiction\u2019s expense: Monica busts Arthur on his attempt to get her to elaborate on an uncomfortable subject by simply staying quiet, and Reggie tries to force Arthur to shut off his cameras by breaking into a Beatles song that would be too expensive to license. (In a budget-conscious twist, he\u2019s actually singing a cheap knockoff.) But sending up the medium is just a bonus. The real prize is getting to watch Morgan and the rest of the cast find their groove and work their way toward creating a show that, if it doesn\u2019t quite fill 30\u00a0Rock\u2019s shoes, at least seems capable of following in its footsteps.<\/p>\n

Get the best of movies, TV, books, music, and more.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The most uttered phrase in the first season of The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins is three…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":486182,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[54],"tags":[1036,88,99,92],"class_list":["post-486181","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-comedy","tag-entertainment","tag-sports","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486181","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=486181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/486181\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/486182"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=486181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=486181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=486181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}