Conan O’Brien did little to manage expectations as he kicked off Sunday evening’s “30 Rock” reunion, a one-night-only benefit at Radio City Music Hall to celebrate the beloved sitcom’s 20th anniversary. Cheers from the crowd were near-deafening as O’Brien introduced the cast — Tina Fey, Alec Baldwin, Tracy Morgan and Jane Krakowski — and they kept up the enthusiasm for surprise guests like Jon Hamm, Tom Hanks, Lin-Manuel Miranda, Will Forte and Brian Williams. Created by Fey, “30 Rock,” which ran for seven seasons on NBC from 2006-2013, takes place behind the scenes of a fictional “Saturday Night Live”-esque sketch comedy show called “TGS With Tracy Jordan.” Fey plays head writer Liz Lemon, Baldwin portrays NBC boss Jack Donaghy and Krakowski and Morgan star as cast members Jenna Maroney and Tracey Jordan.
The cast reunion doubled as a charity fundraiser for the Boys and Girls Club of Harlem, an organization they wanted to honor for two specific reasons. But I’m not a good listener, so here we are,” Fey said. One week it was Al Gore, and the next it could be Queen Latifah.” Katrina Bowden, who portrayed Liz’s beautiful assistant Cerie, asked: “Wait, are those real people who lived?” But only one bold-faced name could win the coveted “best guest star” prize, which went to Elaine Stritch as Jack’s overbearing mother Colleen Donaghy.
She was (posthumously) nominated against Marcella Roy as young Liz Lemon, Sherri Shephard as Tracy’s wife Angie Jordan and Kelsey Grammer as his heist-wielding alter ego “Frajer.” “Unfortunately, Elaine can’t be here tonight to accept her award because she’s dead,” Bowden deadpanned. (Strich died in 2014 at age 89.) “So here to accept on her behalf is two-time Academy Award winner Tom Hanks.” Hanks was apparently tricked into attending the evening while he was one block up, near 30 Rockefeller Plaza. Highlights in a montage of prescient jokes include Jenna’s “free Lyle Menendez” tattoo (the brothers were recently granted an early parole hearing) and Tracy’s call with someone pretending to be Bill Cosby — “You’ve got a lot of nerve getting on the phone with me after what you did to my Aunt Paulette!” — way before the comedian was accused of drugging and sexually assaulting women. Then there was Jenna’s weight-gaining role in the fictional “Mystic Pizza: The Musical” (which now exists and began a national tour this fall) and the iconic show-within-a-show “MILF Island,” which paved the way for the very real HBO Max reality dating series “FBoy Island.” McBrayer put Fey and Morgan’s memories to the test, feeding them niche quotes from the show to see if they could remember the wacky things their characters said over the course of seven seasons.
They started strong; Fey knew the reason there “ain’t no party like a Liz Lemon party” because “a Liz Lemon party is mandatory.” And Morgan remembered the seminal “advice I wish I woulda got when I was your age” which was to “live every week like it’s Shark Week.” And then things took a turn. Fey was stumped by a clip of Liz, dressed as Princess Leia from “Star Wars” to try to get out of jury duty. Everyone shouted: “Because I’m surrounded by naysayers.
Wordplay!” Morgan couldn’t recall other Tracy-isms, like, “I don’t get why people like brunch. What’s the benefit of combining breakdancing and lunch?” and “I was just thinking about how weird it is that we eat birds.” But he had a good excuse.
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