Reggie Dinkins Is Back With Jane Krakowski. NBC Is Rebuilding 30 Rock Piece by Piece

The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins began its second season Monday night at 8:30 on NBC, with episodes streaming the next day on Peacock. Tracy Morgan still plays Reggie, a former NFL star with two MVPs who lost it all in a gambling scandal, and Daniel Radcliffe still plays Arthur Tobin, the documentary filmmaker trying to make the comeback look like one. It's a show about a famous man rehabilitating his image, which is America's most popular genre after true crime, and usually stars the same people.

The series comes from Robert Carlock and Sam Means, with Tina Fey producing alongside them, and its first season did very well for a network sitcom in 2026, which is a bit like being the tallest man at a jockey convention. The pilot, which aired after an NFL playoff game in January, was the season's most-watched broadcast comedy episode; the season wrapped in April, and NBC renewed it. Erika Alexander, Bobby Moynihan, Precious Way and Jalyn Hall are all back. The premiere, 'We Keep the Kisses,' has Hall's Carmelo trying to hide a relationship, which in a house with a documentary crew is like trying to hide a sneeze in church.

Then there's the guest list. Jane Krakowski, who played Jenna Maroney opposite Morgan for seven seasons of 30 Rock, joins as Angela Broyer, a New Jersey interior decorator who went to Reggie's high school. Scott Adsit, 30 Rock's Pete Hornberger, plays a neighbor who's the regular Santa at the tree lighting, and Edi Patterson plays the head of the HOA who decides who gets to be Santa, the most dangerous elected office in the suburbs. Add Jason Mantzoukas, Boris Kodjoe, SNL's Jeremy Culhane and Mike Tirico as himself, and the cast is built like a buffet: nobody asked for all of it, and everybody's going back for seconds.

NPR's Pop Culture Happy Hour summed it up with a pun, calling the show (30) Rock-solid, and I won't argue. NBC spent the better part of a decade trying to find its next hit and has apparently decided to reassemble the last one in a different house, the way a fellow who keeps losing at cards goes back to the deck he used to win with. It isn't cheating. It's network television, which is cheating with commercials.

There's something cheerfully grim about it. The networks used to launch careers. Now they reunite them, like a retirement home with a laugh track and better lighting. But Morgan is as strange and alive on camera as he was 20 years ago, and Radcliffe plays straight man like a fellow who spent his whole youth waiting to stop being a wizard. Hollywood never runs out of ideas; it runs out of nerve, and goes up to the attic for the old ones, which is where the good furniture was all along.