When fans found out last month that a
30 Rock reunion was happening, with key members of the original cast (including Tina Fey, Tracy Morgan and Alec Baldwin) all returning, there was much joy and many GIFs shared on Twitter to express their happiness. Maybe it would be like the
amazing Parks and Rec reunion for charity that had us all nostalgic and singing along to Chris Pratt's ode to Li'l Sebastian. If Tina Fey’s work-wife Amy Poehler, as Leslie Knope, can pull off a remotely-shot reunion, so can Liz Lemon. Alas, as it turns out (and, admittedly, they told us), the hour-long reunion was mostly used to promote NBC’s new streaming service Peacock. So most of it felt less like a continuation of the seven-season show storyline and more like one of those commercials you might skip at the beginning of a YouTube video.
Most of it.If you felt like you were stuck between
30 Rock and a hard place after watching that reunion (thank you, thank you…), there was at least one shining moment of pure hilarity and on-brand Liz Lemonness: yelling at a man for his abject stupidity.
Turning a Manhattan corner, the masked Lemon sees a jabroni on the street casually chilling as if he's immune to COVID-19. “Really? You don’t need a mask, hot shot?” she asks him, before proceeding to smack down all his Facebook conspiracy theories and non-scientific-totally-made-up mask facts.After some quick back-and-forth where Liz reveals that she’s out on the street because her family needs a break from her, she whips off her mask to reveal another mask (twist!) but with her scary growling mouth printed on it, she manages to shoo the knucklehead off of the street.“BOOM! Another successful interaction with a man!” she hollers, throwing her hands up.We’d like to use this tactic in several situations. Manspreaders and Karens, your numbers are up.[video_embed id='1993086']RELATED: Cree artist beads beautiful mask with a message [/video_embed]Jack McBrayer and Jane Krakowski also returned for the reunion reprising their respective roles as Kenneth and Jenna, and the one-time special featured some high-profile guest appearances and cameos from Khloe Kardashian, Dwayne Johnson, Jimmy Fallon, Mandy Moore, Gwen Stefani, Al Roker, Sofia Vergara and
Real Housewives’ Kandi Burruss.While the reunion served some fun
30 Rock humour and brought back favourite characters, some fans may have been a little disappointed by the one-off. According to
Vulture, more than half of NBC's affiliate stations in the U.S. refused to air the special because it was essentially an hour-long advertisement for the Peacock streaming service—direct competition for the TV stations. The special made sure to mention that the reunion show as well as all past episodes of the series (presumably
minus the four featuring blackface), would be available on the streaming service the following day. Peacock is not available in Canada but you can watch all seven seasons of
30 Rock on Crave. [video_embed id='1993091']BEFORE YOU GO: Why it's important to wear a face mask properly [/video_embed]
