It was just last November that Tracy Morgan returned to television in the Paramount+ sitcom “Crutch,” a traditional multi-camera affair in which he plays a cantankerous Harlem businessman with a lot of family on his hands. And here he is again, starring in NBC’s “The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins,” a mockumentary from Robert Carlock and Sam Means, about a disgraced football pro looking to salvage his reputation. (“Redemption” is too precious a word.)
The tradition it belongs to is shorter, but rich, beginning with “30 Rock,” and continuing through “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt,” both of which Carlock co-created with Tina Fey, and “Girls5Eva,” on which they were executive producers, and whose creator, Meredith Scardino, is a writer on “Dinkins.” (Means wrote for all three series.) These shows share a rhythm and a repertoire of comic tactics and effects. They’re cartoons with real relationships, full of devilish takes on media and pop and consumer culture, with jokes that twist in the air like an Olympic ski jumper before landing on their feet going backward. These sound particularly good in Morgan’s mouth, with his non-actory, declamatory way of speaking. For example: “Don’t get me started on Vegas, ‘cause I’ve never been and I’d be making it up.” Or, “Jerry Basmati is two-faced, like that ‘Batman’ villain, the Joker.”
Premiering Monday in its regular time slot after a post-football sneak preview, “Reggie Dinkins” fits the star like a tailor-made suit, which it probably is, putting him in a part not unlike Tracy Jordan, his “30 Rock” character — not the same person, but with a brain that works with a similar inarguable illogic. (“The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is an even worse guy with two guns.”) But Reggie also knows Latin, which he studied in college, “because I thought it would help me meet Dominican chicks” and has read “Moby-Dick.”
A star running back, Reggie was banned from football 20 years earlier after he mixed up two phone numbers and called into a sports show thinking he was talking to his bookie. (He will protest that he only bet on himself to win.) He’s a pariah everywhere he goes, so he doesn’t go much of anywhere. Thanks to his ex-wife Monica (Erika Alexander), who remains his agent and business manager, he still has a lot of money, which he’s spending on a film about himself, hoping it will help him get reinstated to the NFL and then elected to the Football Hall of Fame.
To this end, he has hired Arthur Tobin (Daniel Radcliffe, submitting to an Elijah Wood joke), who once made an Oscar-winning documentary but whose own career blew apart after he melted down attempting to direct a Marvel movie; now he’s teaching at the University of Maryland Center for Documentary, Anime and Pornography and aiming to make something more ambitious, not to say pretentious, than the puff piece Reggie has hired him for. Reggie only addresses Arthur by his full name, the way Tracy Jordan always called Tina Fey’s character “Liz Lemon.” (Arthur, whose shoulder Reggie is rubbing: “Are you being nice or you wiping fish grease on me?” Reggie: “Two things can be true, Arthur Tobin.”
Although Morgan and Radcliffe are the marquee names, it’s an ensemble piece, in which everyone gets to be funny; there are no weak links. Precious Way plays Reggie’s young fiancée, Brina , described by Monica as “a black Jessica Rabbit,” dreams of “making money from my music and then eventually getting so famous from it that I start a makeup line and never have to do music again.” “My friend regardless of race” and former teammate Rusty (Bobby Moynihan), a loyal clown who makes Reggie look like Denzel Washington, lives in his basement. (At one point he gets stuck head-down in a washing machine.)
Teenage son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall), who plays football but wants to sing, works his divorced parents to his advantage. Monica, whose other clients include “some of the top handball players in Serbia,” “a kid who plays Fortnite, and Geena Davis, but only for archery,” might as well be living in Reggie’s big house. Arthur, who has been filming Reggie even in his sleep, might actually be. They have their ups and downs, but, with a little learning, the downs always lead to ups; the show treats them all with affection, as they treat each other.
Not that there aren’t villains; indeed, as much as there is accord within the household, there is discord without. Ronnie Chieng plays a more successful agent who loves, or lives, to mess with Monica. Craig Robinson is Reggie’s nemesis, as the aforementioned Jerry Basmati, a rival player (and cynical Christian), who inherited the post-gridiron media career Reggie imagined for himself. Corbin Bernsen plays his hate-filled old coach, whose career collapsed without Reggie on the team. They’re all hilarious, and frightening.
Unlike most mockumentary series, in which the supposed documentary is just an armature on which to hang a narrative, here it is very much the point — the series opens with the title “An Arthur Tobin Film,” suggesting we are watching the finished version of the movie whose making it documents, one in which Arthur has, against his better judgment, become a character. Like Reggie, he hopes it will reverse his professional fortunes, though the semi-sentimental theme of the show is that there is more to life than a career. There’s an arc!
Here are a few other funny things I couldn’t work into the paragraphs above. Reggie, who might have to replace Arthur: “Now that PBS is gone, Ken Burns is just doing quinceañera videos.” Monica thinking she has hired as her new assistant a Black woman named Shaneequinniii, judging by her email address, discovers it is Shane E. Quinn III, a white preppie. An Epstein Island joke — “Not what it sounds like,” says Reggie, “Dr. Epstein is my optometrist,” and we see a photo of Epstein’s Eye Land.
There’s a lot more where that came from.
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