The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins returns, and thankfully nothing has changed

Except, the filmmaker in him just knows that a Bumblebee-Starscream-style forbidden romance subplot (in deference to potential young viewers who don’t know who that Shakespeare guy is) will look amazing in the trailer, so Arthur lurks, and hopes things explode on their own. When Carmelo hilariously tries to bribe Arthur with “warm beans, scalding hot tomatoes, two hard eggs, blood meat, and some wet mushrooms” (“A proper English breakfast!,” Artur beams), Arthur tells him not to worry—no secret romance has ever stayed a secret for long, even without his help. 

Photo by: Scott Gries/NBC

There’s a truly outstanding bit once Precious Way’s Brina finds a curly hair on Carmelo’s jacket she can’t recognize (she’s a 2C, while Bobby Moynihan’s Rusty is a 3B) when Arthur is so excited to finally see this juicy plot thread picked up that he explodes into frame, smashing himself against the wall. “Quick talking head?,” he asks as nonchalantly as possible as he picks himself off the floor. Arthur Tobin genuinely likes this family, and they like him. It’s a lack of true conflict that The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins should be hobbled by, but in practice, everybody’s conflicts are just fuel for a very cozy, slow-burning comic fire. 

The other main plot is so closely tied to Morgan’s previous major TV gig that viewers could spot the Tina Fey of it all even if her name wasn’t in the executive producer rolls. Tracy Morgan has a singular talent for this type of fame-spoiled but sweet manchild role that even if his Monica-brokered live appearance on sportscaster Mike Tirico’s football chat show isn’t as calamitously funny as Tracy Jordan when he tried to stab Conan O’Brien, watching Morgan cope with that errant ferret exploring his nethers is still what fans have come for. 

A main theme of “We Keep The Kisses” is generational disconnect. Brina claims that young people say “search it up” instead of “google it,” (“I don’t believe you!,” Reggie yells); Monica’s new assistant Max (a funny turn from SNL‘s Jeremy Culhane) gets his job by wowing Monica with a buzzy boast about getting “Dochi to yarf into a [something] on Hot Ones;” Carmelo is confused by Arthur’s own forbidden love sending him physical letters “with stickers on them.” Monica, as savvy as she’s been in keeping her family (and Rusty) solvent over the years, finds that keeping up with the fame game now means reinventing her professional approach as well, and the smugly plugged-in Max seems just the ticket. 

Sadly, as a late-night visit to her office proves, getting Reggie Dinkins famous again isn’t as easy as that. Max, caught stuffed into a latex bodysuit to ply his cake-sitting OnlyFans side-hustle, erupts in as dignified a generational rant as you can when dressed like a bright red condom, scolding Monica, “You mean I don’t have a secret heart code for internet fame? A-doy! Nobody does!” Reggie might take exception to Max calling him a Boomer (“We’re Gen X!”), but the series’ exploration of Reggie’s desire to become beloved once more in a very different media landscape still carries surprising weight. 

When Reggie and Arthur have their episode-ending sit-down to discuss how their various plans went awry yet again, Reggie brings up Sisyphus (Rutgers education for the win), with the two washed-up former stars recognizing, “Getting really close to your goals and having to start over is actually really frustrating.” There’s an underlying yearning in The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins here that carries through all the uniformly delightful shenanigans—both Arthur and Reggie need the adulation back that they once had. And neither truly knows why. 

Stray observations

• I hope Culhane sticks around. Max’s explosion about living with eight roommates in Bushwick because of debt from “an education that is useless now” fits intriguingly enough into the main narrative that he has some staying power. 
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• This was a very funny episode, in that 30 Rock rapid fire yet offhand way you don’t realize you’ve missed ’til it’s out of your life. The way Max’s unseen German client helpfully suggests, “Maybe if you all sit on the cake..?,” in response to the office chaos is delightful. 
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• Speaking of 30 Rock, tonight’s opening fakeout with brina and the family’s theme song video echoes the way 30 Rock‘s season 4 premiere (fittingly titled “Season 4“) similarly suggested some inexplicable format shift. 
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• Thanks to the gods of freeze frame, it’s possible to see just how hard the writers on this show work to fill every corner of Reggie’s world with nonsense. Newspaper clippings from the Dinkins-Basmati feud include barely readable details like Jerry hiring “an old Romanian woman to stand outside Dinkins’ New Jersey home and yell, ‘Soon!’ over and over again.” 
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• Reggie and Rusty also successfully ate Jerry’s all-you-can-eat restaurant into bankruptcy. 
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• Again, like Tracy Jordan, Reggie once tried out a recording career. His Kwanzaa song is no “Werewolf Bar Mitzvah.”
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• One positive effect of Reggie’s comeback: His SNL is back on Peacock. (“I’m also 50, Sally O’Malley!,” an in-drag Reggie booms in a clip.)
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• Monica’s crowded waiting room is filled with would-be assistants, including “Spirit Airline pilots, CBS News producers, and vaccinated country singers.”
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• Monica’s incremental step forward for Reggie is rather elegant. As Max notes, since measles is back, Monica gets the “The More You Know” people to just rerun his old public service announcements like the one where he states presciently, “Vaccinate your kids against measles. You’d have to have a worm in your brain not to do it.”
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• Outstanding callback to Arthur’s sexual harassment training video gig, where a male boss asks his female employee to come sit on a cake in his office.
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• Brina, upon finding out Arthur knew about Carmelo and Delilah: “Jail! No, space jail!” “What’s the difference?” “Space jail moves at the speed of light, so time goes slower. When your sentence is done, centuries have passed on Earth. Everything you knew and everyone you loved is gone!” Don’t mess with Brina’s family. 
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• The Basmatis have their own Rusty. His name’s Gator and he eats dinner with them alongside his Real Doll. 
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• Remember, mailmen keep the kisses you seal your love letters with. Those are intercepted.