Today's Episode
We watched it. Every episode covers the latest installment(s) of a different TV show.
Today's Episode
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins (PILOT)
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The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins premieres for the second time on NBC this Monday. Since the pilot already aired last month, and with its proximity to both the Olympics and the Super Bowl, we have to assume this sports sitcom has a lot to offer. On the podcast, we discuss Tracy Morgan’s character Reggie, and the documentary he is making about himself with the help of Arthur, a disgraced movie director (Daniel “I don’t want to be associated as a wizard, so I take every comedy role I can” Radcliffe).
Along with going over the plot, we play some trivia, talk about our favorite moments, surprises like Daily Show correspondent cameos, and what the early reception is looking like. Tune in to hear what we thought. Welcome to Today’s Episode!
Welcome to today's episode of the podcast where we discuss the most recent installments of a different series every show. It is Friday, February 20th, and in three days, NBC is going to premiere the Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins for the second time. Last month they released the pilot early after the Rams and Bears showdown, Matt Stafford versus Caleb Williams. People were so tuned in on that game because it went into overtime, and then immediately after it got the fall and rise of Reggie Dinkins. The rap reported that it was the uh highest watched premiere in three years for NBC, following that of do you want to take a guess? Oh man, I'm not gonna get it. I don't know that.
SPEAKER_01John Larriquette?
SPEAKER_00Oh, uh Nightcourt, right? Nightcourt, yes. So what did we learn from this pilot? That is what we're jumping into today. First of all, it's Tina Faye and Tracy Morgan's first team up in quite some time. Since 30 Rock? Um, I think that well, SNL technically, and Tina Faye's references on Wikipedia, they are longer than the rest of her entire page. I've never seen someone, an actor, like this before. Everybody should stop the podcast right now. Check out Tina Faye's references. Anyway, so yes, 30 Rock is where they are both best known for teaming up. Tracy Morgan played Tracy Jordan in that, which was a caricature of himself. Then afterwards, everybody knows that he had a near fatal car accident with the Walmart driver, right? In the early 2010s, and then he recovered from it. He has been in a few other series over the last few years. He was in The Last OG, which was about a recently released XCON trying to rebuild his life in Brooklyn. I think that was on TBS, if I'm not mistaken. Yeah, this also takes place in New York, and then in November of like last year, not November of 2024, November of 2025. So only a few months ago, he came out with the sequel to The Neighborhood, the spinoff sequel, yeah, where he played a Harlem widower who gets disrupted when his millennial son and her his free-spirited daughter move back in.
SPEAKER_01Oh, so he's the main character of that. Because I was wondering if he if this was his first main character role since the last OG.
SPEAKER_00The last OG, and then Crutch, that was the name of that show, where again, based in New York, again, playing kind of like a curmudgeony father, right? And then you have the Fallen Rise of Reggie Dickens, where the actual showrunner, Robert Carlock, says this character is really funny, was a jock, and only means well, it's literally Tracy. So my question is to start out, yeah, is Tracy Morgan George Lopez in us? George Lopez in us as in like keeps releasing the same show, some a little better, some a little worse, playing himself in in New York.
SPEAKER_01I think that you could say he's George Lopez in us. I also think you can say that he's Tim Allenus because Tim Allen always the last man's improvement. He just puts it under a different gears.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, there's the trope of like um what's his face? The old uh Western dude, um, the most famous cowboy, John Wayne. Yeah, John Wayne would always play John Wayne. But with Tracy Morgan, it's like he always likes to play the guy getting the second chance. You know, he's getting older and older, and every every show it's like I used to have such a big career, and then something goes terribly wrong, and then he needs to like reshape his entire image. Give me the synopsis, the log line, whatever for the show.
SPEAKER_01Reggie Dinkins, a disgraced former football star living with his family and ex-teammates, hires filmmaker Arthur Tobin to make a documentary about his fall from grace. But Reggie doesn't want to make it seem that way. He wants to make it seem like he's successful and always has been.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, he well, he does want to make his image look better, but he doesn't realize that to do so, he has to delve into the worst parts that he has never really wanted to admit to. Right. Um, and so yeah, Tracy Morgan uh juxtaposed with Daniel Radcliffe, who plays Arthur, the person who's supposed to run this documentary. Now, Daniel Radcliffe, he's continuing his transformation from wizard to theater guy to comedian. We've seen him from Kimmy Schmidt, which was the other Tina Faye show. We saw him in Miracle Workers, Swiss Army Man. I was gonna say, if But what what you don't want to know, my favorite, I just want to shout out for Weird, the Al Yankovic story. That's probably my favorite role of his.
SPEAKER_01There you go. You took you took all three of mine because if you just saw him in Harry Potter films, you might not be able to guess that he would be so funny, but he steals the show in comedy. At this point, I think everybody's seen him in a comedy. He's the best part of all the ones you mentioned, the choose your own adventure, unbreakable, Kimmy Schmidt. Uh, and then I even saw him on Broadway and how I succeeded in business without really trying in 2011. I remember he was the best part of that as well. He has mastered the Josh Hutcherson kind of comedy where it's like no matter what, his character is always going to be likable. Big question.
SPEAKER_00Is it Hutcherson or Hutchinson?
SPEAKER_01I thought it was Hutcherson. I always say Josh Hutcherson, but I'm not really sure if I'm right.
SPEAKER_00But so Daniel Radcliffe, he's playing the normal, the straight uh character here. He's not playing the weirdo. He's not the Swiss Army man. Right.
SPEAKER_01He does have his demons though as well, because of that whole entire.
SPEAKER_00He has a freak out. Yeah. So Marvel. He's hired to do the documentary, and it turns out the reason why he is uh taking such a a job that doesn't seem like it's gonna pay well, and also the NFL doesn't even 100% say that it wants to release the footage from Reggie Dinkins' time in the NFL.
SPEAKER_01Or give him it, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, release it. Yeah. Um so so the reason he's doing that is because of what?
SPEAKER_01No, he was part of a Marvel movie, and then he freaked out when he saw a ton of tennis balls around him, which were supposed to originally be spaceships, and then they kept on rewriting it, and it ended up being a tennis.
SPEAKER_00I think he took that too literally. Like again, I think it's just like all the pressure of running a billion-dollar franchise or multi-billion dollar franchise, having the movie where you have to shoot everything in front of a green screen. These are like indie directors. He won an Oscar, and you have to assume that was outside, you know, he was able to shoot the environment when you're stuck having to just stare at green stuff and tennis balls the whole time.
SPEAKER_01Just imagine the whole thing.
SPEAKER_00I mean, it is ridiculous if you're not an actor and you're not used to it. Yeah, so he started going around and hitting all the tennis balls on set, and yeah, he had his meltdown. I don't I've I think that we've seen that joke before, you know, freak outs on set. It feels like it's more and more common with Wonder Man and the franchise and all that meta critique, but it's it's just in a sitcom form here. So I was fine with that. But I actually found them showing Reggie Dinkins screwing himself over in the past a much funnier scene. With Michael Costa, where he was uh mixing up the phone number.
SPEAKER_01It seemed like they got the entire daily show cast on here. Trevor Noah's birthday is today, February 20th.
SPEAKER_00Oh, I I have some I let's jump into a sports trivia then. Because uh February 20th, tell me which one didn't happen on this day. In 2004, A Rod was acquired by the New York Yankees from the Texas Rangers in a blockbuster trade. In uh, yeah, I said 2004. 2022, there was an all-star record night because Steph Curry dropped 50 points with uh 16 threes. Uh-huh. Uh in 1963, Willie Mays signed a record deal for the time. It was$100,000, MLB's highest paid player, which is crazy when you think$100,000 compared to Shohay's$700 million. Um, and then in 1976, Muhammad Ali retained the heavyweight uh against John Pierre Koopman. I thought one of those did not happen on February, February 20th.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, Alex Rodriguez, I think maybe I'm wrong. I thought he was on the Yankees before 2004, so that's gonna be my guess.
SPEAKER_00He was not, it was five days earlier on February 15th, so you still got the answer right. The reason he's included here, though, is that Reggie Dinkins is kind of like the same story of A-Rod, who has had falls and rises and then falls again. Uh primarily most recently, I would think, because of his breakup with um Jennifer Lopez. Jennifer Lopez, who then went and broke up with uh Ben Affleck as well. But yeah, no, his I remember he would release documentaries and even time articles and stuff before he got into sports casting, where they were trying to rebrand him as not just the steroid guy, not just the rich guy, not just the guy who like hit the baseball out of the mitt as he's running to the as if if someone hasn't seen that clip of like I think 2005 or 2006, where he's running towards first base and he literally slaps the ball out of the first baseman's mitt to try to be safe. It's one of the funniest things. It seems like it should be in a comedy. Uh, and it's around the same time when Reggie Dinkins, 2005, that's when his fall happened, again, called up the host of a show uh for an interview he was doing. Speaking that he was talking to his bookie, and just straight up betting on himself.
SPEAKER_01Well, and yeah, laying it out kind of for the world to see. Also, Ronnie Chang showed up as Barry Hugh. So I was glad to see that both of them I was in a completely unrelated scene. I was trying to see, like I was like, maybe this is made by someone who is from the Daily Show, because like again, you have two people.
SPEAKER_00No, it was a more it was mostly all uh Kimmy Schmidt, uh 30 Rock, and uh and Mr. Mayer. I mean, like, that's why Bobby Moynihan's in it. Moynihan's been super busy as well. There's 17 credits in TV alone over the last three years. Really? Yes, it doesn't feel like that though, because I haven't seen him in in like a ton, but like post-SNL, it's always weird because it's like unless you watch the specific show they jump in on. Speaking of other shows that this reminds you of, though, it is a sitcom, it does involve betting. Do you consider it at all like Bookie?
SPEAKER_01No, I don't think I think that boogie was darker and also it wasn't a mockumentary.
SPEAKER_00This how well that that's interesting because I looked it up and this doesn't say it's a mockumentary. It is though. They have the side panels and they literally have the director there. Right. But then you would say like reality TV is also a documentary. No, because this is scripted. I yeah so is reality TV. But when I'm thinking about like the shows like Parks and Rec and The Office, uh and the paper, they make a big point of saying that this documentary is eventually going to be released. Right. But this one, it's more like I feel like it's like the rock show where he's trying to make a show within the show about himself.
SPEAKER_01That was a that was a comprised of a series of flashbacks. Literally, it being a mockumentary is one of my pros.
SPEAKER_00Well, wasn't uh what's his face the guy who was interviewing him in that show? Randall Park? Yeah, Randall Park. Wasn't he interviewing him for a like past experience look back or something? But then they did a flashback. I don't know. It just isn't labeled right now as a mockumentary. Um and it's got the same director as Documentary Now, um, as Reese Thompson. So, you know, uh, how about Eastbound and Down? Eastbound and Down, the the Danny Masterson show? Danny McBride? Danny McBride, yeah, that's what I meant. It's a different person. Yeah. Uh ones in jail. Eastbound and Down, it was like where he flamed out his career. He started as like a hundred mile per hour. I think he like won the World Series or something. Yeah. And then like this is just him as an aging uh uh ex-athlete.
SPEAKER_01That one I can see definitely more than Bookie.
SPEAKER_00Mr. Throwback. Steph Curry was literally mentioned in the show.
SPEAKER_01Yes, no, I do think that this is almost exactly like Mr. Throwback. Both were NBC.
SPEAKER_00But Steph Curry is not on a uh downslope or like a fallen arrack.
SPEAKER_01I mean, take away like the realness of having Steph Curry in that TV show, and I'm saying you're kind of dealing with the same thing.
SPEAKER_00I would also put Charlie Pooth in there, especially when it came to the managers. The Charlie Pooth show. The Charlie Pooth show, yes. Um, and then it does feel like we've gotten a lot of sports comedies over the last couple of years. So where does it fit in with the Chad Powers group and Stick? Stick, oh man.
SPEAKER_01I would say that it's I can't like I honestly I don't see the similarities between the two. Neither do I. Stick was a drama, and Chad Powers, like it was just such a It's like a Ted Lasso ripoff. Yeah, like this, as as weird as it is to say, is grounded in reality. Chad Powers could never actually end up happening.
SPEAKER_00I see the opposite where Chad Powers, because you have Glenn Powell being able to be all acrobatic and like actually show some football, it feels a little bit this. I I walked away from it feeling kind of like it was a pandemic show. It's got a really small cast, a restricted setting, and uh I don't know. It just felt like it was smaller scale than anything else. It is a sitcom, though, where the other ones it feels like has more of a plot moving forward.
SPEAKER_01I don't know. Well, I was thinking that this is probably um what an NBC is trying to restart like the late 2000s. Because if you remember that block of like The Office, Parkson Wreck and 30 Rock, even when though they all received critical acclaim in later seasons, the first seasons, particularly the pilot episodes, were never really liked by the Yeah, we always talk about how comedies it takes a while for them to find their footing.
SPEAKER_00And I feel like it's the same thing kind of here. The difference being that Tracy Morgan is he's a lot less like he has the delivery, some of those lines, especially in the past where he was with his wife and uh and he was like, and we're still married. And it was like so clearly that like in the future they were getting the breakup. Yes. However, for him to run the whole show, we've already seen him do that so many times with this sort of same idea. When does it become old?
SPEAKER_01Well, that's my actually my first con was that yeah, Reggie Dinkins can get very grating as a character very fast. I didn't feel like he was uh uh his loud and obnoxious persona did not fit the wholesome tone that I felt the show was trying to have. And I didn't even really feel like he had a save the cat moment in it. Did you?
SPEAKER_00Like I didn't Monica worked as kind of his um, like it's just supposed to be his charm. He definitely was trying to be the save the cat moment when he was talking to his kid. Right. Um, and he was saying, like, yeah, no, I'll listen to you. I I I hear what you're saying. Like, he didn't have it. Monica kept saying, Um you always bet on Reggie Dinkins. He'll always pull it off. And then you look back in his past, and it's like for the last 20 years, maybe he pulled it off for like 10, but we haven't seen enough of his actual career to kind of root for him.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm like, I'm rooting way more for Arthur Tobin than I am Reggie Dinkins by the end of this episode.
SPEAKER_00Because he already won an Oscar. Right. You're just like, oh, you have the talent, you just need to reestablish.
SPEAKER_01And I'm not sure I completely bought Monica's reason to go back to Reggie's. It happened pretty abruptly.
SPEAKER_00I would say more because of the weight that they had been together for so long. Yeah, she would that she wouldn't just give up after one fight.
SPEAKER_01I get that he's her son's father, but I was more talking about when Barry Who again played by Ronnie Chang, who I was glad was in this TV show, when he was like insulting him, and then that was enough for her to just be like, you know what, maybe I made a mistake. I was like, I'm not sure if that like in reality really would have happened.
SPEAKER_00Um in reality, uh so she plays his manager, even though they used to be married. And she, yeah, and she finds out about the documentary, gets mad, and says, It's either me or the documentary, and he says, Well, I want to keep this thing, and then she quits. And then she's going to take on this new role, and that's where she just gets lambasted that she spent so much time with her ex-husband. She's like, No, I do love him, and I do think that he's a good guy. It's just that we're at different points in our lives. Did you think that and I think that that just his smugness and and I think Ronnie Chang always plays a smug idiot really well. Yeah, no, well, I mean, he's not an idiot in real life, but but uh No, no, no, but but the smugness, like even in Megan, I remember right, but it's enough to make you want to do the exact opposite of what he's like fruiting for, and that I think that's why they made it. I do think it was so sappy though, that she just walked outside, there's Reggie Denkin, she's like, I didn't take the interview, and then now what's the show? Just him being followed around and and just a bunch of little skits of of why uh what what he's doing nowadays with Bobby Moynihan. Yeah, and what do you think of Bobby Moynihan's character, Rusty? Okay, so Rusty, we see him at the very end, he's almost um fake murdered because that's how uh Reggie had scripted it, that he wanted to be.
SPEAKER_01Right. I mean, I mean, what's there to think? I think that Bobby Moynihan is hilarious. He saved a ton of SNL sketches, but in this, I found his character to be kind of like the worst, I think. Because like, and not not worse in terms of like annoying, he did was kind of reminiscent of Larry De Thad from BMS, if uh if Rusty was kind of like Larry. But here I just felt like his comedy chops didn't really get like the chance their chance to shine, you know.
SPEAKER_00I know that football players can get old re rather quickly. It's like once you're off the uh athletic diet, or you're just like eating as much as you were eating when you were a player, but you're not actually like expending that energy. Yeah, you can balloon, but like that would be the fattest kicker ever. Like most kickers, it's it's crazy, but they're like ripped. You know, they're they're super strong in not just their legs, but they actually like train and stuff like that. I don't, I don't I never see a fat kicker on the NFL. So when they showed the picture of him, I both laughed and also like any sense of this being a series show where we would get even the Chad Powers level of football looking uh scenes went away. Also went away when I saw how like limited Tracy Morgan is in his movement, probably because of the accent. But like he is shown in the backflashes, and I'm just like, I really hope they don't try to have him run.
SPEAKER_01You know, I didn't even I didn't even factor that in until you just said it now.
SPEAKER_00But yeah, he doesn't move a lot in the pilot, probably because like I don't think he's moved in any of this series, like besides just normal walking and stuff.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I didn't even think about that. So and I'm also glad that he's he's still gaining work. I just feel like this show, if it's going to be because again, Parks and Rec, Office 3D Rock, they're staples of MBC. Also more characters though in each one. Yes, but but like I can I can give the show a pass for this. So overall, I thought that like I think it just needs time to grow because I do see potential for the TV series, and I do somewhat empathize with Reggie Dinkins because it's hard not to feel old. I had a sad realization uh happen during the Super Bowl because the first Super Bowl I ever remember was Super Bowl XL, and uh I think it was between the Seahawks and the Steelers. The Steelers ended up winning 21 to 10 that game, but I remember a lot of facts about it. Like I remember people thought that Super Bowl XL because of the Roman numerals meant that it meant extra large, like it was supposed to be a big football game.
SPEAKER_00So, like Rothelsberger versus I don't know who the Seahawks quarterback was back then.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I was seven years old at the time, but I even remember like the uh they used to give the commercial listings in the newspaper, and you were able to tell which ones they had played at that point. Uh and so I I always thought to myself though, at seven that when it became Super Bowl LX, that I was going to be very old, and throughout the years it kept crep creeping up. And Super Bowl L was weird enough, but sadly now, Super Bowl LX happened, and so much like him, I had to accept my past and realize I'm at least older than my seven-year-old self because now it's Super Bowl LX. So five out of ten.
SPEAKER_00You were still in your 20s. I just want to, I just for the people listening out there, and who this guy's complaining about being old in his 20s. Sorry.
SPEAKER_01When you when you like I had been waiting 20 years, not in like a fun way for Super Bowl LX to happen, and it just happened this last year.
SPEAKER_00Reggie Dinkins is like 60 years old in this show. That's just for comparison. But you said five out of ten, right? Five out of ten. Five out of ten is just the most normal show you can get. What is the most famous case of gambling leading to the uh big expulsion of uh a player ever? Like it's the most well known.
SPEAKER_01Well, I would say I remember 30 for 30 did a full thing on it. I I always think of Charles Barkley. He said, Oh, he lost like 10 million dollars, but no, not Betty.
SPEAKER_00I'm not talking about Betty, I'm talking about a player who gets expelled from their sport. Pete Rose is like the biggest one ever. Of course, of course. Hit leader in baseball. Of course. The difference was that they don't tell us right off the bat what Reggie Dinkins is so well known from. You know, like he's a good quarterback, but there are hundreds of good players in the NFL. What makes him so special? The the crazy thing about Pete Rose is he had 4,200 some hits. Like the closest player next to him, I mean Derek Jeter, who's the most recent player to play since to even get close, is like 600 to 800 hits away from him. So it was crazy. And then like shoeless Joe Jackson and stuff. But Pete Rose was the inspiration for the character. So I kept waiting for Reggie to get like some sort of record. And then I was gonna look up who actually has that record to just wonder if they would be pissed off at the fact that like they just gave it to someone else for the show.
SPEAKER_01And I know that a lot of TV shows, sports comedies in general do like to throw in actual stats there. This then, yeah, this didn't even really try to do that.
SPEAKER_00We will get guest stars, but like other comedians. I haven't seen other sports stars, unlike with Chad Powers, where you do expect to see other big sports guys, and it doesn't have the budget of stick. So there's a lot of things working against it, I feel like. But who knows with the second episode coming out in three days what they change. Darnell Dinkins is actually a football player. I just wanted to draw out that there is a Dinkins uh that is playing football. Currently, no, he's a former NFL tight end who turned into a coach. Uh, what else is there to say? It's gonna be 10 episodes, and um, yeah, I always like Moynihan, so I didn't have as much of an issue with him. I felt like the kid played just the most normal, basic child that we've ever seen. It's just the characters themselves. But I will say that Brina, who is his like fiance, his fiance girlfriend, I thought her delivery was quite funny. Like I thought she was able to turn on from I'm going to play a manipulative like B right now to I'm gonna be um, I'm gonna tell you the truth, which is that I think that Monica should be in our lives, right? Like I thought that she played that scene pretty well.
SPEAKER_01She was the reason why uh why uh Reggie Dinkins ended up going to Monica.
SPEAKER_00So yeah. Yeah. And then uh the Daily Show people, the Reggie's delivery and the flashbacks, uh, there were reasons to like the small jokes and Daniel Radcliffe's posters of his previous movies.
SPEAKER_01I did the one part that I did laugh at with Bobby Moynihan was when Bobby Moynihan walked in on his interview and was like, Did you bring all these from home? Yeah.
SPEAKER_00And then he asked for them to be delivered when he gets fired into his. Home, um, or to I think the bank that they came from. Uh and and so the reception on this thing, Hollywood reporter called it the heated rivalry of football. I'm kidding. That's not what they say. I was gonna say what they say it makes an appealing odd couple because of Radcliffe and Tracy Morgan. Yeah, no, um, yeah, overall it's been kind of mixed reviews so far, and and it's just trying to find its footing, but you wouldn't recommend it. Not yet. What would you give it out of 10? I'd probably give it a four out of ten. Four out of ten? Yeah, it wasn't my favorite. But thanks for listening. We'll see you on the next episode. Hope you enjoyed this one. Bye.
SPEAKER_01Bye.