'The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins' Season 2 Review
Season Two.
Aired On: NBC / Peacock.
Release Date: 11/02/26.
Genre: Comedy. Mockumentary. Sport.
The Verdict: A Must-See
Replicating the wildly successful run of 30 Rock was always going to be a tough task. Tina Fey and Robert Carlock have taken numerous bites of the apple over the last 15 years. They have had varying degrees of success — you could argue the four-season run of Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt on Netflix was by far the closest. Since then, it’s been mostly a string of sitcoms that haven’t really stuck the landing. The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins is the latest attempt to try and get a show to stick around, as the NBC sitcom about a disgraced football star returns for a 10-episode second season. If the first four episodes of the new season are any indication, the show has found a level of comedic consistency that could sustain a successful run.
If you are not familiar with the show, Fey & Carlock have unleashed Tracy Morgan as Reggie Dinkins, a hall-of-fame-level running back denied entry into Canton because of illegal gambling. Like The Office or Abbott Elementary, the show is shot like a documentary, as prestigious filmmaker Arthur Tobin (Daniel Radcliffe) tries to help Reggie find redemption and get that long-awaited Hall of Fame call (Arthur is also trying to recover from a brutal downfall in his industry). The second season continues both of those stories, with plenty of hijinks along the way. Key supporting characters in Reggie’s life include well-meaning but awkward former teammate Rusty (Bobby Moynihan), ex-wife and manager/agent Monica (Erika Alexander), zilennial fiancée Brina (Precious Way), and teenage son Carmelo (Jalyn Hall).
Carmelo has the closest thing to a running storyline in the early parts of this second season, secretly dating the daughter of Reggie’s mortal rival Jerry Basmati (a great Craig Robinson). The show’s narrative certainly takes a back seat to the gags. In typical Fey/Carlock style, they come flying at a mile a minute. There are many amusing cutaways to various jokes that are basically blink-and-you-miss-it, so random but often quite funny. It doesn’t have the success rate of 30 Rock, but really nothing does, and plenty of jokes are funnier when you fully understand what’s being said.
The cast has really grown into their chemistry at the start of this second season. Morgan and Moynihan are masters of absurdist comedy, and they continue to really shine with this writing. Radcliffe is a delight as Tobin, very willing to make fun of himself. Alexander and Way get much more to do in these early episodes, a vote of confidence from the showrunners that pays off well in many of the B-plots.
The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins showed enough promise to make a second season an intriguing proposition. Less than three months later, it’s delivering well enough on that promise, a rare network sitcom that actually is worth the effort to try and follow week-to-week. We will see what its long-term prospects look like, but for now, this show scores.
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