30 Rock's Fake Shows Are Becoming Reality

One quippy 30 Rock scene was all it took to predict Comedy 2023. (Nice find, @chronowerks!)

A single Jerry Seinfeld/Jack Donaghy exchange managed to capture everything that’s wrong with comedy media this year (and we’re only in early February, gang). Let’s start with the notion that 30 Rock Seinfeld was just finding out that a digital version of himself was performing on Law and Order and ER, apparently without his knowledge. That’s only about three millimeters from what actually happened this week when an audience member at a Seinfeld stand-up concert had to inform the comic that he was performing somewhere else that night. That would be on Twitch, where doppelganger Larry Feinberg was spewing hate in the infinite sitcom episode Nothing, Forever. 

No wonder Jerry’s a little peevish about the idea on 30 Rock. In 2023, his virtual evil twin was not only performing Seinfeld-style comedy routines without the actual comic’s consent, “Larry” was peppering his stand-up bits with anti-gay and anti-trans comments that weren’t even presented as jokes.  What’s the deal with ‘comedy’ that includes lines such as “I’m thinking about doing a bit about how being transgender is actually a mental illness. Or how all liberals are secretly gay and want to impose their will on everyone.”

Back on 30 Rock, another virtual Jerry makes a pitch for MILF Island, a reality show concept so preposterously hilarious that of course some TLC network doofus had to greenlight it for real. 

But real life, once again, has to push 30 Rock’s exaggerated comic concept one additional, disgusting step further. It’s not enough to produce a dating show with women old enough to be the contestants’ mothers. On Milf Manor, the ladies actually are the contestants' mothers. Is there anything more cringe than the idea of blindfolded mamas trying to identify their own sons by caressing the contestants’ abs? If we could watch with Oedipus, we’d all be stabbing our eyes out. 

What other 30 Rock nightmares do you have in store for us, 2023? 

And why do we think it could be God Cop, with the Almighty himself taking police corruption to existential extremes? We’re afraid to check Twitter tomorrow and find out.