Every few weeks, some account on X prompts other users to recall their favorite joke from 30 Rock. It’s great engagement farming, because there’s no shortage. As serious fans know, you can rewatch the show a few different times and still find new clever one-liners and references. This week, the prompt is from a previous prompter.
“I love it when somebody tweets ‘what’s the best 30 Rock joke’ and everyone replies with their fave 30 Rock joke,” the tweet stated. “Can somebody pls do that? I would but I’ve done it too many times in the past and I should let somebody else have the engagement this time.”
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Unsurprisingly, the quote tweets went wild. Alec Baldwin is being re-regaled as one of the greatest comedic performers of all time. Jenna Maroney punchlines and Kenneth Parcell quips are being lauded as all-time one liners. But this time, the real star is Tracy Morgan’s Tracy Jordan.
There’s countless pulls of pure gold. In classic 30 Rock fashion, you get a few jokes on the way to the main punchline. Morgan’s delivery is unmatched, punching up even the smartest jokes with an inimitable sense of timing. There was no one doing it quite like Morgan.
Now, his comedic genius also seems a bit prophetic. As many on X pointed out, Tracy Jordan seems to be the blueprint for a very real man, and not just Tracy Morgan’s own life. Eric Adams’ most memorable quotes are nearly interchangeable for Tracy Jordan’s zingers.
Jordan’s “What is this? Horseville? Cause I’m surrounded by naysayers!” is not too different from “All my haters become my waiters when I sit down at the table of success,” which the real mayor of New York City, Eric Adams, said while under investigation for corruption.
That’s just scratching the surface on the comparisons, too — Adams is filled with the kind of dialogue that really seems like it came straight from a 30 Rock script. “Every day you wake up you could experience everything from a plane crashing into our Trade Center … to a person who’s celebrating a new business that’s open,” Adams said in 2023, before calling New York the greatest city in the world.
Adams, who is currently running for re-election against former Governor Andrew Cuomo and Democratic candidate Zohran Mamdani, is still delivering daily Jordanisms. It makes Morgan’s performance all the more impressive; 15 years ahead of time, he was delivering the best impersonation of somebody who was still scraping his way into local politics. It’s certainly not the first time a 30 Rock bit has turned into reality. The show also somehow managed to predict MILF Manor and A.I. Seinfeld in the same joke.
Reliving great TV through social media prompts is one of the purest forms of fun anyone can have these days. Hopefully, we will be able to start sharing even more of Tracy Morgan’s work with Tina Fey, as the actor is slated to team up with Fey for an upcoming project. Morgan will play a disgraced former NFL star trying to rehab his image across from Daniel Radcliffe, and Fey will executive produce.
But can it ever top “That’s a white myth, Ken”? Only time will tell.
