Will ‘Reno 911!: It’s a Wonderful Heist’ ambush the Emmys like ‘The Hunt for QAnon’ did last year?
The holidays are sizzlin’ in “Reno 911!: It’s a Wonderful Heist,” a Christmas-themed sequel to the Emmy-nominated “The Hunt for QAnon.” Can the Reno Sheriff’s Department score another bid for Best TV Movie?
Jim Dangle (Thomas Lennon) is bemoaning his rotten luck – and Matt Damon’s Crypto.com ad – when Terry (Nick Swardson) arrives in the form of an angel to show the downtrodden lieutenant what Reno would look like had he never donned his iconic hotpants to patrol its streets. After delivering on the reference to Frank Capra’s 1946 classic, “It’s a Wonderful Heist” “unloads the funniest, weirdest gags that [Kerri Kenney-Silver] and Lennon can devise without resorting to cheap gimmicks, like character development or narrative tension,” writes Matt Schimkowitz (The A.V. Club).
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Envisioned as a parody of “Cops,” “Reno 911!” was created by Robert Ben Garant, Kenney-Silver and Lennon (all three are also series regulars) and originally aired on Comedy Central between 2003 and 2009. A feature-length film, “Reno 911!: Miami,” came out theatrically in 2007, and the series was briefly revived by Quibi before the service shut down in 2020. Such obstacles were familiar to “Reno 911!’s” team, who conceived the mockumentary out of “total desperation” after the pilot they had initially developed for Fox was abruptly canceled. The underdog comedy survived again when Quibi sold its library to Roku.
In 2022, “Reno 911!: The Hunt for QAnon” ranked 10th in Gold Derby’s odds but made the shortlist over heavily predicted contenders like “Fresh” and “The Fallout.” “It’s a Wonderful Heist” is positioned in eighth but still doesn’t have much in the way of support from editors and top users. Did the preceding installment’s political relevance temporarily boost “Reno 911!” on voters’ watchlists, or are we underestimating the Comedy Central franchise all over again? Emmy noms for Kenney-Silver (Short Form Series Actress) and the show itself (Short Form Comedy, Drama or Variety Series) in 2020 and 2021 indicate that affection for Dangle and his inept deputies may not be entirely contingent on MAGA jokes.
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“It’s a Wonderful Heist” is under-reviewed and holds a middling Rotten Tomatoes audience score, but “The Hunt for QAnon” was unaffected by similar liabilities. While the scale of contenders like “Prey,” “Boston Strangler” and “Reality” suggest we’re witnessing something of a telemovie renaissance (the Movie/Limited acting races could see more non-miniseries contenders than they have in several years), “Reno 911!,” Schimkowitz argues, provides something else – “the same respite from peak TV [the series] offered channel surfers in the 2000s” that, “in an age when every sequel, revival, or reboot has to reckon with its legacy,” is “defiantly itself.”
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