'Crutch,' Tracy Morgan's feel-good comedy series, has a strong cast that lifts familial jokes

Tracy Morgan has fetched up successful a multicamera, filmed-before-a-live-audience concern comedy, “Crutch.” Premiering Monday connected Paramount+, it’s a cousin, successful textual and firm terms, to the CBS sitcom “The Neighborhood,” from which it has been spun off, and though it includes immoderate words you can’t accidental connected broadcast TV and has a streaming-length, eight-episode season, it’s for each intents and purposes a web sitcom — good-hearted, familial and adjacent little risqué than most.

Seven seasons of “30 Rock” person firmly conflated Morgan successful my caput with Tracy Jordan, the quality helium played there, a personage truthful singular 1 would deliberation it indispensable someway beryllium an close depiction of the existent Morgan. “We’re a squad now,” Tracy says to Tina Fey’s Liz Lemon successful that series’ opening episode, “like Batman and Robin, similar chickenhearted and a chickenhearted container.” I can’t ideate immoderate different histrion getting distant with that line. Obviously, there’s much to Morgan than Jordan — he’s a stand-up comic, has been successful a batch of movies and was a “Saturday Night Live” formed subordinate from 1996 to 2003. The 2018 TBS melodramatic drama “The Last O.G.” lasted 4 seasons — it besides featured “The Neighborhood” prima Cedric the Entertainer — and formed Morgan arsenic an ex-con, reckoning with a gentrified Brooklyn aft 15 years successful prison.

Here helium plays Francois “Crutch” Crutchfield, widower, begetter and gramps and the proprietor of a Harlem flooring company. Morgan had guested connected “The Neighborhood” arsenic the member of Cedric’s character; successful “Crutch,” he’s go a cousin, with a fewer appearances by Cedric to cement the relationship. (Arsenio Hall and a precise comic Deon Cole besides marque impermanent appearances.) Jealous of his bid and his space, and his money, he’s looking guardant to the clip erstwhile “I tin yet bash me” — plans that are upset with the unexpected instrumentality of his big children to the nest. (Sitcom premise No. 310.)

Son Jake (Jermaine Fowler), having graduated Columbia Law School astatine the apical of his people and passed the barroom connected his archetypal try, decides to discontinue his high-paying occupation astatine a firm steadfast to enactment for Legal Aid, leaving a fancy Manhattan flat — with escaped parking — to determination backmost home. (It’s a unilateral decision.) Daughter Jamilah (Adrianna Mitchell), recently (and for a moment, secretly) separated from her husband, arrives from Minnesota for an indefinite sojourn with her children, Lisa (Braxton Paul) and Mase (Finn Maloney). Not technically surviving astatine Crutch’s but astir each the clip (she scores a cardinal successful the opening episode) is his sister-in-law, Antoinette (Kecia Lewis), called Toni, an acerbic bird-watching corrections officer, with whom Crutch trades insults similar Sherman Hemsley and Marla Gibbs successful “The Jeffersons,” if not rather astatine that level of wit. (Toni: “For idiosyncratic who ate arsenic galore pb chips arsenic you, you did beauteous good”; Crutch: “Why don’t you halt flapping your gums and flap your wings backmost to your cave?”) Well, it’s a large brownstone, and it’s convenient to person arsenic galore characters arsenic imaginable connected a azygous set.

Rounding retired the institution is Adrian Martinez arsenic Flaco, “the manager, income associate, lawsuit work rep [and] HR” astatine Crutch’s flooring store, a sweet, delicate goof. Luenell recurs arsenic Miss Pearl, who looks down from a neighboring gathering connected Crutch’s rooftop plot — a fantastic set, from accumulation decorator Katie Akana — tossing retired comments similar a drunk Muppet: “This assemblage broke up New Edition” and “Every clip y’all connected that roof, it’s drama. This amended than that dragon s—.”

Unlike Morgan’s “Last O.G.” character, Crutch hasn’t been retired of circulation, but, similar galore tv fathers, helium lives successful a generational bubble, and determination is simply a modicum of Kids These Days and What’s the World Coming To humor, on with nostalgic references to Doug E. Fresh and the Fat Boys (“Today they’d beryllium called the Plus-Sized Boys,” says Flaco). There’s a saccharine country successful which Crutch and Flaco springiness Minnesota-raised Lisa and Mase lessons successful however to thrust the subway; an occurrence successful which Jamilah tries excessively hard to get the kids into a theatre camp; adventures successful bird-watching with Toni and Jake; a sojourn to situation to face a convict (Cole) “so assured erstwhile helium robbed bodegas helium would provender the feline connected the mode out.” Becky Ann Baker, who was Jean Weir connected “Freaks and Geeks” plays different maternal Midwesterner arsenic Jamilah’s mother-in-law, Kathy, who is fashionable with everyone.

The question present is whether a amusement tin beryllium comic if the jokes are … not large oregon benignant of hacky. And the reply seems to beryllium it can, if the actors are amusing isolated from what they’re made to say, and the situations sufficiently engaging, and you are flexible with your explanation of “funny” — that is, if you don’t request to beryllium laughing each the time. That said, this is an appealing series, moving connected emotion and goodness and close behavior, with a big of likable performers, Morgan especially, who has the prime of being astatine erstwhile devilish and angelic, a grumbling saint. That Crutch, for each his bluster, is simply a softy, is simply a constituent the bid explicitly makes. Called upon to stock his feelings, helium says: “In my days, men conscionable held it in.” “That’s wherefore they each died astatine 56,” replies Jake. (Morgan is 56.)

But feelings volition beryllium shared.