Stream It Or Skip It?
It’s amazing to us to think that the person who knew how to best write a sitcom part for Tracy Morgan was Tina Fey. Sure, they worked together on SNL for years, but it’s uncanny how much Tracy Jordan, his 30 Rock role, took advantage of his penchant for saying crazy things with the utmost confidence. We say all this because Morgan’s new sitcom, a spinoff of The Neighborhood, doesn’t do that, at least not to start.
CRUTCH: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: Francois “Crutch” Crutchfield (Tracy Morgan), locks a door in his house and closes a curtain as his son Jake (Jermaine Fowler) walks in the house.
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The Gist: Crutch, who owns a flooring shop in Harlem, is excited to see Jake graduate law school and start a lucrative law career; he already works for a top firm. He’s throwing a rooftop party for him, all while renovating the top floor of his brownstone into a rental property. So he’s excited for the money Jake will bring in, but also the money the rental will get him.
For the party, Crutch’s daughter Jamilah (Adrianna Mitchell) arrives with her kids, Mase (Finn Maloney) and Lisa (Braxton Paul) in tow, but her husband has stayed behind in Minnesota. Antoinette (Kecia Lewis), who is the sister of Crutch’s late wife and loves to trade insults with him, knows why Jamilah’s husband is back home; Jamilah is on the verge of divorcing him and needs to live with Crutch for awhile to figure things out. Antoinette advises her to tell him at the party, when he’s on his third drink.
At his flooring shop, Crutch and his business partner Flaco (Adrian Martinez) tell Crutch’s grandkids about their plans to go on an old-school hip hop cruise, When Crutch’s cousin Calvin Butler (Cedric The Entertainer) and his wife Tina (Tichina Arnold) show up — they’re in from California to go to Jake’s party — Tina tells Crutch she’ll help him fill out his dating profile for the singles portion of the cruise.
At the party, Jake tells the gathered crowd that he’s decided to quit his corporate law job and work for Legal Aid. Not only is Crutch horrified that his son is giving up his high-paying job, he’s doubly horrified when Jake asks to move back in. At the same time, Jamilah asks Crutch if she and the kids can also move back in. In other words, Crutch’s empty nest is starting to get pretty crowded.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Crutch is a spinoff of The Neighborhood; in fact, Morgan appears as Crutch on the November 3 episode of the long-running CBS sitcom, which is in its final season. Owen H.M. Smith is the showrunner, with Cedric the Entertainer and Morgan among its executive producers. The show doesn’t feel all that far off from the Netflix sitcom The Upshaws or the ABC sitcom Shifting Gears.
Our Take: Crutch is about as traditional a family sitcom as you can get, especially on streaming. Really, except for a few instances of the word “shit” or “tits,” the show could air on CBS without much of a problem. You’ve got multiple generations living under one roof, two relatives throwing insults at each other, and secondary characters that are there to give the neighborhood where the show takes place some identity and depth. If you closed your eyes and ignored the curse words, this show has rhythms that make it sound like a Norman Lear sitcom from the ’70s.
But it also has Tracy Morgan as its star, and it feels like the show’s writers are struggling to figure out how to use his unique comedy style to their advantage. Morgan’s comedic signature is chaos, because you don’t know what he’s going to say, or when he’s going to say it, or if it even makes any logical sense. But he delivers those lines with such confidence you can’t help but laugh your ass off at it, anyway. Sure, Denzel Washington isn’t his father, but you laugh when Morgan states that because he does so with so much conviction.
We don’t get a lot of that in the first two episodes. Sure, Crutch talks about having a snake he calls “Financial Freedom” and talks about the only women he wants to see on the hip-hop cruise are on stage, but much of the first two episodes shows “Family Man Tracy Morgan” instead of “Anarchic Tracy Morgan,” and it’s a disappointment.
Morgan proved in The Last O.G. that he can be the centerpiece of a show while throwing in a lot of his signature craziness, and there isn’t any reason that this can’t be a part of Crutch, serving as an immediate comedic touchpoint as we get to know the other characters. During the stand-up-comedians-doing-sitcoms era of the ’80s and early ’90s, early episodes of the better sitcoms relied heavily on the comedian’s standup persona as they established themselves, because that’s what the writers and producers knew would attract audiences and keep them around. There’s no reason why the writers of Crutch couldn’t lean into that more in the early going.
The rest of the cast is full of sitcom pros, and there are some funny lines here and there. We do see evidence in the first two episodes that the show will dive into family issues that are more heartwarming and emotional than funny, especially with regards to the gambling addiction of Jamilah’s unseen husband. But for the most part, it’ll be about Crutch dealing with putting his empty nest plans on hold for his kids and grandkids and how he deals with it. Not exactly a new concept (see above), but the more the writers lean on Morgan, the better it’ll be.
Sex and Skin: None in the first two episodes.
Parting Shot: As his family surrounds him at the kitchen table, demanding his attention, Crutch looks straight at the camera and smiles.
Sleeper Star: Luenell plays Miss Pearl, the often-drunk buttinsky neighbor who sits at her window and comments on everything that goes on. As you might expect, she had some of the funniest lines in the first couple of episodes.
Most Pilot-y Line: When Crutch and Calvin go to court to see Jake work his Legal Aid cases, the two of them go into an extended Shawshank Redemption line recital that lasts about a paragraph too long.
Our Call: STREAM IT. We see Crutch‘s potential as a fun family sitcom, but we hope the writers realize that Morgan needs to be unleashed a little more in order for it to succeed.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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