{"id":113802,"date":"2025-11-03T22:14:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T22:14:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/113802\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T22:14:07","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T22:14:07","slug":"crutch-review-tracy-morgans-feel-good-series-lifted-by-strong-cast","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/113802\/","title":{"rendered":"‘Crutch’ review: Tracy Morgan’s feel-good series lifted by strong cast"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Tracy Morgan has fetched up in a multicamera, filmed-before-a-live-audience situation comedy, \u201cCrutch.\u201d Premiering Monday on Paramount+, it\u2019s a cousin, in textual and corporate terms, to the CBS sitcom \u201cThe Neighborhood,\u201d<\/a> from which it has been spun off, and though it includes some words you can\u2019t say on broadcast TV and has a streaming-length, eight-episode season, it\u2019s for all intents and purposes a network sitcom \u2014 good-hearted, familial and even less risqu\u00e9 than most.<\/p>\n

Seven seasons of \u201c30 Rock\u201d<\/a> have firmly conflated Morgan in my mind with Tracy Jordan, the character he played there, a personage so singular one would think it must somehow be an accurate depiction of the actual Morgan. \u201cWe\u2019re a team now,\u201d Tracy says to Tina Fey\u2019s Liz Lemon in that series\u2019 opening episode, \u201clike Batman and Robin, like chicken and a chicken container.\u201d I can\u2019t imagine any other actor getting away with that line. Obviously, there\u2019s more to Morgan than Jordan \u2014 he\u2019s a stand-up comic<\/a>, has been in a lot of movies and was a \u201cSaturday Night Live\u201d cast member from 1996 to 2003. The 2018 TBS dramatic comedy \u201cThe Last O.G.\u201d<\/a> lasted four seasons \u2014 it also featured \u201cThe Neighborhood\u201d star Cedric the Entertainer \u2014 and cast Morgan as an ex-con, reckoning with a gentrified Brooklyn after 15 years in prison.<\/p>\n

Here he plays Francois \u201cCrutch\u201d Crutchfield, widower, father and grandfather and the owner of a Harlem flooring company. Morgan had guested on \u201cThe Neighborhood\u201d as the brother of Cedric\u2019s character; in \u201cCrutch,\u201d he\u2019s become a cousin, with a few appearances by Cedric to cement the relationship. (Arsenio Hall and a very funny Deon Cole also make guest appearances.) Jealous of his peace and his space, and his money, he\u2019s looking forward to the time when \u201cI can finally do me\u201d \u2014 plans that are upset with the unexpected return of his adult children to the nest. (Sitcom premise No. 310.)<\/p>\n

Son Jake (Jermaine Fowler), having graduated Columbia Law School at the top of his class and passed the bar on his first try, decides to quit his high-paying job at a corporate firm to work for Legal Aid, leaving a fancy Manhattan apartment \u2014 with free parking \u2014 to move back home. (It\u2019s a unilateral decision.) Daughter Jamilah (Adrianna Mitchell), newly (and for a moment, secretly) separated from her husband, arrives from Minnesota for an indefinite visit with her children, Lisa (Braxton Paul) and Mase (Finn Maloney). Not technically living at Crutch\u2019s but around all the time (she scores a key in the opening episode) is his sister-in-law, Antoinette (Kecia Lewis), called Toni, an acerbic bird-watching corrections officer, with whom Crutch trades insults like Sherman Hemsley<\/a> and Marla Gibbs in \u201cThe Jeffersons,\u201d if not quite at that level of wit. (Toni: \u201cFor somebody who ate as many lead chips as you, you did pretty good\u201d; Crutch: \u201cWhy don\u2019t you stop flapping your gums and flap your wings back to your cave?\u201d) Well, it\u2019s a big brownstone, and it\u2019s convenient to have as many characters as possible on a single set.<\/p>\n

Rounding out the company is Adrian Martinez as Flaco, \u201cthe manager, sales associate, customer service rep [and] HR\u201d at Crutch\u2019s flooring store, a sweet, sensitive goof. Luenell recurs as Miss Pearl, who looks down from a neighboring building on Crutch\u2019s rooftop garden \u2014 a wonderful set, from production designer Katie Akana \u2014 tossing out comments like a drunk Muppet: \u201cThis body broke up New Edition\u201d and \u201cEvery time y\u2019all on that roof, it\u2019s drama. This better than that dragon s\u2014.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike Morgan\u2019s \u201cLast O.G.\u201d character, Crutch hasn\u2019t been out of circulation, but, like many television fathers, he lives in a generational bubble, and there is a modicum of Kids These Days and What\u2019s the World Coming To humor, along with nostalgic references to Doug E. Fresh and the Fat Boys (\u201cToday they\u2019d be called the Plus-Sized Boys,\u201d says Flaco). There\u2019s a sweet scene in which Crutch and Flaco give Minnesota-raised Lisa and Mase lessons in how to ride the subway; an episode in which Jamilah tries too hard to get the kids into a theater camp; adventures in bird-watching with Toni and Jake; a visit to prison to confront a convict (Cole) \u201cso confident when he robbed bodegas he would feed the cat on the way out.\u201d Becky Ann Baker, who was Jean Weir on \u201cFreaks and Geeks\u201d<\/a> plays another maternal Midwesterner as Jamilah\u2019s mother-in-law, Kathy, who is popular with everyone.<\/p>\n

The question here is whether a show can be funny if the jokes are \u2026 not great or kind of hacky. And the answer seems to be it can, if the actors are amusing apart from what they\u2019re made to say, and the situations sufficiently engaging, and you are flexible with your definition of \u201cfunny\u201d \u2014 that is, if you don\u2019t need to be laughing all the time. That said, this is an appealing series, running on love and goodness and right behavior, with a host of likable performers, Morgan especially, who has the quality of being at once devilish and angelic, a grumbling saint. That Crutch, for all his bluster, is a softy, is a point the series explicitly makes. Called upon to share his feelings, he says: \u201cIn my days, men just held it in.\u201d \u201cThat\u2019s why they all died at 56,\u201d replies Jake. (Morgan is 56.)<\/p>\n

But feelings will be shared.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tracy Morgan has fetched up in a multicamera, filmed-before-a-live-audience situation comedy, \u201cCrutch.\u201d Premiering Monday on Paramount+, it\u2019s a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":113803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[6935,73538,73542,73546,146,73541,85,46,73547,2064,35630,73543,5458,73545,73540,762,73544,73539,411],"class_list":{"0":"post-113802","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-tv","8":"tag-character","9":"tag-crutch","10":"tag-daughter-jamilah","11":"tag-eight-episode-season","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-flaco","14":"tag-il","15":"tag-israel","16":"tag-mase","17":"tag-morgan","18":"tag-neighborhood","19":"tag-opening-episode","20":"tag-series","21":"tag-son-jake","22":"tag-star-cedric","23":"tag-time","24":"tag-toni","25":"tag-tracy-morgan","26":"tag-tv"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113802","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=113802"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/113802\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/113803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=113802"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=113802"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=113802"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}