Said announcement came with a teaser for the series, albeit one that doesn’t exactly go heavy on the plot info: It’s basically just various characters repeating Morgan’s character name, Crutch, over and over again. Weirdly, despite the fact that Morgan actually guest-starred on an episode of The Neighborhood several years ago as a family member of Cedric The Entertainer’s lead character, Calvin, the 30 Rock and Saturday Night Live veteran is now playing a whole other family member of Calvin’s, a cousin. Which didn’t stop either Cedric or Neighborhood co-star Tichina Arnold from stopping by to give their new-old pal the standard “Good luck with the spin-off!” push, from what we can tell from the tease. (They’ll also be doing their more formal launch duties on November 3, with an episode of The Neighborhood guest-starring Morgan and helping to set up the character and lure viewers over to Paramount+.)
As to the actual content of the series, we’re going to risk becoming a parody of ourselves and note that it doesn’t sound un-akin to Frasier. Crutch, see, is “a brash, yet beloved Harlem shop owner whose world is turned upside down when his highbrow son and free-spirited daughter move back into the family home.” (Okay, technically it sounds like a Frasier-and-a-half, with Jermaine Fowler, Kecia Lewis, Adrianna Mitchell, Adrian Martinez, Braxton Paul, and Finn Maloney all set to co-star on the show.)
Of course, avid Morgan watchers will know this also isn’t the only TV comedy he’s got in production at the moment; he’s also reportedly still working on The Fall And Rise Of Reggie Dinkins, a title about as un-Crutch-like as it’s possible to get. That series is still in development at NBC, where it’ll team Morgan back up with his old 30 Rock pals Tina Fey and Robert Carlock; no word yet on when the show, ordered to series back in May, will land on the NBC schedule. The upshot, though, is that we might soon have two different Tracy Morgan TV comedies to choose from, which, as far as problems go, is a pretty sweet one to consider.
