Tracy Morgan leads this Neighbourhood spinoff as an empty nester whose nest fills right back up again after a pair of family crises
With financial times being tough these days, multigenerational households are on the rise. And after all, economy aside, it takes a village to raise kids (and keep grandparents occupied), right?
In the new sitcom Crutch, one happy empty nester’s humble abode is about to become a full house. All eight episodes of the ensuing calamity will be available to binge on Paramount+ starting Monday.
Tracy Morgan is Francois “Crutch” Crutchfield, a brash Harlem widower who finds both of his adult children, grandkids included, suddenly needing a place to stay. Dear old dad welcomes his new long-term houseguests, albeit with some weariness. And in the pilot, it’s an even fuller house than usual, thanks to a visit from two very familiar faces to avid sitcom viewers. Indeed, Crutch is a spinoff of long-running CBS sitcom The Neighborhood, starring Cedric the Entertainer and Tichina Arnold as Crutch’s cousin Calvin and his wife Tina.
“We’ve got a lot of experience with dealing with grown kids that’s never ready to leave the nest,” Calvin, temporarily in town from California, reassures Crutch. No time for questions this visit, though. “We didn’t mean right now,” Calvin quickly follows up when Crutch tries to take him up on the offer.
While Crutch may have been enjoying his solitude just fine, family is family, so what are another four housemates? His oldest, Jamilah (Adrianna Mitchell, Snowfall), turns up on dad’s doorstep explaining that she’s in the middle of a messy divorce, and she, along with her young ones Lisa (Braxton Paul) and Mase (Finn Maloney), need somewhere to crash.
Per Paramount+, Jamilah is “a free-spirited naturalista with a dry wit and a sharp tongue.” After her idyllic suburban life in Minneapolis starts falling apart, she packs up and heads back to Harlem, hoping to recreate some semblance of her own childhood for her kids. Crutch is more than happy to teach these li’l newcomers a thing or two, giving them a crash course in the subway and the creatures that call it home, as well as how to come off “New York tough.”
Crutch’s son, Jake (Jermaine Fowler, Coming 2 America), finds himself back in the old man’s upstairs apartment after a thwarted attempt to fly the coop. Disillusioned by corporate greed, Jake left a high-paying job at a slick law firm to begin a more fulfilling career providing legal aid in Harlem. Though the new gig might come with more heartfelt thank-yous, those do not pay the bills, so pop-subsidized housing is a necessity.
Incredulous at his son’s reasons for turning down a quarter-million-dollar salary, Crutch opines: “Money can’t buy you happiness, but it can get you so close you won’t even know the difference.” Jake, however, is set on learning his own lessons, and maybe for him happiness really does come via a lighter paycheque.
Tony-winning Broadway star Kecia Lewis helps round out the cast as Crutch’s sister-in-law, Antoinette, a divorcée who returns to the fold as soon as she hears her late sister’s kids have fallen on hard times. A correctional officer at Rikers Island, Antoinette usually doesn’t have time for Crutch’s antics, but she’s willing to put their differences aside to help out.
While our curmudgeonly protagonist tells it how it is, however cynically he sees it, his longtime best friend is the polar opposite — a cheery, glass-half-full kind of guy. Adrian Martinez (Stumptown) stars as Flaco, Crutch’s loyal childhood pal and general manager of the flooring shop they run together.
Morgan, of course, needs no reintroduction. The actor and comedian is known for unforgettable performances, like his seven-season run on Saturday Night Live, and as one of the most quotable characters on 30 Rock — absurdly unstable actor and bane of Liz Lemon’s existence, Tracy Jordan.
Behind the scenes, the leading man reunites with a trusted collaborator — creator Owen Smith, who also helmed Morgan’s four-season comedy The Last O.G. One of Smith’s early duties in launching Crutch was to do a little rewrite on the character viewers met a few years ago. First appearing as Calvin’s rich brother in a season-four episode of The Neighborhood, for his own show Crutch was tweaked to be of more modest means, and a more distant relation as Calvin’s cousin.
In a spinoff-launching crossover event, Morgan will appear in a new episode of The Neighborhood, airing on CBS the same night as Crutch debuts on Paramount+. In that episode, Crutch takes a very hands-on approach to Calvin’s request for flooring help, arriving in Los Angeles — and promptly driving Tina crazy. We suppose it’s only fitting that he’s about to get a taste of his own medicine, from his own unexpected visitors.
The series premiere of Crutch begins streaming Monday, November 3, on Paramount+