Review: ‘The Last O.G.’ Searches for Brooklyn, and Itself

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/04/02/arts/television/the-last-og-review-tracy-morgan-tbs.html

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“The Last O.G.” is a time-travel comedy. It just happens that Tray (Tracy Morgan) undertook his journey, from 2002 to 2017, in real time, while sitting in a prison cell.

Tray returns, after taking the rap for a fellow drug dealer (Malik Yoba), to find that the mean streets of his old Brooklyn neighborhood have gotten nice. Maybe too nice. A Van Leeuwen ice cream truck is parked on the corner; a mom tells her baby that “seaweed is alkalizing”; tourists snap pictures with selfie sticks. What happened to Brooklyn? he cries, using slightly different language.

“The Last O.G.,” which begins Tuesday on TBS, is a homecoming story for Mr. Morgan, too, after the 2014 car crash that nearly killed him. “The Last O.G.” shows his comic skills as sharp as ever while letting him stretch in a rounded character role.

It’s good to have him back. But to enjoy Mr. Morgan’s gifts and the excellent supporting cast, you have to watch “The Last O.G.” go through some heavy adjustment problems of its own.

The series, whose creators include Jordan Peele, endured a period of limbo, going through a change of showrunners and having its release date pushed back from last fall. (Hence the “present day” setting in 2017.)

Maybe as a result, there seem to be two different shows competing for space in the six episodes provided for review. One is a laid-back, affecting comedy about second chances; the other is a clunky mishmash of broad gags.

You can see this in the pilot. It’s rough, but it contains the makings of better things.

Tray hopes to reunite with his girlfriend, Shay (Tiffany Haddish). She’s now going by Shannon — “You calling yourself by your government name now?” Tray demands — raising money for the homeless and married to a white hipster named Josh (Ryan Gaul). She also has two kids who, it quickly becomes apparent, are biologically Tray’s.

Ms. Haddish, whose turbocharged performance absconded with “Girls Trip” last year, is convincing in a more restrained role as Shannon, rooted in her new life but conflicted over Tray’s return. But the pilot is weighed down by cringey prison-rape jokes and a subplot about Tray’s halfway house, run by a sketchy would-be comedian named Mullins (Cedric the Entertainer), that’s much less funny and wildly jarring in tone.

As the show goes on, it seems like someone figured out that gentrification jokes and Tray clumsily trying to win Shannon back were not enough to build a series on. Fitfully, not all at once, the series shifts.

It becomes less about Tray trying to get his old life back and more about his working toward a new one, while easing his way in as an adjunct member of the family. The culture-shock stuff is still there, but in service of Tray seeking to discover the man he might have been if he’d had that 15 years of freedom. He uses Tinder for the first time and tries to parlay his prison interest in cooking — he invented “dessert loaf,” with Chex mix, Reese’s Pieces and jailhouse hooch — into a restaurant job.

Mr. Morgan delivers a rich performance. He still has the blustery bravado he showed on “30 Rock,” but he’s slowed a few beats, which helps him pull off the bittersweet aspects of the role. As Tray tries to bond with his estranged kids by taking them on a “truth safari” through his old neighborhood haunts, he wears the decade and a half of lost time like a heavy coat.

By midseason, “The Last O.G.” has not figured itself out yet. The strong fifth episode builds out Shannon’s character by sending her to the funeral of her neglectful mother, showing that her relationship with Tray isn’t the only one she’s had to work to move on from. But it’s thrown off by an over-the-top subplot about Tray’s pursuit by a prison groupie (Chrissy Metz of “This Is Us”).

You might consider waiting until late in the season to see if the show has worked out its issues. But you’d miss some treats, like the moment in the pilot where Tray likens transformed Brooklyn to “Planet of the Apes,” and Mr. Morgan tosses off a perfect, offhand Dr. Zaius impression.

Sitcoms often beg patience while they figure out their tone early on. This isn’t a dealbreaker if they offer something in the meantime, and in “The Last O.G.,” that’s Mr. Morgan and Ms. Haddish.

As it is, the series exists as if in a halfway house. It’s still shakily transitioning, but you can see the signs of a productive future.