Spelman grad trades jokes with Tracy Morgan on Paramount+ comedy ‘Crutch’
Old-school sitcoms featuring a live studio audience and three cameras harkening back to the early days of TV have become scarce in 2025.
CBS ― former home to classics like “I Love Lucy,” “All in the Family,” “Everybody Loves Raymond” and “The Big Bang Theory” ― is only airing two now. One of them, “The Neighborhood” starring Cedric the Entertainer and Tichina Arnold, is in its eighth and final season.
Despite that show’s enduring popularity, its spinoff, “Crutch,” won’t air on CBS. Lacking prime-time slots, the network decided to air the show on its streaming service, Paramount+.
The show revolves around a Harlem widower nicknamed Crutch played by 56-year-old “Saturday Night Live” alum Tracy Morgan, who had success with his last two shows, “30 Rock” on NBC (2006-2013) and TBS’s “The Last O.G.” (2018-2021).
To bridge “The Neighborhood” and “Crutch” in classic “crossover” fashion, Morgan will appear on the Monday episode of “The Neighborhood” while Cedric and Arnold as Calvin and Tina Butler pop into the first episode of “Crutch,” which debuts all eight episodes on Paramount+ the same day.
“The Neighborhood” stars visit Crutch, Calvin’s cousin, to celebrate Crutch’s son Flaco (Adrian Martinez) graduating from law school.
Atlanta native and Spelman alum Adrianna Mitchell, in her first regular TV role, plays Crutch’s 32-year-old daughter Jamilah, who brings her two kids to Harlem from Minneapolis for the occasion.
By the end of the first episode, Crutch is in for a rude awakening: His empty nest plans are put on hold when Flaco decides to forgo a high-paying lawyer job in favor of doing pro bono cases for Legal Aid. As a result, he needs to move into Crutch’s home.
At the same time, Jamilah breaks the news that her husband in Minneapolis had abandoned his family over a gambling addiction, leaving her broke and forced to also move back into Crutch’s home at the same time as Flaco.
It’s a classic sitcom conceit, placing adult family members in conveniently close proximity.
Like “The Neighborhood,” “Crutch” breaks no new ground. It’s a pleasant, easy-to-watch show with a fusillade of jokes — some corny, some genuinely funny.
“Even down to the song choice for our theme song, we wanted this to feel like an old-school sitcom,” Mitchell told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “And you can’t take the New York out of Tracy.”
Morgan anchors the show with ease, mining humor over generational differences, cracking wise over chest hair, liquor, hip-hop, podcasts and his love of Harlem.
He is also more than a decade removed from a vehicular accident that left him severely injured in 2014. A Walmart truck driver from Jonesboro crashed into Morgan’s van on the New Jersey Turnpike, killing Morgan’s friend, James McNair.
Morgan “talked about it a lot,” Mitchell said. “He showed us a documentary about it. He treats every day like it’s a blessing. His heart is so open. He was a father figure for me in real life on the set.”
Mitchell, whose background is heavily rooted in theater, was surrounded by several seasoned comics such as recurring actor Luenell and guests such as Deon Cole and Arsenio Hall.
“It was a real whirlwind of a learning curve to work with comedians whose brains work so differently,” she said. “Tracy and the others would try to one-up each other. It was hard but fun.”
Mitchell has deep roots in Atlanta: Her family has been in the area for multiple generations, and her uncle, Ceasar Mitchell, is a former Atlanta City Council president.
She grew up mostly in Gwinnett County, spending weekends and holidays in South Fulton at her grandmother’s home. After years of attending mostly white schools, she purposely chose to attend Spelman College.
She moved to New York City to pursue acting and has lived there ever since. Her Broadway debut came in 2022 as Opal in Pulitzer Prize-winning “Fat Ham.”
But her ties to Atlanta remain strong. Mitchell birthed her 2-year-old son in Atlanta with a doula, and last year, she got married in her native city to fellow actor Kadeem Ali Harris, coincidentally a regular on the drama “Harlem” on Amazon.
“They moved our shoot date up to a Thursday so I could fly down on a Friday,” she said. “I got married on a Saturday and got back to work Monday.”
She now lives in the Bronx, not far from where “Crutch” is fictionally based, and her son attends school in Harlem. (“Crutch” was shot in Queens in the same studio as “The Cosby Show.”)
“It’s very full circle,” she said.
Mitchell has watched all eight episodes and feels the show finds its comic footing quickly.
“I think our chemistry as a family feels very authentic,” she said. “We did a scene where nobody hugged. That felt weird, so we hugged. Black people hug each other. We reshot the scene and it felt right. We put a lot of love in this show.”
IF YOU WATCH
“Crutch,” now available on Paramount+ on Monday
About the Author
Rodney Ho writes about entertainment for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution including TV, radio, film, comedy and all things in between. A native New Yorker, he has covered education at The Virginian-Pilot, small business for The Wall Street Journal and a host of beats at the AJC over 20-plus years. He loves tennis, pop culture & seeing live events.
