The Last O.G.: Pilot
April 7, 2018 3:34 PM - Season 1, Episode 1 - Subscribe

An ex-felon is shocked to see just how much the world has changed when he is released from prison for good behavior after a 15-year stint and returns to his newly gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood.

Expanded episode/series plot:
Tray (Tracy Morgan) is an ex-con who is shocked to see just how much the world has changed when he is released from prison for good behavior after a 15-year stint. Returning to his newly gentrified Brooklyn neighborhood, he discovers that his former girlfriend, Shay (Tiffany Haddish), has married an affable, successful white man (Ryan Gaul) who is helping raise the twins (Taylor Mosby and Dante Hoagland) Tray never knew existed. Wanting nothing more than to connect with his kids, but having neither the money to support them nor himself, Tray falls back on the skills he learned in prison to make ends meet while treading unfamiliar territory.
From TBS, where there are more video clips and such, including the uncut pilot (not sure if there are region blocks).

Review: 'The Last O.G.' Searches for Brooklyn, and Itself (James Poniewozik for New York Times)
“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.
posted by filthy light thief (1 comment total)
 
Interesting to see this run in the same season as Atlanta, though they're not directly competing. My first thought was "really, this is Tracy Morgan's comeback vehicle? And Jordan Peele worked on this?"

I don't know if I've come to a second thought yet. I'll stick with it for now, just to see where it goes, but the episode 2 preview didn't pull me in.
posted by filthy light thief at 3:36 PM on April 7, 2018


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