‘The Last O.G.’ review: Tracy Morgan’s strong return to series TV

WHAT IT’S ABOUT In the series return of Tracy Morgan — his first since “30 Rock” and first lead role in a TV comedy since 2004’s short-lived “The Tracy Morgan Show” — he plays Tray, who’s just out of prison after a 15-year stretch for selling crack cocaine. What to do? He heads back to gentrified Brooklyn to reconnect with his girlfriend, Shay (Tiffany Haddish), who’s now married to an easygoing white guy, Josh (Ryan Gaul). Tray ends up in a halfway house run by Mullins (Cedric the Entertainer), then later hooks up with cousin Bobby (Allen Maldonado) who helps with the re-entry process. Tray eventually finds work as a barista, then attempts to get to know Shay and Josh’s teenage kids, Shazad (Dante Hoagland) and Amira (Taylor Mosby). You’ll find out why.

“The Last O.G.” — “original gangster” — was co-created by Oscar winner Jordan Peele.

MY SAY “The Last O.G.” can’t help being a little sad because Morgan is a little sad, and it can’t help being a little funny because Morgan is Morgan. He so much as breathes and you laugh. But there’s some melancholy in this new series, also some well-disguised and unmistakable autobiographical traces, too. Both may be related.

Meanwhile, there’s a small miracle here as well. That’s Tracy Morgan on the screen, after all. He’s almost died twice, at least the times we know about. This is someone who knows he’s got a new lease, and knows he can even go home again, to Brooklyn no less.

What are those autobiographical elements? Morgan’s real-life father, Jimmy, a Vietnam War vet and addict, died when Morgan was 19, and there’s a scene in a later episode where Tray rages against a parent and addict, also deceased, who betrayed her children. The spray of angry words aren’t just lines a writer thought up. They’re personal.

Also, Morgan grew up in the Tompkins Houses on Myrtle Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant while Tray and Shay grew up in the Gowanus Houses in a now-tonier corner of Brooklyn, between Cobble Hill and Boerum Hill. But Morgan fans also know a close friend of his was murdered at the Tompkins projects when they were teens. The Brooklyn of “The Last O.G.” may be prettier and undeniably safer than the Brooklyn where Tray grew up, but he can’t just efface the past like the rest of the newcomers. Walking his kids through Green-Wood, Tray explains that “the cemetery is like the ghetto — full of sadness and death, but also full of life.” Again, that’s likely not Tray talking but Tracy.

Get past the series’ OK opener along with some of its searing vulgarity — hey, this is a Tracy Morgan show, after all — and “The Last O.G.” settles down into something else and something better. It’s about Brooklyn-past and Brooklyn-present, and the absurdity of those extremes. It’s also about one man’s past and his present, and how he can’t quite reconcile either. “Me and your mom had a proper Brooklyn love story,” he says wistfully to his kids, leaving them and the viewer to puzzle over the exact meaning of “proper.”

“The Last O.G.” is a comedy, but you begin to suspect only reluctantly. Mostly it’s about Morgan coming to terms with himself at a fictional remove. He does have some tragedies and near-tragedies to work through. As a shrink might observe, comedy may be part of the process for him but not necessarily the final result.

BOTTOM LINE Improves after the launch, while Morgan remains Morgan — the best news here — and do stick around for Chrissy Metz’s (“This is Us”) cameo in the fifth episode.

By Verne J Gay

Verne.Gay@newsday.com@vernejgay

Verne J Gay is the television critic