In The Last OG, Bed-Stuy native and ex-con Tray (Tracy Morgan) comes home from his 15 year prison term to find the Brooklyn he once knew may no longer exist. As he attempts to make amends with his ex, Shay (Tiffany Haddish), Tray has to learn the new rules of the streets he once ran on the fly. While the show may lack some depth, it brings together two different Brooklyn worlds that are often misunderstood as one, heavily stereotyped gentrifying borough.

Initially surprised by the stroller moms dominating the sidewalks and juice bars on every block, Tray tracks down Shay only to discover that she’s gotten married to (gasp), “A WHITE DUDE?!,” Tray exclaims as he watches Shay and her husband Josh (Ryan Gaul) suck face in slow-mo from across the street. Much of the humor is straightforward and over the top, as in that scene. The jokes won’t have anyone in stitches, but the show is filled with plenty of laughs.

Tray is eternally optimistic and has a heart of gold. He comes leaves prison with grand plans. He’s ready to get back with his dream girl, he wants to mentor misguided Brooklyn kids, and he wants to become an executive chef. Within his first couple hours as a free man, he learns that Shay is taken and gets stonewalled cold by a couple of brunch-seeking brothers who he mistakes for drug dealers. Still, he keeps his chin up, determining to get Shay back and to take his sage advice to his roommates at the halfway house he’s set up to live at. After he goes on the job hunt, he quickly learns that an ex-con peddling “dessert loaves” is a tough sell as a dishwasher, let alone a New York City executive chef. Not to be discouraged, he persists and ultimately lands a job at an upscale corporate coffee chain.

The only one really rooting for Tray in the show is Bobby (Allen Maldonado), a kid who idolized him back in the day and grew up while he was away. Their exchanges make for easy laughs. Neither of them is particularly intelligent, but both are extremely opinionated and good-natured, and Morgan and Alvin Maldonado have excellent on-screen chemistry. When Tray lands the coffee shop gig, he heads over to Bobby’s to give him the good news. Bobby is hanging out on the stoop of his building brown-bagging a tallboy. Before Tray can even get past his gate, he’s already pumped up. He greets Tray with, “Yo! You ain’t do it! You ain’t do it!,” and promptly freaks out when Tray tells him that he did, in fact “do it” (“it” being getting a job).
All before the creature gets a chance to live and buy cheap levitra why not try this out make decisions on its own.

Tray and Bobby are the two main “Old Brooklyn” characters featured in the show’s first two episodes. Tray is still discovering the many ways the neighborhood has changed since he got locked up. The show often paints him as out of place, whether he’s shouting and kicking over a trashcan on a clean Park Slope-looking sidewalk or making well-intentioned but mostly inappropriate sexual remarks to customers at the coffee shop. One of the show’s major storylines is how Tray will acclimate to his new surroundings, something that seems paramount to the realization of his dreams.

Bobby grew up as the neighborhood transformed and is a bit misguided. When a hilarious exchange between him and Tray turns real, Bobby reveals that he sells weed for a living and isn’t afraid of jail. Tray tries to educate him, saying, “In prison, as pretty as you are, you would be a perfect ten.” Bobby responds after pausing, “Thank you, man.” While this made for a clever punchline, it’s also tragic that he doesn’t understand the gravity of spending time in prison. In a lighter moment, Bobby pulls up to Shay’s black-tie fundraiser in his Mazda with running lights and blasts “Since You’ve Been Gone” to help Tray win her back. When he finally realizes Tray’s conversation isn’t going as planned, he peels out and hits one of Shay’s big donors.

Shay’s character bridges the gap between new and old. She grew up with Tray, but put herself through college in his absence, married a white dude, and manages a nonprofit. At her event, she delivers an eloquent, heartfelt speech to a large room full of potential donors. An old white couple greets her afterwards with, “That was quite the speech Shannon. So articulate! You should think about politics.” Tray interrupts their conversation in a yellow velour jumpsuit after inappropriately catcalling throughout her speech. When Shay excuses herself and drags Tray outside, her tone, vocabulary, and even her posture are different. She might as well be a different person as she chews him out for his irresponsible decisions. Ever-positive Tray smiles as he see the Shay he recognizes and says, “There’s the old Shay.” She responds with, “I go by Shannon now.”

As someone who’s thrived in the ever-changing Brooklyn, Shay is fiercely protective of her success and her family, and her code-switching is a prime example of that. When her husband and kids come to her aid, she quickly sends them back inside. She tells Tray he had no right to intrude on her event after not seeing her for 15 years. Haddish plays the character extremely well.

The setting provides a healthy dose of “New Brooklyn.” The Brooklyn Tray once knew no longer exists, and he’s forced to adapt. Shay’s husband Josh is also presumably new to the borough, though his back story is never explained. He and Tray have spirited interactions, and his struggle to adjust to Shay’s new behavior is really funny. After she gets off the phone with Tray one morning, he asks her, “Did you just say ‘n***a?'” Shay responds, “Did you just say ‘n***a?'” Again, the show serves up reality with an anesthetizing dose of humor. As white gentrifier Josh discovers a new side of Shay, he’s also forced to adapt to surprises and remain open minded because he loves her. Co-creators Jordan Peele and John Carcieri could spend an episode delving into his backstory, but that would potentially take away from the show’s main story.

As the season progresses, one can only hope the characters will gain some depth. Through two episodes, they come across more as caricatures than real humans. While it makes for funny scenes and stories, the lack of reality will limit the show’s pertinence. TBS certainly doesn’t have a reputation for developing shows with hard-hitting social commentary, but The Last OG presents an opportunity to do just that. The Last OG could show the world the delicate, nuanced world of Brooklyn today, but is that too much to ask of a mere sitcom?