Tracy Morgan Show, The - Unaired 2003 Pilot (DC)

Here is review blurb from Wash Post.

"The  Tracy Morgan Show" is a bright new comedy and a generous act of kindness. The program, premiering tonight on NBC, has many of the  trappings of standard domestic sitcoms but also a warming glow that  lifts it above the crowd and can lift a viewer's spirits as well.Morgan's  series is bound to be labeled "a blue-collar 'Cosby Show,' "since it's about a loving African American family, one whose chief breadwinner is a  struggling small businessman and not a rich doctor. He's played, as the  title rather loudly suggests, by Tracy Morgan, a seven-year veteran of  "Saturday Night Live" whose sketches on that show tended to come at you from angles and to go for chuckles rather than broad guffaws. His series, which debuts with two episodes back-to-back at 8 on Channel 4,  takes the same sweet route.The show needs fine-tuning, but Morgan is instantly winning as Tracy Mitchell, who runs a small garage  in an unspecified part of New York and hurries home each night, as any  sensible man would, to wife Alicia (Tamala Jones) and sons Jimmy, 7 Bobb'e J. Thompson), and Derrick, 13 (Marc John Jefferies). The kids are utterly winning and unaffected, and Daddy easily identifies with  them because part of him never quite grew up.He's childlike, not childish, and Morgan never stoops to playing the usual Daddy Dumbbell seen on so many sitcoms, especially the CBS kind.NBC, meanwhile,  does not have a proud record where "minority programming" is concerned,  but that phrase "minority programming" has a bureaucratic clunk to it. Most of the action takes place  either in the Mitchell apartment or at Tracy's garage, where the regulars include the genially garrulous "Spoon" (John Witherspoon),  amiably enormous Bernard (rapper Heavy D) and Freddie (Katt Williams),  the neighborhood wiseguy who has several schemes up each sleeve. When  the topic turns to phobias, Freddie says, "I got a real phobia: I'm  afraid of my girlfriend's boyfriend." At the moment, the balance is tilted too strongly toward the workplace. This is a show whose best  scenes take place at home. There's a gentleness to Morgan's approach that is refreshing and ingratiating. He's no namby-pamby but, thank Heaven, not an addition to TV's population of beer-bellied  blowhards, either. The program represents a collaboration between the  classy Carsey-Werner company (which, of course, did "Cosby" and with him  made TV history) and "SNL" creator and executive producer Lorne Michaels, who has made some TV history himself. Tracy Mitchell exists as a real person, not some dippy doofus.  One episode begins with Tracy entering the house after a day at work and  declaring grandly, "Oh man, look at this beautiful family all working  together to get dinner on the table for the man of the house. Life is sweet. "He's exaggerating, of course, but on this show, life is."SNL" veteran Tracy Morgan (with Marc John Jefferies): Taking a refreshingly gentle approach to family comedy.