Put the kids away — Tracy Morgan is in the house.
Morgan, who is hilarious in both “Scare Tactics” and “30 Rock,” shows up tomorrow night in a stand-up special filmed at the Apollo in September — and it’s Morgan without writers, network censors or any other human telling him, “You can’t say that on TV.”
And when you don’t tell Morgan that he can’t say that on TV, he goes right ahead and says that on TV.
The show’s titled, “Tracy Morgan: Black and Blue,” but it’s not, trust me, because he gets beat up. The name comes from the fact that his material centers on the difference between whites and blacks, and also because his humor is so blue, the shade hasn’t even been invented yet.
How off-color is that blue exactly? Let’s just say that Morgan’s routine makes Chris Rock’s stand-up sound like it belongs on “The Martha Stewart Show.” And while a good part of it is laugh-out-loud, hold-your-stomach funny, for me at least, it would be a lot funnier with about 1,000 fewer motherf- – – – -s beginning, ending and punctuating every line.
Come on — the guy’s a giant TV star, not some street guy dealing drugs.
Anyway, amidst the motherf- – – – -s, Morgan takes on everybody and everything. In fact, there are groups here that are so off-limits as targets, that it’s almost terrible to laugh so hard — which I definitely did.
Like? How about “cripples,” as he calls them? OK, you have to be insane to make fun of (or laugh at) paralysis, the handicapped, people on dialysis and women missing an eye — right? OK, I must be insane, because I really laughed, but I’m ashamed of myself.
Tell me after you watch it that you didn’t laugh at the routine about a bar fight between a wheelchair-bound guy and a bully. Flat-out hilarious.
Then, there’s the difference between black and white — especially when it comes to discussing disease. White people for example, he says, will explain that “amputation can be a complication of diabetes,” while blacks say, “He gon’ lose that foot! He got sugar!”
My favorite, however, is a routine about how you always see white husbands on CNN searching for missing wives in the woods with volunteers, calling, “Katie! Katie! Are you out there?” And how you know, right then, that he did it!
Funny, but not for the faint of heart.