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Brick Wall Comedy
Brick Wall Comedy
Promotional art for Black and Blue
Cover image credit: Promotional image via Prime Video

Black and Blue

Tracy Morgan

HBO · 2010 · 58 min

An hour of highly explicit stand-up at the Apollo Theater.

Tracy Morgan took the stage at the Apollo Theater in 2010 as a network television star, thanks to his role as an eccentric celebrity on 30 Rock. For his first solo HBO hour, he left the NBC filter at home. Black and Blue is an exercise in dirty stand-up, leaning heavily on the second half of its title. Morgan delivers intensely graphic material with his signature wide-eyed deadpan, playing the fool while saying things that would never clear a broadcast standards department.

The set runs heavily on crude humor, including tight focus on the mechanics of men’s faces during orgasm and an escalating riff about a childhood girlfriend afflicted with a removable eye and a T. rex arm. He occasionally pivots to politics and history, noting the media fuss over Barack Obama appearing on The View and suggesting Abraham Lincoln was actually assassinated over a bad cocaine deal. Critics at the time praised his delivery but noted the hour leans hard on shock value, testing the limits of a routine built primarily on explicit absurdity.

The set list

6 bits

  1. Founding Fathers and cocaine use

    Opens the set claiming that Founding Fathers such as Benjamin Franklin and Abraham Lincoln used cocaine.

  2. George W. Bush failing to find Osama bin Laden

    Jokes that Osama bin Laden is not hiding well and could easily be found running a gyro cart across from Madison Square Garden.

  3. Dinner at the White House with Barack and Michelle Obama

    Recounts attending a White House dinner and jokes about Obama having a gangsta persona with a Wu-Tang T-shirt hidden beneath his suit.

  4. The Incredible Hulk

    Argues that the Incredible Hulk is not actually a superhero, but rather just a drunk white dude filled with rage at a bar.

  5. Wearing a Tito Jackson T-shirt after Michael Jackson died

    Describes being chased down the block after Michael Jackson's death because he wore a shirt asking 'What about Tito?'

  6. The closer (spoiler). Show it

    Dating a severely handicapped woman closer

    Escalates a graphic story about his first girlfriend into an explicit act involving her empty eye socket.

How it plays

Tone
Extremely blue, adult-oriented, shocking, uncensored, and controversial.
On stage
Swaggering, unpredictable, freewheeling, and goofy clowning with a drawling delivery and explicit, off-color blue humor.
Pace
Begins with swagger and high energy, rapid shifts between topics, lots of physical jokes, facial expressions, and stage movement.
About
Differences between white and black culture, Race relations and anger, Celebrities and pop culture, Politics and meeting President Obama, Sex and relationships, Aging

What the critics said

Met with predominantly negative critical reviews, with reviewers condemning it as lazy, uninspired, reliant on worn racial stereotypes, and excessively mean-spirited, although some credited his physical goofy charm.

In the room: Welcomed with a standing ovation at the historic Apollo Theater and an engaged crowd, though critics found the overall room response uneven.

Summed up from reviews, articles and listings. Sources: imdb.com, thefutoncritic.com, indianprairie.library.link, tvguide.com, nypost.com, chud.com, dvdtalk.com, amsterdamnews.com, en.wikipedia.org, hbomax.com, twincities.com.

Backstory

Filmed in Harlem at the Apollo Theatre, the venue where Morgan was originally booed early in his career and where he was first discovered in the 1980s.

Details

Released
Taped
Apollo Theatre, New York City
Runtime
58 min
Where
HBO
Director
John Moffitt
Topics
After
Bona Fide (2014)

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