Black and Blue

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.