Review: Tracy Morgan, “Staying Alive” on Netflix

I saw Tracy Morgan headline twice in 2016 near the beginning and the end of his “Picking Up the Pieces” tour: March at SXSW in Austin, Texas; then November at Carnegie Hall in NYC for the New York Comedy Festival.

As I write in my official review of Tracy Morgan: Staying Alive on Netflix for my friends at Decider, “The differences in just the past year in his physical stamina, confidence, and outlook have been astounding to see.”

Here’s a bit more from the beginning of my Decider review:

Call it a comeback.

In fact, hail Tracy Morgan as a modern miracle, back from the near-dead and back onstage, just about three years removed from the New Jersey Turnpike crash that killed his friend and put Morgan into a coma. No need to forgive the comedian, then, for entirely appropriating the opening of Saturday Night Fever for his first Netflix special, Staying Alive — as Morgan re-enacts John Travolta’s strut below the subway line in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn, complete with similar suit and slices at Lenny’s Pizza set to the sounds of the crooning Bee Gees.

Morgan can afford the extravagance. Shown not so subtly at all with a close-up of his blue Walmart shopping bag, which Morgan reaches into to grab a wad of cash to purchase a white fur coat.

Onstage at the Count Basie Theater in Red Bank, N.J., Morgan’s decked out in a white three-piece suit paired with white Adidas. “We can get right to it. Everybody in here knows I got hit by that f—ing Walmart truck.”

Read the rest of my review on Decider.com.

 

 

Sean L. McCarthy

Editor and publisher since 2007, when he was named New York's Funniest Reporter. Former newspaper reporter at the New York Daily News, Boston Herald and smaller dailies and community papers across America. Loves comedy so much he founded this site.

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