Nearly two and a half years after a highly publicized car accident killed comedian James “Uncle Jimmy Mack” McNair and put 30 Rock alum Tracy Morgan in a coma, the latter returned to stand-up with his Picking Up The Pieces tour. He then spent most of 2016 on the road, perfecting his followup to 2014’s Bona Fide so that he might find a home for it. Morgan did just that when it was announced Staying Alive would premiere on Netflix sometime in 2017, and as the new trailer above indicates, that time is none other than Tuesday, May 16th.
The new special is chock-full of touching anecdotes, like Morgan’s story about watching his young daughter take her first steps while he was undergoing physical therapy and re-learning how to walk. Then again, as the trailer immediately points out, this is still the very same Tracy Morgan you’ve loved since his days on Saturday Night Live. “When I came out of the coma I was behaving erratically,” he says. “The doctors told me wife, ‘Mrs. Morgan, that’s the brain trauma.’ And my wife looked at the doctors and said, ‘No, that n**** always been crazy!”
Morgan might joke about not remembering what Jack McBrayer’s actual name is. If this Staying Alive trailer is any indication, however, the comic still has plenty of stories to tell from the stage.
