George Carlin: It's Bad for Ya!

George Carlin: It's Bad for Ya!
Original HBO airdate: March 1, 2008
Written by and starring George Carlin
Director: Rocco Urbisci
Available at Amazon.

George Carlin's fourteenth and final HBO special focuses a lot on death (this show debuted less than four months before Carlin's death), and how the living still deal with it, particularly the belief in the afterlife and whether the deceased either go "up there", or "down there". It is more than a little disconcerting, not just because Carlin passed on shortly after this performance, but quite honestly, he looks bad. While his mind still seems to be as sharp as ever, and his performance suffers very slightly at times, George looks much older than his age at the time, seventy, and he definitely looks like he's in poor health.

Most of the material is fairly grim, but it doesn't come across as willfully dark as previous specials did. Carlin seems a little more subdued, and the stage set, which is a warm, inviting den, takes the edge off of any of the more "questionable" (for a lack of better terms).

The DVD also included two extras: a 2007 interview that Carlin did for the Archive of American Television called "Too Hip for the Room", as well as his appearance from 1968 or 1969 on The Jackie Gleason Show, where a clean shaven, red-haired, and suit wearing George telling mainly clean jokes for close to ten minutes. That last one alone is very interesting, if only to compare how much Carlin evolved over the next forty years.

Recommended DVD.