Chris Rock's 'Total Blackout' tour is a brilliant, timely show

If laughter is the best medicine, Chris Rock picked the right time to return to stand-up.

Nearly a decade removed from his last tour, Rock — at a packed Milwaukee Theatre Monday night — tackled the thorniest subject matter of these anxious times with the patented fearlessness and intelligence that's cemented his place among comedy's greats.

Rock's legacy could grow, based on Monday's all-new 90-minute set, the foundation of a Netflix special coming later this year.

The touring show is dubbed "Total Blackout," but the 52-year-old has never been more exposed, facing up to his own failures as a recently-divorced, unfaithful husband. Even while exploring sensitive personal territory — including his own pornography addiction — Rock managed to unearth big laughs.

This may have been uncharted territory for Rock, but he has always defied expectation, and he did so time and again Monday. Take his take on President Donald Trump. Rock isn't one to go for the easy jokes about tiny hands, long ties and all that. Unlike other comedians, Rock said he wasn't even anxious about Trump as president. "When you're black, the future is always better," he reasoned.

Sure, Trump was "a real bully," Rock said, but the world needs bullies. "Who's going to eradicate poverty. ... Who's going to cure cancer? Some kid getting his (expletive) kicked in high school right now," he said. Rock went so far as to thank the bully who repeatedly called him the N-word and pushed him down a flight of stairs. "Pressure makes diamonds," he said. "Not hugs."

The set was loaded with dozens of edgy, thoughtful observations. Condemning police shootings of unarmed black men, he nevertheless acknowledged that cops have hard jobs, most police are good and officers don't have enough financial support. "You get what you pay for," Rock said. "Some jobs, everybody's got to be good, like pilots. American Airlines can't be like, 'Most of our pilots like to land, but we have a few bad apples that like to crash into mountains, so please bear with us.' "

Approaching topics like gun control and racial inequality, Rock dug deeper than his contemporaries, connecting the root of these problems to economics. Gun owners should be required to have a mortgage, Rock suggested, half-jokingly. "If you have a 739 credit score, you ain't killing nobody," he quipped, the conviction and sweetness of his preacher-like cadence effectively pitching the viewpoint. Businesses may no longer have signs in their windows that read, "Whites only," Rock said, but pricing reinforces the divide. "The Ritz-Carlton Hotel doesn't say, 'No blacks allowed,' but a $1,500-a-night hotel room does," he said.

Yet Rock reserved some of his greatest criticisms for himself, copping to giving a homeless man $5 and bragging about it, even though he had $300 in his wallet at the time.

And he revealed his 16-year marriage ended after he cheated with three women while on tour.

A bit about unappreciated fathers implied some defensiveness, and some may have construed his commentary on a frightening custody battle as fishing for sympathy. But Rock was being honest and owning his mistakes. By the night's end, this show felt less like Rock's return to stand-up and more like his first step toward personal redemption.

"Total Blackout" is the best set of Rock's career, not just because of the side-splitting punch lines or his sharp perspectives. This time, Rock's challenging listeners and himself to be better human beings, a message as important now as ever.

"I wasn't a good husband," Rock said Monday, the swagger slipping from his step like air slowly deflating from a balloon. "I wasn't kind. I didn't listen enough. ... I (expletive) up and I paid the price."

"If you have somebody you love, hold them tight."

A SAMPLE OF ROCK'S JOKES AND QUOTES

• "Nobody can be whatever the (expletive) they want to be. Luck is involved in this (expletive). You can be anything you're good at, as long as they're hiring, and even then it helps to know somebody."
• "In the American justice system, two people can be charged with the same crime in the same place and get different sentences. We need to revamp that (expletive). The justice system should be like Walmart. If you can find a lighter sentence, we'll match it."
• "Every Sunday I watch T.D. Jakes, Joel Osteen. ... Why is God always so broke? The devil never needs money. You never see the devil on TV saying, 'We need donations. This evil is not going to pay for itself.'"
• "There's no equality in a relationship. You're in a band. There are roles to play. Sometimes you sing lead, sometimes you play tambourine. And if you play tambourine, play that (expletive) right. It's like Hall & Oates. I don't know what Oates does, but Hall wouldn't have a hit without him."
• "Men think they own their houses. You don't own (expletive). Here's a test. Go home tonight, and try to hang up a picture of your mother. Let's see how that (expletive) goes."
• "(At the final divorce hearing) she had three lawyers, I had three lawyers, and it dawned on me. ... All of them were more educated than I was, born under better circumstances from me, and they were all here to take my money. At that moment, I realized, I made it."

THE SURPRISE SET FROM A BIG COMEDY STAR

• Rock had two unannounced openers at the Milwaukee Theatre Monday, and one of them is used to packing theaters himself: rising stand-up star Hannibal Buress. Hailing from Chicago, Buress tailored his 20-minute set with several Milwaukee-specific jokes, ribbing the city for being deemed a "northern suburb" by Chicagoans and pondering why every place in town, even laundromats, have fish fries. Beyond that, the set was looser and more low-key than his typical headline performances, touching on his use of Cialis, Airbnb policies and his two weeks of sobriety, which he said for a comedian, is more like 18 months.