Brad Garrett

Thanks to comedian and television favorite, Brad Garrett, Las Vegas has been rewarded with the return of an old-school comedy club. The venue formerly known as The Comedy Stop at the Tropicana is now called Brad Garrett’s Comedy Club, and to kick things off, the star himself is headlining this week (with help from his opening act, Rob Sherwood.) As might be expected, the show was wonderfully bombastic and decidedly “R-Rated” in keeping with Garrett’s goal to bring an “old Vegas vibe” back to The Strip.

Sherwood got the audience warmed up by riffing on topics such as hotel porn, Vegas dropping its desire to be a “family town,” sexual addiction, and a hilarious set about his teenaged son getting a DUI. (The kid wasn’t pulled over by cops — he drove his car into a house.) Sherwood then closed out his set by whipping out the guitar and playing a couple of original songs: “Erectile Dysfunctional Men” and “Sarah Palin, I Want to Have Sex with You.”

But all of that felt positively “G-Rated” once Garrett hit the stage. With the microphone stand only reaching the hulking comedian’s belly, Garrett was getting laughs without saying a word, before finally intoning. “I’m too big for this club.”

Garrett took advantage of the smaller, intimate venue and had a lot of fun bantering with the audience members about everything from their choice of clothing to choice of spouses. He even closed out his hour-long set by turning up the lights, and taking questions and requests from the audience. Admittedly, things maybe got a bit too personal when one audience member wanted Garrett to autograph his wife’s breast. (Garrett politely demurred, in case you were wondering.)

While Garrett’s hilarious but unapologetically un-PC routine featured words that can’t really be printed here, you can rest assured he kept the crowd in fits of explosive laughter while surfing through an array of topics. A story about former co-star Ray Romano telling him he looked like the “child of Greg Brady and Herman Munster” led into Garrett’s memorable Herman routine. From there, he joked about taking Viagra (because he was “tired of disappointing my hand”) before going into material about marriage, relationships, sex, and how his ex-wife got all his money.

All joking aside, Garrett said it was “like a dream to have a club in Vegas,” before telling the audience how he worked at the Desert Inn 26 years ago, opening for the likes of Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis, Jr. Then, he treated the crowd to some fine impressions of the two Rat Packers, and told one of his greatest bits, his famed “Stick around for Frank” routine. It was both a reminder of the good old days and a harbinger that the good old days are back again.