Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tig Notaro: Drawn’ on HBO and HBO Max, Re-Imagining The Comedian’s Onstage Stories

Three years after her last Netflix stand-up comedy special, Tig Notaro returns to HBO and goes back to the drawing board, allowing multiple animators to illustrate an old pre-pandemic performance of hers, re-imagining the stories the comedian told onstage.

TIG NOTARO: DRAWN: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Tig Notaro became a viral meme this spring when Zack Snyder cast and filmed her in post-production to replace disgraced Chris D’Elia in Snyder’s Netflix zombie action flick, Army of the Dead.
We’ve all gotten to know a lot about Notaro and her life through her performances over the past decade, from One Mississippi on Amazon Prime Video, to a Netflix documentary (Tig), a Showtime comedy road film (Knock Knock, It’s Tig Notaro), and two stand-up specials, 2015’s Boyish Girl Interrupted for HBO and 2018’s Happy To Be Here for Netflix. Drawn has drawn Notaro back to HBO for an hourlong special filmed at Largo in Los Angeles four years ago, but brought to renewed life by several different animators at Six Point Harness and directed by Greg Franklin.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: There may not be many animated stand-up comedy specials out there to draw experience from, so to speak. But Comedy Central did present the 2004 series, Shorties Watchin’ Shorties, in which cartoon versions of Nick DiPaolo and the late Patrice O’Neal watched animated stand-up clips from fellow comedians. For his part, Notaro’s director Greg Franklin worked with several comedians on animating some of their bits about a decade ago: You may have seen and shared his work with Jerry Seinfeld, Louis C.K., Wyatt Cenac, Kyle Kinane, Jackie Kashian or Myq Kaplan.
Memorable Jokes: Animating the hour makes much of it even more memorable than it already would be, as Notaro regales us with two bloody stories that sent her to the hospital, in addition other mishaps, a retelling of her cancer treatment and other medical emergencies via a long-running dialogue with comedian and actress Jenny Slate, her fandom of Eddie Van Halen and Dolly Parton, and her wonderment over the backstory of the Kool-Aid Man, who began breaking through walls in TV ads in the mid-1970s.

Our Take: Going with animation not only allows us to visualize Notaro’s funny trips down her own Memory Lane, but also enjoy a lighter take on her interaction with the crowd at Largo (dubbed La Venue in Drawn). That even goes for an interloping spider, which gets its own backstory during the special’s opening scene to make its entrance just past halfway through the hour that much more, or perhaps less, unexpected.
I counted at least 11 different renditions of Notaro throughout the hour. Some aim for a realistic interpretation of the comedian; some employ different techniques such as stop-motion; some go for a more cartoonish effect. Notaro told Decider: “Because I’ve been on this project for so long, I do genuinely connect with all the different pieces.” But if she had to pick one she related to most, it’d be the toon of her who’s actually telling the jokes. “The version of me that’s onstage at Largo. Because there’s so many of my face expressions and body movements that I really was kind of shocked that they were there. Which they are.”
Even before she became well-known outside of comedy circles, Notaro enjoyed a reputation for sticking to her particular sensibility and not trying to appeal to audiences who might not get her sense of humor.
Now still, she laughs off her premise about the Kool-Aid Man mid-story, realizing some in the crowd may not know of what she speaks. “Yeah, I don’t know if the Kool-Aid man is on commercials anymore,” she says in the hour. “I don’t care about if my material is relevant.” To Decider, she added for emphasis: “I’m just all about putting out there, whatever I want or whatever feels right.”
Our Call: STREAM IT. Notaro may be a notoriously dry comedian, perhaps too dry for some tastes? So this also may be your best chance to see her in a completely new light. Or 11 new lights.

Sean L. McCarthy works the comedy beat for his own digital newspaper, The Comic’s Comic; before that, for actual newspapers. Based in NYC but will travel anywhere for the scoop: Ice cream or news. He also tweets @thecomicscomic and podcasts half-hour episodes with comedians revealing origin stories: The Comic’s Comic Presents Last Things First.

Watch Tig Notaro: Drawn on HBO and HBO Max