Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tim Dillon: A Real Hero’ On Netflix, A Podcasting Comedian Has The Stage All To Himself

Tim Dillion is banking millions now thanks to his podcast patrons on Patreon. How will that translate back into stand-up comedy, where Dillon once toiled in relative obscurity, only scoring a 15-minute special from Netflix just four years ago?

TIM DILLON: A REAL HERO: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

The Gist: Tim Dillon was leading bus tours in New York City before breaking through as a stand-up comedian. In 2018, he filmed a half-hour for Comedy Central, and was one of the first eight stand-ups named to The Comedy Lineup to record 15-minute sets for Netflix. It’s a fairly notable lineup, in retrospect. The other stand-ups on the bill included Michelle Buteau, Taylor Tomlinson, Ian Karmel, Sam Jay, Phil Wang, Sabrina Jalees and Jak Knight. Buteau and Tomlinson are Netflix stars now; Karmel has become James Corden’s sidekick in late-night; Jay has her own HBO series; Jalees co-starred on a CBS sitcom and currently co-stars on a game show on The CW; Knight wrote for Jay’s HBO show and co-starred in a Peacock show with her, but sadly died by suicide this summer.
And Dillon? During the pandemic, he briefly moved to Texas to allow himself more frequent appearances on Joe Rogan’s podcast, and his own podcast, “The Tim Dillon Show,” blew up. He currently has some 42,590 subscribers to his Patreon, earning him more than $222,000 per month, which totals more than $2.6 million annually.
For his solo debut on Netflix, directed by his podcast producer Ben Avery, Dillon cracks jokes about moving to Austin, conspiracy theorists, and why all nurses cannot possibly be heroes.

What Comedy Specials Will It Remind You Of?: Although he remains close with Rogan, Dillon has more in common comedically with Rogan’s former co-host from the final season of The Man Show on Comedy Central: Doug Stanhope. Take Stanhope’s attitudes toward contemporary life, add in a growl that hints at the anger of a young Sam Kinison, and you’ve got something approaching Dillon’s stage presence.

Memorable Jokes: Though he may be rolling in dough now, Dillon is quick to remind us that he grew up as part of Long Island “white trash,” which back then meant being the only family dining inside the Pizza Hut. His first few minutes focus on fast-food chains. He’s not likely to score an endorsement deal from Little Caesars anytime soon. And he’s never going to become a fan of chain restaurants taking stances on political or social issues, either.
After an audience member asks him: “Indica or sativa?” the question prompts a mini-rant about Colorado, and then a shift into Texas, where he shits on their obsession with barbecue and playfully mocks the police officers who want to ticket him simply for driving a car with California plates, only to learn Dillon’s political views more clearly align with them, even if he acknowledges he only looks like he’s a bad cop himself.
There’s some light stuff in this hour, too. Dillon makes fun of adults who visit Disney parks, perhaps because it reminds him of the trip his parents took there in an attempt to save their marriage. He makes fun of his Irish heritage generally, and his relatives more specifically. The cruise industry also incurs his satirical scorn. So, too, Joel Osteen, NFTs and Florida’s supposed “Don’t Say Gay” law all get Dillon riled up. And though he doesn’t mention Simone Biles by name, Dillon clearly doesn’t have the bandwidth to empathize with Olympic athletes who take untimely mental health breaks. “Just do a flip!”
Our Take: For the masses who have jumped aboard the Dillon bandwagon since the pandemic, the question for them may be as simple as this: Is he any different now as a stand-up comedy than he is as a podcaster?
Short answer: His stand-up is shorter than a typical podcast episode. This hour only lasts 48 minutes. No ad reads. Follow-up answer: Because he’s recording this to last more than a hot minute, Dillon decidedly shares more of his evergreen thoughts, compared to the topical rants and tangents that fuel his podcast.
And the reaction from the fans is curious, at least from the sound editing. After his early jokes, you’ll hear the sound of a slight roar coming back from the audience, which overwhelms any laughter or applause in the room. Though you might expect them to vote conservative, they and he demonstrate more of a nihilistic attitude than anything traditionally right-wing.
Onstage, Dillon sometimes positions himself more in the middle, politically, claiming to view political philosophy like swimming in the ocean: The further from show you swim, the less likely you are to make it back to shore. When he speaks on public education policies, he says “like everything else in the country, it swings crazy left to crazy right.”
Though when he joked about restaurants taking political stances, he doesn’t take aim at the corporate executives or their true profit motives and campaign funding, but rather, he espouses disdain for their low-paid workers.  “When’s the last time you left a drive-thru and you’re like, ‘I hope I’m the same page with all of them?'” he jokes instead. “I hope the gnarled hand giving me my quesadilla shares my values.” Hate to break it to you, but the drive-thru worker isn’t managing the social media account or the investments of the company you’re railing against.
Some critics of Dillon have come for him for his personal alignments, whether it’s sitting with Rogan or with those Rogan sits with (Dillon ironically wore a “Free Ghislaine” T-shirt while gleefully sitting next to Alex Jones two years ago). While Dillon may offer a slight impersonation of Rogan as a high-pitched conspiracy theorist about vaccines, he stops short of any sincere criticism of his podfather. But Dillon also knows his place in the current comedy outrage economy.
Dillon is the type of comedian who gets banned from Airbnb, but not Twitter. “That does not make you sound like a badass.”
On the other hand, he also knows his place in the cultural conversation makes for even stranger bedfellows and peers. As he says of Hillary Clinton, who now also has a podcast: “She thought she was going to be leader of the free world…last year that bitch had my job.”

Our Call: STREAM IT. If you’ve heard of Tim Dillon and wondered what all the fuss is about, or even if you haven’t, then this is a great opportunity to find out for yourself. All without having to subscribe to his Patreon.

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 Tim Dillon: A Real Hero on Netflix