Out of Line

What does it feel like to watch stand-up if all you’re seeing is a cartoon?

- KATHRYN VANARENDONK

Tig Notaro: Drawn

TIG NOTARO’S new, fully animated stand-up special for HBO, Tig Notaro: Drawn, may have been conceived and green-lit before the pandemic, but its conceit is unexpectedly fitting for a summer like this one. It starts with a cartoon Notaro walking into a cartoon theater, expressions and outfits a distillation of the real-life comedian’s look—short swooping brown hair, oversize cardigan, body rendered in long straight lines. Her mouth is a simple curve, one that tilts down skeptically when interrupted by an audience member. The audio is pieced together from material Notaro recorded at the L.A. venue Largo over the past few years, the animation style changing with the jokes. When Notaro launches into a story (about her childhood or a gruesome health crisis or the Kool-Aid Man), the drawings pull us along. Suddenly, we are no longer in a theater; we are crouched behind a fence next to the Kool-Aid Man, waiting for the cue to bust in and yell, “Oh, yeah!”

Notaro isn’t the first comedian to go toon or even the first to do it on HBO. In 2010, excerpts from Ricky Gervais’s long-running podcast became