Notaro maintains this great back-and-forth throughout Happy To Be Here, throwing out seemingly unrelated questions and premises, and accepting the eager responses. The whole thing is exhilarating; the audience is eating out of her palm, even as several minutes lapse between setup and punchline. Early on, Notaro, who once worked as a temp, relates a story about her worst assignment. Every new reveal from the comedian is followed by some guess from the crowd, which then becomes part of the bit; it’s one of several instances in which Notaro’s stories snowball, gathering and discarding punchlines. But she’s not testing out material—she’s turning their expectations on their heads. Notaro knows everyone’s waiting (or worried) for the story to get worse, whether the setup is foreboding or innocuous. Her deliberate delivery and joke structure build the anticipation, so that we never know if we’re about to hear about another terrible day in the life of Tig or exult in her experiences as a new mother.

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The result is not quite misdirection, but it is magical and even bold. Although her past tribulations continue to inform her comedy, Notaro commits to the present—and the future—in Happy To Be Here. She trusts that we know enough about her past not to ask her to wallow in it; and, as sublime as her grief is, Notaro proves there’s so much more to her comedy than tragedy. Her happiness doesn’t blunt any of her humor, and it also provides a fitting end to Notaro’s unofficial trilogy. If Live marked her lowest point, then the giddy-in-comparison Boyish Girl Interrupted declared Notaro’s intention to fight back. Happy To Be Here is both the fulfillment of that promise and Notaro’s reward.