Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Tig N’ Seek’ On HBO Max, Where A Kid Looks For Lost Things With The Help Of His Inventor Cat

One of the great things about HBO Max is that it has access to the best of Cartoon Network, including titles like Steven Universe, Ben 10 Universe, Powerpuff Girls, Regular Show and more. While aimed towards kids, the CN shows have gotten adult followings because they don’t talk down to anyone and get into situations that make people young and old pay attention. And they can be a bit surreal. So does the newest CN-produced series, Tig N’ Seek, fall into that category?

TIG N’ SEEK: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A kid looks through his magnifying glass. “Whadda we got here? We got a golf hole, whaddya we got here? An untied shoe,” which of course is his shoe.

The Gist: Tiggy (Mike Chilian) is an 8-year-old kid who works at the Department of Lost and Found. He thinks he’s pretty good at finding things for people, and we see him trying to find a lost golf ball for a woman who has hired him. His skills are pretty good, but he’s nothing without his gadget-building cat Gweeseek (Kari Wahlgren) who takes parts of a ditched golf cart and makes a chair lift without Tiggy even knowing it.

The golfer, happy that she’s got her ball back, tells Tiggy about her “method” for hitting the ball well. That makes him obsessed about having a “method” of his own. He finds out back at the office that Nurtiza (Wanda Sykes), an eye-patched bunny who’s their maintenance person, has her own method, and the fuzzy, muscled This Guy (Jemaine Clement) has his own methods. It drives Tiggy into a tizzy.

Also in a tizzy is their bulldog Boss (Rich Fulcher), who is getting his portrait painted today and is missing the tie he got from his father, the Chief, who founded the department. “I want to be a good boy,” the Boss says. When This Guy finds he’s missing a certain shade of blue, this buys Tiggy some time, and he stumbles on the Five Rules of Finding in the portrait of the Chief. He uses those five rules, but still can’t seem to find the tie, even when Boss’ footprints take them to a self-tanning salon. Will he find Boss’ tie?

Our Take: Chilian, who worked on Rick and Morty and Uncle Grandpa, is the creator of Tig N’ Seek as well as the voice of Tiggy; he doesn’t try to talk down to his audience in the ten 12-minute episodes that are on HBO Max (they were originally slated to air on Cartoon Network). Even though Tiggy is 8-years-old, he talks like an adult, and what’s funny about him is that he’s a pretty good finder of things, but doesn’t have any confidence in himself. He also projects his fears on little Gweeseek, who’s pretty darn confident, given his ability to make something out of nothing.

The second episode sees Tiggy and Boss go through a ton of lying and cover-up scenarios after Gweeseek steals a churro from the vendor across the street, and Boss eats it. While the vendor seems unaware of the theft, and Gweeseek has no idea what he did wrong, Tiggy is beating himself up for raising a shoplifter and Boss is telling Tiggy they should get their stories straight when the vendor comes over to ask for a glass of water.

It’s that kind of ridiculousness that marks so many Cartoon Network shows, that are unafraid to expose kids to emotions and situations that used to be reserved for grown-up sitcoms in the ’70s and ’80s. Are there lessons to be learned in these episodes? Not really. But we loved seeing Tiggy go through his emotions and seeing Gweeseek calmly bail his buddy out time after time.

What Age Group Is This For?: The first episode is rated TV-Y7, but the other nine are rated TV-PG. Not sure why there’s a distinction, but it seems like a show that’s suitable for kids 8 and up. My 5-and-a-half-year-old daughter liked it but didn’t love it, and the message in the second episode wasn’t one we’d want to impart on kids that young.

Parting Shot: Boss is so happy to get his tie back, he wants Tiggy and Gweeseek in the painting with them. “Hold still for the next 3 hours,” says This Guy.

Sleeper Star: When two of your supporting characters are voiced by Sykes and Clement, it’s a pretty good bet that we’ll see more stories with them during the ten episodes.

Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we could see.

Our Call: STREAM IT. Tig N’ Seek is cute and is smart enough to not drive you crazy when you’re watching it with your kids. That can be said about a lot of Cartoon Network shows, of course, which is why a lot of them are cult hits with adults. This could be one of those.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, VanityFair.com, Playboy.com, Fast Company.com, RollingStone.com, Billboard and elsewhere.

Stream Tig N' Seek On HBO Max