The Tick TV Series
The Tick is a strange beast. It originally saw the light of day as a comic, which, as a medium, fitted perfectly with the premise. It is, after all, a superhero parody and as superhero stories are the dominant genre in American comics, it was a perfectly sensible melding of subject and media. When it was turned into a cartoon, the amalgam worked equally well, seeing as many comic superheroes had been adapted to Saturday morning TV, and the general reaction was a nod of agreement. (The cartoon being incredibly funny also helped greatly.) But when a live action version was announced, I couldn’t help but struggle with how it could possibly work.
This was because television has never leant itself to live action superhero programs, whether parodic or not. Let’s take a look at just a few of the low-budget entries – Batman, Wonder Woman, The Million Dollar Man. Arguments could be made that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was basically a superhero series, but while its popularity cannot be denied (and as much as I love Buffy), the series was very much a sanitised, mainstream-friendly version of the superhero genre, removing many of the more absurd genre trappings, possibly for the better. The Tick, as a spoof of superheroes, couldn’t take similar liberties when moving over to its new medium: in order to fully satirise the superhero genre, all the genre conventions, in all their ridiculous glory, had to be present. The notion of the resulting program raised suspicion and cynicism in my mind.
Sadly, the series didn’t last very long: only 9 episodes were made and 8 shown before Fox cancelled it, though frankly it's a surprise that they commissioned it at all. It’s been out on DVD for a while, and while the results are mixed, it’s certainly worth checking out simply as a curio.
The series opens with the Tick thwarting the evil schemes of a coffee machine at a bus station before he’s tricked into taking a bus to The City, where he meets Arthur, former accountant turned superhero sidekick, and they team up to battle a communist robot let loose by disgruntled postal workers and save Jimmy Carter. It’s brilliantly oddball stuff, with the Tick’s dialogue stealing the show, as shown with his confrontation with a coffee vending machine: "Empty your bladder of that bitter urine men call coffee… Java devil, you are now my bitch." Patrick Warburton’s deadpan performances here are to be applauded as he plays the character with just the right mix of stupidity and innocence.
One major problem, though, is the supporting cast. Not so much with the performances, which are solid given the material, but with the characters themselves. Arthur remains relatively true to the comic, but the comic’s Die Fledermaus and American Maid are reinvented as Batmanuel and Captain Liberty respectively, and neither character is very interesting. Both are turned into sitcom stereotypes, Batmanuel as an oversexed, Joey Tribiani-type character and Captain Liberty as an unlucky-in-love career woman. The only interesting thing about them is that they are rarely seen out of uniform, and neither are the Tick or Arthur. It's jarring at first, but them sitting around a table drinking coffee while wearing spandex makes for an interesting visual.
And I think that embodies what people didn’t like about the series. It blurs the line between two genres, the sitcom and the superhero action series, and the viewing public couldn't grasp the blend. This isn't helped by some of the plots of episodes which cover some very strange ground indeed for either of those genres.
Firstly, the aforementioned episode which never aired, somewhat unsurprisingly given Fox’s conservatism, deals with the Tick and Arthur’s relationship with obvious homosexual undertones. This is never any direct implication of the two being in a sexual relationship, but the allegory is pretty clear: Arthur’s mother and sister are worried about his choice to be a “sidekick” and have him institutionalised for his own good. The same hero/sidekick dynamic is used in another episode as an allegory for abusive relationships. But perhaps the strangest episode given the program's primetime timeslot is an examination of the difference between justice and law (in brief, they're not the same thing – the law is only an approximation of justice, and often acts as a hindrance to it), and the Tick’s trouble in accepting that the system isn't as perfect as his rose-tinted optimism thinks it is.
While I applaud the writers for these attempts to address some relevant and interesting social problems, I’m not sure that a primetime superhero sitcom is the place to do it, especially one which already has some huge hurdles to jump. I find the show absolutely hilarious, but I can also see exactly why it’s very much a failed experiment.
This was because television has never leant itself to live action superhero programs, whether parodic or not. Let’s take a look at just a few of the low-budget entries – Batman, Wonder Woman, The Million Dollar Man. Arguments could be made that Buffy the Vampire Slayer was basically a superhero series, but while its popularity cannot be denied (and as much as I love Buffy), the series was very much a sanitised, mainstream-friendly version of the superhero genre, removing many of the more absurd genre trappings, possibly for the better. The Tick, as a spoof of superheroes, couldn’t take similar liberties when moving over to its new medium: in order to fully satirise the superhero genre, all the genre conventions, in all their ridiculous glory, had to be present. The notion of the resulting program raised suspicion and cynicism in my mind.
Sadly, the series didn’t last very long: only 9 episodes were made and 8 shown before Fox cancelled it, though frankly it's a surprise that they commissioned it at all. It’s been out on DVD for a while, and while the results are mixed, it’s certainly worth checking out simply as a curio.
The series opens with the Tick thwarting the evil schemes of a coffee machine at a bus station before he’s tricked into taking a bus to The City, where he meets Arthur, former accountant turned superhero sidekick, and they team up to battle a communist robot let loose by disgruntled postal workers and save Jimmy Carter. It’s brilliantly oddball stuff, with the Tick’s dialogue stealing the show, as shown with his confrontation with a coffee vending machine: "Empty your bladder of that bitter urine men call coffee… Java devil, you are now my bitch." Patrick Warburton’s deadpan performances here are to be applauded as he plays the character with just the right mix of stupidity and innocence.
One major problem, though, is the supporting cast. Not so much with the performances, which are solid given the material, but with the characters themselves. Arthur remains relatively true to the comic, but the comic’s Die Fledermaus and American Maid are reinvented as Batmanuel and Captain Liberty respectively, and neither character is very interesting. Both are turned into sitcom stereotypes, Batmanuel as an oversexed, Joey Tribiani-type character and Captain Liberty as an unlucky-in-love career woman. The only interesting thing about them is that they are rarely seen out of uniform, and neither are the Tick or Arthur. It's jarring at first, but them sitting around a table drinking coffee while wearing spandex makes for an interesting visual.
And I think that embodies what people didn’t like about the series. It blurs the line between two genres, the sitcom and the superhero action series, and the viewing public couldn't grasp the blend. This isn't helped by some of the plots of episodes which cover some very strange ground indeed for either of those genres.
Firstly, the aforementioned episode which never aired, somewhat unsurprisingly given Fox’s conservatism, deals with the Tick and Arthur’s relationship with obvious homosexual undertones. This is never any direct implication of the two being in a sexual relationship, but the allegory is pretty clear: Arthur’s mother and sister are worried about his choice to be a “sidekick” and have him institutionalised for his own good. The same hero/sidekick dynamic is used in another episode as an allegory for abusive relationships. But perhaps the strangest episode given the program's primetime timeslot is an examination of the difference between justice and law (in brief, they're not the same thing – the law is only an approximation of justice, and often acts as a hindrance to it), and the Tick’s trouble in accepting that the system isn't as perfect as his rose-tinted optimism thinks it is.
While I applaud the writers for these attempts to address some relevant and interesting social problems, I’m not sure that a primetime superhero sitcom is the place to do it, especially one which already has some huge hurdles to jump. I find the show absolutely hilarious, but I can also see exactly why it’s very much a failed experiment.
posted by Ryan Stephens at 9:39 AM
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