Um, spoon?

August 23, 2016 12:54 AM

Compare and contrast:
The new The Tick (Amazon, ep 1)
The old The Tick (YouTube, ep 1)
From the middle The Tick: vs. a vending machine
posted by JHarris (59 comments total)

And here's a recap of the comics The Tick, issue 1, from the amazingly long-lived The Tick fansite!
posted by JHarris at 12:58 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I'd post something clever, but I'm easily distracted by shiny objects.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:00 AM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

So wait, when do we get more Destiny?
posted by aubilenon at 1:29 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Now can we get the Reid Fleming, World's Strongest Milkman miniseries ?
posted by fallingbadgers at 1:41 AM on August 23, 2016 [9 favorites]

Sadly, this the second-highest rated of the three current pilots on Amazon's current "Pilot Season", scoring 7.7 to an 8.4 for Jean-Claude Van Damme in "Jean-Claude Van Johnson" (kind of playing himself, because what else can he do?). Third place with 5.3 is "I Love Dick" starring Kevin Bacon as Dick in a story "adapted from a lauded feminist novel" (MRA downvoting victim?).

Come on. Ticksters! Get in there and Vote Tick so we can see what happens when it gets past the tragic backstory and really gets weird!
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:15 AM on August 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

Creator Ben Edlund explains why "New Tick" is so different.
posted by oneswellfoop at 2:26 AM on August 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

I wasn't really that crazy about it. Every scene that actually had The Tick in it was perfect and hilarious, but most of the show was devoted to Arthur sadsacking around in a very tedious way. I would love it if the new show took the piss out of grim n gritty superheroes. But it feels more like it wants to be an early Grant Morrison comic or something, with the (not a spoiler; this is just speculation) suggestion that The Tick is the manifestation of Arthur's...whatever. Like he's a tulpa or some shit. I'm not sure; but I do feel confident the show would be a better one if it played to its strengths, which is to say if it concentrated more on being funny.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 2:46 AM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

I saw it last night and it made me sad. A show that used to make me giggle with delight, made into...what, exactly? I found myself focusing on the cinematography, since there was no writing or acting to capture the attention, and being appalled by how bland and lifeless the camera felt. I wanted frames that reminded me of comic book panels, but pushed even further, into melodramatic silliness...but no. The camera never got too close, never swept out too far, never seemed to care what it was capturing.

The wall of articles. How many times have we seen this? Where is the joke? Without a joke, without irony, it's just lazy. The camera wasn't interested in the articles. The design of the wall wasn't interested in us making connections. It was visually bland.

Why was it visually bland? It would be the cheapest thing on earth to print out articles that were funny by virtue of being unrelated, things that had no possible connection to one another, and pull them together with red string and conspiracy. The shuttle explosion was close...maybe a bit on the nose, but also too tucked away. It's okay to make a big joke. It's okay to go too far. But because the story, the camera, took no interest in the conspiracy, it was impossible for the viewer to.
posted by mittens at 4:22 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Now can we get the Reid Fleming, World's Strongest Milkman miniseries ?

The role John C. Reilly was born to play.
posted by delfin at 4:56 AM on August 23, 2016 [13 favorites]

Eh, it was better than the previous "What if Seinfeld, but superheroes?" series. I'm sure it's possible to make a live action The Tick well, and in this age of interminable superhero shows and movies a there's never been a better time for it. This pilot seems to be The Tick in a serious world, which is OK, but I already miss Die Fledermaus and American Maid who seem to have no place in this new order. Maybe if The Tick's influence slowly makes this straight-laced world a weirder place, that would be more suitable?
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 5:04 AM on August 23, 2016 [6 favorites]

Third place with 5.3 is "I Love Dick" starring Kevin Bacon as Dick

So, Tick vs. Dick?
posted by Halloween Jack at 5:04 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

The bland visuals are all the more surprising since it was directed by Wally Pfister, who was director of photography on a bunch of visually stunning movies directed by Christopher Nolan.

I thought there were a lot of interesting ideas, and they handled the Tick himself well, but it didn't come together at all.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 5:07 AM on August 23, 2016

Oh, but "Jean-Claude Van Johnson" was really good.
posted by He Is Only The Imposter at 5:08 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Except that if any of the articles were "funny by virtue of being unrelated" (which could be funny depending on the writing of the articles, but is a very "I took a tenth of a second to think of this in a panic when all of a sudden the showrunner turned to me in the writer's room" joke) then Arthur wouldn't be RIGHT, which was the whole point. You're talking about burning the whole story on a stupid throwaway joke that's been done a million times before.

As for "the camera never seemed to care what it was capturing" or your assertion that the frames weren't frequently set up like comic book panels, I don't even know what to say. You watched a different episode than I did, I guess. I would say the episode was fine, not great, and frankly as much as I love him I don't think Serafinowicz is hitting the right notes (mostly he's not going BIG enough). I have hope that he'll be able to get there. The Arthur stuff was the only stuff that really worked, and I think setting up Arthur as a guy with a history of appearing unstable with a traumatic past but who is actually pretty together will make for an entertaining friction with the serious-ish world around him as he gets inevitably drawn more and more into the Tick's silly crusade, because the Tick, exasperating as he is, is the only one who's listening about the only important thing. And the Tick's particular style of madness should be interesting grinding up against a world that's a bit more serious than his previous settings, where he was only a little crazier than the craziness surrounding him.
posted by IAmUnaware at 5:11 AM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Creator Ben Edlund explains why "New Tick" is so different.

I want a channel of nothing but all the Patrick Warburton comedies he didn't get to make that he talks about in this link.
posted by middleclasstool at 5:15 AM on August 23, 2016 [12 favorites]

As long as Ben Edlund is in charge, I can overlook the weaknesses, and although Peter Serafinowicz is neither Townsend Coleman nor Patrick Warburton, he holds his own. But this is a different show. Despite his well-known nigh-invulnerability, I admit I never imagined the Tick walking chest-first through a hail of bullets and laughing it off, but I can get on board.

Thanks for that interview link, oneswellfoop. I can't believe the obvious metaphor of Tick-as-parasite (taking over Arthur's life and apartment, etc.) never occurred to me.

I miss Batmanuel.
posted by Faint of Butt at 5:16 AM on August 23, 2016 [17 favorites]

I can't believe the obvious metaphor of Tick-as-parasite (taking over Arthur's life and apartment, etc.) never occurred to me.

You're not the only one.
posted by Optamystic at 5:30 AM on August 23, 2016 [9 favorites]

And if I hadn't read the Ben Edlund interview, I wouldn't have noticed the most obvious gag in the whole half hour, that when the big blue guy introduces himself to Arthur as The Tick, Arthur's response is a nervous tic.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:34 AM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

The bland visuals are all the more surprising since it was directed by Wally Pfister, who was director of photography on a bunch of visually stunning movies directed by Christopher Nolan.

Christopher "What if Stanley Kubrick fucked a CCTV camera" Nolan? It was about as visually stunning as I expected.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 6:27 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I kind of enjoyed this. Not a fan of any previous incarnation of The Tick but I am a fan of Peter Serafinowicz. Surprisingly I found the Arthur parts of the story way more interesting than The Tick himself.

The best comedy was The Tick tipping various objects over in Arthur's apartment trying to open the "Secret Lair".
posted by mmoncur at 6:35 AM on August 23, 2016

> I miss Batmanuel.

Batmanuel was one of the best. He was pretty good in his animated iteration too (called Die Fledermaus).

I also loved the obvious oddities, like Sewer Urchin, or, from the villain side, Chairface Chippendale.

Also, does anyone else feel like "The Semi-Billionaire," villainous founder of the Phalanx of Gloom, is now a Presidential contender?
posted by mystyk at 7:07 AM on August 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Reading that Edlund interview it sounds like he's more interested in emulating the latest superhero TV shows rather than mocking them, which is a shame. The most beloved Tick incarnations revel in their silliness and joyful insanity. What has always made The Tick good is the perfect antidote to the Grimdark plague so it's a bit weird to see The Tick in a gritty realistic world. This is the source of dissonance in seeing him walk chest-first into a hail of gunfire.
posted by Mr.Encyclopedia at 7:10 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

The new Tick looks like he is based off a Frank Quitely drawing.
posted by entropicamericana at 7:13 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

Jean-Claude Van Damme in "Jean-Claude Van Johnson" (kind of playing himself, because what else can he do?)

THIS IS A THING? This sounds more or less like a reworking of the film JCVD, which was weird and fun. I'll give it a shot for sure.

Speaking of Amazon pilots... my kid really liked Lost in Oz from last year. They said it was picked up for series. I know animation takes a while, but it's been more than a year. Is it still coming?
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:37 AM on August 23, 2016

Oh, but "Jean-Claude Van Johnson" was really good.

For those who don't know, it seems to be based loosely on the movie JCVD, which was sort of the same idea but without the secret agent plot. It's a great movie.
posted by Huck500 at 7:38 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

NEAT!
posted by leotrotsky at 7:39 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

Amazon, how they hell do you have self-produced shows that I still can't watch in Canada because of regional restrictions!?

(What happened to free trade?)
posted by ODiV at 7:46 AM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

The new Tick looks like he is based off a Frank Quitely drawing.

YES. I was trying to figure out what bugged me about the costume and you nailed it.

I'm not sure if I quite like it or not. I think I need to watch it again. I really felt that Patrick Warburton was perfect in the previous incarnation.
posted by Fleebnork at 7:54 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I agree, but I can also see the point of saying that Patrick Warburton was the platonic ideal of the lantern-jawed Big Blue Bug Of Justice who's a crazy person in a somewhat less crazy world, so let's try something else. Problem is that AFAIK there's never been "something else" where the Tick is concerned so this adaptation is in uncharted waters from minute one.
posted by Holy Zarquon's Singing Fish at 8:38 AM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

I enjoyed the new Tick.
posted by terrapin at 8:44 AM on August 23, 2016

I'm hoping that Patrick Warburton's involvement as a producer means that, if the series gets picked up, he'll get to make a cameo appearance as a different superhero.
posted by Faint of Butt at 8:44 AM on August 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

Now that Marvel on Netflix has Daredevil Season 2 under its belt I dearly hope this new show on Amazon will have ninjas and Oedipus, and even Paul the Samurai.
posted by linux at 8:52 AM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Maybe Warburton could play Barry Hubris, aka The Other Jerk Who Calls Himself The Tick.
posted by Strange Interlude at 8:52 AM on August 23, 2016 [17 favorites]

Clearly, Warburton would play 'Barry', the other Tick.

On edit, jinx.
posted by rock swoon has no past at 8:52 AM on August 23, 2016 [5 favorites]

"The Tick vs. The Tick" was - in my book - the best cartoon episode of anything I've ever seen. Anywhere.

Had that been made into a live-action ep, the Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight would have been played by Dennis Hopper.

Now?

Tom Waits.
posted by Thistledown at 9:06 AM on August 23, 2016 [8 favorites]

the Midnight Bomber What Bombs At Midnight would have been played by Dennis Hopper.

Now?

Tom Waits.

Maybe. I'd try Charlie Day.
posted by lumpenprole at 9:11 AM on August 23, 2016 [12 favorites]

Now you have me wanting to watch Charlie Day shouting "Bad is good, baby! Down with government!"
posted by Pope Guilty at 9:13 AM on August 23, 2016 [11 favorites]

I just wanted to add:

TONGUE TONGUE WEEPS FOR HE HAS BUT ONE TONGUE TO TASTE AN ENTIRE WORLD.

Sorry, can't believe I never had a chance to type that in a MeFi thread before.
posted by blahblahblah at 9:27 AM on August 23, 2016 [9 favorites]

I'll watch this eventually because I loved the comic book in high school, but I wonder how many times we can go around on this carousel before people realize it's time to get off and make a tv show based on The Tick's spiritual successor, Dr. McNinja.

That said, my favorite Tick-on-TV-moment has to be the mustache episode of the cartoon.

It's a savvy kind of feeling!
posted by offalark at 9:39 AM on August 23, 2016 [7 favorites]

The new Tick looks like he is based off a Frank Quitely drawing.

Wow, really? For me this is the least Quitely of any Tick. Quitely to me is this overstuffed muscle look, which if I was going to plot a trajectory I'd say cartoon Tick was the most FQ, then FOX tv Tick, then this Tick wayyyyyyy farther down the line.

I liked this take just fine. It wasn't like the FOX show, which wasn't like the cartoon. All of them had Edlund's dark weirdness, though this embraced some more dark anti-humor. And everything is better with some Jackie Earl Haley.
posted by phearlez at 10:17 AM on August 23, 2016

It can't be based off a Quitely drawing because all the characters don't have pinched, piggy little pig-faces.
posted by The Tensor at 10:22 AM on August 23, 2016 [2 favorites]

I liked but didn't love this. It seems like they're going to be moving it toward more visually extravagant, overtly crazy stuff if it gets to go to series- I mean, come on, look at The Terror's aircraft flying in a giant upright T shape- but it really could have gone more in either direction. Some of the lolgrimdark stuff ("blinded by weaponized syphilis and then shot") barely landed, which was just bizarre.

That said, there was one, and exactly one, moment in the pilot that had me literally doubled over laughing with how well it brought together the "gritty reboot" vibe and the original comic and cartoon's style:

MILD SPOILER I GUESS
Arthur's childhood trauma flashback, starting with the ridiculously on-the-nose bit with Flag Five ship crushing his father, the heroes being shot in the face, all leading up to:

"What's that behind your ear?
...NOTHING! YOU GOT NOTHING!"

Kind of mixed on Serafinowicz, too, but at least they've got enough of a budget to try and get some of the character's cartoonish physicality back. And he's doing his goddamnedest to impersonate Townsend Coleman, which is appreciated.
posted by Merzbau at 10:48 AM on August 23, 2016 [4 favorites]

Jean-Claude Van Johnson is very very good. Coconut water coming out of the shower good.
posted by danny the boy at 12:35 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've read conflicting things and I'll probably watch this anyway, but I just want to know what I'm getting into: How graphic is the violence in this? How over the top?

The original comic had some pretty dark things in it so I'm interested in this take. I just want to be ready, I guess (unexpected violence/gore upsets me).
posted by darksong at 2:27 PM on August 23, 2016

One thing everyone can agree on is that the cartoon The Tick had one of the greatest opening credits sequences of all time.
posted by tobascodagama at 2:39 PM on August 23, 2016 [7 favorites]

@darksong, it's a bit darker than the previous The Tick shows and comic and I suspect it'll get a bit darker if the show greenlights.

Spoilers I guess:

In one scene a boy and his father are enjoying ice cream cones and when the father walks across the street to pay the meter, a giant spaceship crash lands on and immediately (presumably) kills him (no blood that I saw) with his son looking on in horror. Three anonymous and confused super dudes tumble out of the crashed ship, blood on their eyes and complaining of blindness (caused by a certain villain's eye virus weapon or something). No lingering closeups on the eyes, though. Two of the anon heroes are murdered fairly quickly and with relatively little violence and one has his hand deliberately crushed under a villain's boot (brief shot with a scream, no blood). Later, there is pretty tame but fun action scene in which titular character calmly wades through flying bullets and dispatches a dozen villains with flicks of his wrist.

Hope that helps.
posted by christopherious at 2:40 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

christopherious: "villain's eye virus weapon "

Weaponized Gonorrhea to be exact.
posted by wcfields at 3:10 PM on August 23, 2016 [1 favorite]

I've been really negative about this, so I wanted to say that I loved Jackie Earle Haley. I wish we'd seen more of him, but even his few moments hinted at what the show could be -- the tone they're trying for seems very hard to pull off, but he got it.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 3:56 PM on August 23, 2016

Thank you, christopherious! That's exactly what I needed to know. I'd read some descriptions that made it sound much more graphic and bloody than that, then another place called it a "PG Deadpool" so I really had no idea which to believe.

I'm still hopeful this will work. What I like about all the incarnations of The Tick is that there is room for all of them to be different and still be satisfying.
posted by darksong at 4:11 PM on August 23, 2016

Seconding tobascodagama. If this gets picked up and they can't get the rights to the original cartoon theme- or can, but decide to go with something else, like complete savages- it will all have been for nought.
posted by Merzbau at 4:53 PM on August 23, 2016

What I like about all the incarnations of The Tick is that there is room for all of them to be different and still be satisfying.

Totally agree. Honestly, I think the only real failing of the pilot was the uneven editing. Then you have a new and different looking Tick looking not partucularly Patrick Warburton like and wearing a creepy costume and the greater focus on Arthur. The reactions I'm hearing from some folks seem reasonable, considering all that.

I have a feeling that if it's greenlit, fans will come around.
posted by christopherious at 4:57 PM on August 23, 2016

It must be noted that the previous Tick series broke Ben Edlund into television, and his credits between then and now provide some big bright arrows pointing to his handling of Tick 2016: Firefly, Angel (a little Whedon never hurts), seven seasons as one of the umpteen Producers on Supernatural, then a season each on staff at Gotham and Powers (the PlayStation-exclusive show nobody's seen). The 'Batman Prequel' Gotham in particular, which was always a mix of grimdark and batguanocrazy... Edlund always had the crazy, but I think all the creatives on that show had to take grimdark injections and he just hadn't gone through full withdrawal yet. Now, if he'd done any work on Mr. Robot, I'd be really worried... there were hints that The Tick was all in Arthur's mind, but the big blue bug's big action scene happened when Arthur couldn't be around, right? The deal here is that the biggest complaints involve issues that were not - and could not - be resolved in the pilot. So Ticksters need to have faith in Ben E. and give it high enough marks to push it into series - sorry, Jean-Claude.
posted by oneswellfoop at 5:19 PM on August 23, 2016 [3 favorites]

Gotham handles grimdark better than any other show on television, honestly. Its mix of black humor and grisly violence is tonally a lot more sound than people give it credit for; it's at once the spiritual sequel to the Tim Burton Batman movies and Batman '66, and it works. So I don't think it's fair to blame Gotham for whatever failings are on hand with The Tick. I hope it gets better if Amazon goes to series, but the big problem I see is that it feels a lot like a lot of shows that already exist. Whereas no one is really doing anything like either of the previous shows right now, ironically enough.
posted by kittens for breakfast at 5:55 PM on August 23, 2016

Room temperature fire!
posted by scunning at 6:35 PM on August 23, 2016

Edlund also wrote 24 Supernatural episodes and directed 3.

I don't know, I think there are good reasons to think this may very well end up distinguishing itself from other superhero shows myself, but I guess we'll have to see.

As I watched the pilot last night, I kept thinking of Powers and Gotham and was trying to figure out exactly why, and then I remembered that Edlund was involved in both, and something clicked.

When those two shows came along, I was all but done with superhero media and braced myself for more of the same. But despite a few warts they've each turned out to be incredibly refreshing and original in their own unique ways, and possibly the best superhero stories I'd ever seen on screen. If it is approved, I think think this weird new Tick show is going to join their ranks.
posted by christopherious at 6:36 PM on August 23, 2016

Edlund also wrote 24 Supernatural episodes

Now imagine if Ben Edlund wrote a supernatural 24 episode...
posted by Faint of Butt at 4:07 AM on August 24, 2016 [1 favorite]

I liked it well enough -- I think it's a good update of The Tick for what's going on now in superheroes (taking shots at the whole "grimdark" thing), although it doesn't really feel much like the comic or the cartoon or the first TV show. I get what it's going for on an intellectual level and I appreciate what it's trying to do. I'm not sure how much I connected with it, though. It's not quite a miss but it's not quite a hit either. I wish the pilot had been longer and had more room for some of these ideas to breathe. It felt like it ended just as it was picking up.

The cast is great. I hope it gets picked up because I'd like to see where it goes.

(I'm curious how this plays with people who may not have 20 years of history with The Tick in various properties. If I was new to The Tick, I could see liking this much more. That's not a "but it's not my Tick so it's bad!" complaint, really, just it's a new version of The Tick I don't really recognize yet. But then I remember how much people haaaaaaaaaaaated the first live-action show when it began because it wasn't like the cartoon or comic.)
posted by darksong at 8:07 AM on August 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

It's worth noting that one of the "Associate Producers" is Chris McCulloch, writer on the cartoon The Tick, who you may better know as Jackson Publick of The Venture Bros....
posted by JHarris at 9:55 PM on August 24, 2016 [3 favorites]

Serafinowicz will get better at it I'm sure. He's the guy behind Tarvuism and Building A Human, BTW.
posted by JHarris at 9:31 PM on August 26, 2016 [2 favorites]