I thought that might have been a shout-out to the original cartoon series with the Terror, who was an aged, semi-retired supervillain, and the super-team that had fought him in the past who were also all retired and very very old. One of them had the superpower of shooting his eyes out like rockets and had the catch-phrase “Rocket from the socket!”
Eyes seem to be a recurring theme in this series. The Flag Five were blinded by weaponized syphilis, Overkill seems to have cybernetic eyes, so does the present-day Terror, Ms Lint is missing an eye, the Pyramid gang all have tattoos under their left eyes.
Watched the first two episodes with my wife but she wasn’t in love with it. So I waited a little and then banged out the last four episodes last night. I liked it. There were only one or two laugh out loud lines for me in an episodes but I was consistently amused throughout and thought episodes 5 & 6 started to give some real pay off both in plot and comedy. I liked the cartoon back in the day but wasn’t really in love with the Fox version (Warburton was great for the part but the writing didn’t work for me, I guess). I like the fact that this version is more of a departure from “live action slapstick cartoon” and has a little more going on.
Nitpick: The “Am I wearing a suit?” bit fell flat for me because it’s so obviously a suit. You can see the sleeves and wrinkles! That quandary worked better in the cartoon or the Fox version with the solid smooth suit than this one with the fabric weave and armor plates. I guess it’s more visually consistent with Arthur’s suit (which I like better than the Fox bunny pajamas) so that works but it does kind of kill the joke.
I don’t think the appearance of the suit matters, the guy never wears anything else and apparently never even takes it off, he also does not know where he came from or who he is.
I finished it last week and I did like it but it didn’t quite feel the same as the other incarnations. Serafinowicz has the stature and timing to play the Tick and Griffin Newman was fine as Arthur. I also like the actor who played Ms. Lint. The series itself seems a little too grounded though. The Tick is an absurd character surrounded by other absurd characters in an absurd world and I didn’t think this was so much the case in this series. Everyone is a little crazy but it seems to be an otherwise pretty normal world so it feels like there is something missing. Otherwise, I enjoyed the storyline and the Tick interacting with everyone. Additionally, Townsend Coleman, who was the Tick in the cartoon series, has a cameo in this as a talking dog.
This series really did whet my appetite for the Tick though and I’m now working my way through the earlier TV series. Captain Liberty, rrrow!. I wish that the cartoon was on Netflix or something though.
Well, it did for me. There’s no question about whether or not it’s a suit, just why he doesn’t take the suit off.
Contrast that with the previous live action suit where you could plausibly wonder if that’s an extremely hard to get in/out of suit or just his body. I mean, it’s not perfect but within the limitations of an early 2000s live action network TV show, it worked. The new suit just doesn’t hold up to the gag (though I’m fine with it otherwise).
I’ve been doing the same thing, and you’re absolutely right about Captain Liberty. I had forgotten about her morally casual attitude too.
The cartoons are mostly up on youtube BTW.
Oh come on - “Am I never naked…or am I never not naked?” is a great line.
Ooh, good catch.
I missed the previous live series but have now watched it on Amazon. My first reaction to her outfit was “Really??? They really made her wear that???”
The rest of the 1st season is up on Amazon today! I watched the whole thing (6 more episodes) and it was just as good, if not better, than the first 6, IMO. It really is better than the other live action Tick, even though I enjoyed that one too. Better balance of humor, with jokes and characters that seemed to flow better and much less that felt forced.
My daughter is coming home next weekend, I might wait for her and then watch it with her. We watched the first part of the season before she headed college this year.
This is fantastic news! Thanks for the heads-up!
I started from the beginning again since it’s been like 6 months since I watched the first 6 episodes and I actually enjoyed them more this time than the first. There were a lot of details that I had forgotten (or missed completely the first time around, in a few cases) so that was like the show having a patch update since I first watched them which was kinda cool.
I also noticed a bunch of glaring mistakes that I prolly justly go the first time around, notably timeline-type comments not making any sense, i.e. something that just happened being described as “a couple of days ago”, etc. Minor but threw me a bunch since it’s rare you see someone do that IRL conversations, eh.
Overall, tho, as I said I enjoyed it more the 2nd time thru. Tomorrow I plan on catching up to at least E6 but I may try and stretch it out over a few days rather than just binge it.
And again I have to ask: how in the fuck did Jackie Earle Haley not work for 13 years??? The guy is fucking AMAZING.
the watchmen and nightmare on elm street remake was 13 years ago?
does it have the comic book parody vibe the animated series had?
He was in the first season of Preacher as well -
Watchmen and NoES were both part of his return to acting. According to his IMDB page, he had no work from 1993-2006 as an actor; that is the period I was referring to.
The quality of his work makes such a thing curious, IMO. I mean, he was easily the best thing in Watchmen, he dominates every scene in The Tick and even his earlier work was brilliant (he matched Matthau and O’Neal in Bad News Bears; Breaking Away was freaking incredible, etc.). He’s an Oscar winner, ffs.
I can’t help but wonder why he didn’t work for those 13 years.
I hope they start bringing in more of the characters from the cartoon. Die Fledermaus was my favorite, if only for his extreme uselessness.
Short answer is he grew up into an odd looking adult and no one was there to guide him through the change to becoming an adult character actor. Then alcohol and drugs.
Do you have a cite for that, tho?
His wikipedia page says
but his IMDB page only lists one directing credit, for Criminal Activities in 2015.
I have a hard time believing the “odd looking adult” thing, considering that Harvey Keitel, Willem Dafoe, Christopher Walken, James Woods, etc. have all had long and active careers.
And he was born in 1961, so he was 33 when he stopped acting; that’s well into adulthood.
IC - thanks.
I liked the second half overall, but I have a couple of questions:
[spoiler]Why did The Terror choose the guy who found the teeth to be the VLM?
Did Overkill’s cardiac arrest get better?
Do we have any idea who Arthur’s step-dad is? Also someone from the Flag Five that survived? It seemed sort of implied with the ‘I know that sound’-comment, but I don’t see how that could work… [/spoiler]