The Tick Fails To Get Under Reviewer's Skin!

Fans cheered when news broke that their favorite, antennaed, blue-clad avenger would be coming to the small screen. Legions of loyal followers were again wowed with the near-perfect casting of Patrick Warburton (Seinfeld, NewsRadio) as the mighty superhero. Unfortunately, the pilot episode of The Tick will not entice the same excitement that arose from those early reports.

The Tick finds the title character standing vigilant over The Bus Station, rescuing hapless and weary travelers from the tyranny of a coffee vending machine gone bad. Eager to rid his station from the costumed freak, the station manager dupes The Tick into leaving his post to go fight evil in The City. From the first images and words of this opening scene, come a vision of what is yet to come in the twenty-some minutes that follow... regrettably, it is a vision that will disappoint many.

Meanwhile, in The City, mild-mannered Arthur (David Burke) has decided to give up his job as an accountant to pursue a career as a superhero. The night after leaving his job, Arthur stumbles upon a fiendish plot by a group of Soviet terrorists, to assassinate the Postmaster General and thus throw the U.S. Postal Service into a state of chaos with the use of a robot called The Red Scare, created during the cold war. While they manage to stop the terrorists from programming the robot with its new orders, The Tick accidentally awakens the automaton... immediately resuming its original diabolical programming... to destroy President Jimmy Carter!!!

While some studios have tried to avoid going over-the-top with projects based on comic books, an effort that has been met with some success to this point... The Tick is one case where going conservative will severely injure the show's chances of becoming a success. While most superhero-genre films and television shows have been the victims of camp, The Tick is a victim of a lack thereof. Something that perhaps the show's producer, Barry Sonnenfeld (Men In Black, Addams Family), failed to grasp was that The Tick is over-the-top. The original comic book and subsequent cartoon series, that this pilot was based upon, is a parody... a spoof of comic books and superheroes in general.

Nor were the problems the result of poor performances on the part of the actors involved. In fact, the actors fit their roles wonderfully, and seemed to be enthusiastic about the show. Though some fans of the way the title character was portrayed in the cartoon series may be a bit unsatisfied with Warburton's voice and performance, he puts on a good, solid show...and brings The Tick to life.

In truth, the main problems arose from the apparent lack of over-all production value. The sets used, were cheap and very obviously done on a sound stage. On a positive note concerning the sets, however, they had the right idea... for example, the bus station was called The Bus Station... the hotel in The City was called The City Hotel... the different locales used were titled in Tick fashion... but extremely cheap. It almost seemed as though all the budget was used up in the costumes for The Tick and The Red Scare.

The pilot is on the right track for what The Tick needs to be in order to be a success in prime time... but it needs that extra push. In an age where going over-the-top is becoming unstylish in comic book based film and TV properties, The Tick needed to go against the grain to keep the tone and feel necessary that has made the comic and animated series as funny and imaginative as it has been. The Tick pilot made it up the hill most of the way, but when it failed to reach the top of the mount, let alone go past it... the show instead rolled back down and crushed my hopes for what I dreamed would be a phenomenal television series.