The Tick has returned and he’s been rebooted and retooled. He’s a little darker than before, but for some reason it works.
Oh, and he also not the star of his own show and that works too.
This time around, the protagonist of the show appears to be Arthur who, as we learn in a flashback, got his neurotic and obsessive behavior from watching his father getting squished and killed during an attack by The Terror, played with marvelous gusto by Jackie Earl Haley. How, having grown into a young man, Arthur is convinced that The Terror is still alive even though the greatest superhero in the world, Superion, claimed to have killed him. While staking out what appears to be The Terror’s minions, he meets The Tick in all of his blue dumb glory and an eventual partnership is formed.
This new iteration of The Tick takes a little getting used to, but when you do it’s great. Peter Serafinowicz plays The Tick just as you would expect the character to act: Brash, stupid as everything, and childlike while, at the same time, making him a nigh-invulnerable force to be reckoned with. I’m not crazy about the costume, more specifically the eye-holes because it makes The Tick look like he’s wearing glasses and makes the character appear nerdy, which is not what the character is or was going for, but like I said, you forget after a while and go with it.
Griffin Newman is Arthur, this time played less as a pansy and more of someone obsessive and psychologically damaged and, to be honest, it works. You really feel for Arthur this time around since he’s got a reason to do what he’s doing and isn’t just an accountant that got bored one day and put on a moth suit.
Quite honestly, when Arthur does don the moth suit, it’s pretty amazing. It’s only for a few minutes, but it looks perfect.
This is a pilot that screams for a full series order. Sure, it could have used more scenes with The Tick as he’s in, only about 25 percent of the episode and it could have used more jokes to cut up some of the more melodramatic moments, but as a pilot episode… the beginning of a journey, it works nicely and, as a reboot of one of my favorite superheroes, it couldn’t have updated and fleshed out the world of The Tick any better.
Jason Gaston 