Thursday, March 24, 2011

Office Comedy Week Part IV: SPOOOOOOON

Alright, I apologize for the title line. I'm not discussing spoons today. No, I'm talking about the little engine that could of the super hero world- Ben Edlund's THE TICK. It started as a comic as far back as the late 80s. But comics are for losers and we all know I'm such a cool guy and totally not a nerd, so like all cool people I was first exposed to the Tick through the mind melting affects of children's Television circa 1994. But while us crazy folks who watched stuff like Freakazoid may remember the cartoon well, so few people ever remember that there was a 2001 live-action version. Possibly no one remembers because it was during that period where Fox canceled everything. As in, that's when they canceled Family Guy (to such strong protests they eventually brought it back) and it's shortly before they canceled Firefly, a cult sci-fi show whose following actually continued to grow until a followup movie was made (Incidentally, Edlund worked with the far more famous Whedon on a number of his projects including Firefly. Edlund; the unsung hero of losers everywhere). Fox was not exercising the best judgement at the time. What really hurts is that the live action Tick is genuinely one of the funniest goddamn things I've ever seen in my life. So much so that numerous concepts I had in mind just fell apart. It seemed like the Tick beat me at every turn. And look at how far it got. A mere nine episodes, not all which even got the chance to air. As a rule of thumb, the better and more distinct something is, the less time it gets in the media. Beatle Bailey and Blondie are still doing their shtick sixty years. Or, since we're talking TV, the Simpsons is 20years old and hasn't been funny since the mid 90s. Shows like Cheers and Frasier went on forever and one was a sequel to the other. These days we've got Two and a Half Men. Thank God Sheen's insanity is putting a stop to that. Pains me to admit this though. The Tick's ratings sucked. Even Firefly could claim 5 million viewers an episode. But again, like Firefly, it had such praise from its existing fans (as well as all the actors in it etc.) that it was quickly released on DVD, and today is perpetually availible on Hulu and Netflix instant.

Again, you might not see how this would be an office comedy but I assure you that it is. The shows I've discussed so far have been either batshit insane (Better off Ted and Archer) or taking the extraordinary and making it commonplace (Dead Like Me). The Tick is unusual in that it does both of these things. Patrick Warburton who played the title role went from being no one as far as I was concerned to being one of the funniest people alive through this role. He's probably the most over the top of the cast, but even the sraight man (Arthur, until recently an accountant and boring enough to prove it) is laughably excessive. There's the episode when he's forced to tell his mother and sister about his "Life style choice" (You mean your family doesn't know that you're... super?) and gets committed. And that's how many episodes go. Little actual heroing is accomplished. It's always about the prelude or the after affects of the heroism. So another example: the episode when The Tick and Arthur are invited to join a League of Super Heroes while their friends Batmanuel (try saying it a few times. It grows on you.) and Captain Liberty (the only proper hero of the bunch, really) start a class action lawsuit against the same league for discriminatory entrance policies. And of course the classic episode where they all have to testify in court against Leonid Kasparov Destroyovitch AKA “Destroyo” despite the Tick's limited understanding of the justice system.

The icing on the cake is Warburton and the hilarious Tickisms which come up frequently.


I know you all expect and hope that I’ll hate everything I come across but I’m not really some hate filled monster. Just a critic. Everybody is. I’m just better at it than most people. But I’ve been feeling pretty shitty lately so I’ve really only been talking about stuff I enjoyed. And this is the best of the best. Stupid, yes. Cheesy, yes. Weird and dumb and niche, yes. But also made of pure win. Watch it. Or I’ll sic Destroyo on you.

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