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The Tick
Episode 1.05
Writer: David Sacks
Director: Bo Welch
Original Air-Date: 12/13/01
Tick is a child. Plain and simple. Tick is an eight-year-old suddenly dropped into an indestructible body with a blue plastic suit poured over it. In this sense, he's a bit different than previous incarnations of the Tick. Of course, the blue guy's always had the single-minded zeal of a stalwart city defender, but I can't recall him being so innocent.
So this week, Arthur runs into an old high school crush and she's instantly taken with him. The bummer of it is that she seems more into the moth suit than she is into Arthur. Under Batmanuel's advice, Arthur plays the suit's charms for all they're worth, confusing the Tick to no end. In a rather humorous couple of scenes, Batmanuel and Captain Liberty play the roles of parents to this dysfunctional family and try to give Tick the "talk."
None of it registers though, as he interprets their babbling as, "...blah blah blah condom blah blah blah paternity suit..."
Meanwhile, in the B plot, Captain Liberty tries to stop the publication of nude photos in a porn mag called "Peekaboob." Anyone ever notice that sitcoms are always forced to come up with fictional names for porn mags? I'm pretty certain that Married With Children took up 85% of all possible porn mag names with my favorite being, "Big 'uns." Heh. Oh wait, what was I talking about?
Okay, cool, new paragraph. So a pattern I've noticed with the past five episodes is that the foursome is usually split into two duos (T&A and B&C, duh) and given their respective plots. This isn't always successful as one plot kind of bogarts the humor bong for the entire episode leaving the other plot dejected and alone with merely a contact humor high. Right, enough of that metaphor.
This pattern even happens on a smaller scale during dialogue sequences. When Batmanuel and Liberty are chatting about her pics, Tick gets distracted by some random punks in an alley. I dunno, it feels a little disjointed sometimes. Granted, the juicy dialogue usually comes from Nestor Carbanell's humorous charisma but it would be kinda nice to incorporate T & A a bit more. No, not like that you perv.
I know Tick can be used as merely a big blue juggernaut that ends a conversation with some bizarre statement that leaves everyone else speechless. Granted, that's a fun part of his personality, but he can be used in dialogue too. Three words, "Teets of justice."
Oh yeah, one new thing I noticed was the rooftop chat. I'm glad that the show has expanded the hangout zone of the foursome beyond the coffee shop. To liken it to Seinfeld, the coffee shop is Monk's and the rooftop is Jerry's apartment.
Hmmm... I wonder who's Kramer?
Episode Rating: 7 out of 10
Stare deeply into Daniel Solis' teets of justice.
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