Slashdot Mirror
The Tick Premieres Tonight on FOX
abde writes "The Tick finally premieres this Thursday on FOX at 7:30 PM CST. Looks like Patrick Warburton finally gets to spread some creamy Justice on our toast!" Here's hoping that this show comes close to it's source materials. It's in a tough time slot, so I really hope it sticks around long
enough to find a footing. Good luck to you Ben (I know you're reading!) In other TV news, Salon reviewed
The buffy musical which aired on tuesday. Since my local basic cable doesn't provide UPN, I haven't seen it. I've been loving FX syndicating what is easily among my favorite shows: hot chicks, sharp humor, and monster killing. It may be the perfect show. I just wish TV was available via FTP.
Family Guy is back on the air as well and airs right before The Tick
Taco you post a story about Morpheus and then bitch about not being able to get the Buffy Musical. Let's think about that huh?
I downloaded the entire episode less than an hour after it had aired.
Not to mention that all of the songs have been mp3ed are on Morpheus too.
Happy hunting
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
Tick won't be able to say "Spoooooon!".
None of the old villians will be present.
All because of some fucked up copyright stuff.
oh, and Speak won't be there, either.
More information can be found here. (http://slate.msn.com/?id=2058205) for the goat paranoid)
Even without those things, I'm still excited about dorking out, and I think that putty is an excellent choice for the Tick.
Brant
Argle. Bargle.
What the heck happened to the cartoon series? Did it just evaporate once it was sold to Comedy Central? I had mere basic cable at that time, so I wouldn't know.
The only thing that we learn from history is that nobody learns anything from history.
The Buffy musical was good because it was different than the rest of the bleak, TV wasteland. I'm sure that brief spark of originality will go completely unnoticed, however, so don't worry.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
SPOOOOOOOOOON!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
sorry, couldn't resist
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
Unfortunately the ratings will be decimated by Survivor tonight. Fortunately for Fox, there are a lot of hardcore fans and the creator of the show needs a thing or two about sci-fi comedy.
Here is the main cast list if you're interested...
David Burke is Arthur
Liz Vassey is Captain Liberty
Nestor Carbonell is Batmanuel
and of course the Tick is played by Warburton (as mentioned in the post).
the byproduct of years of oppression by the white man
The president is speaking tonight. 25 minute speech followed by the standard 5 minute talking head wrap up. Don't know if Fox carries national news in your area but they do in mine (Chicago).
Now my VCR and Tivo settings are all fucked up.
Poo.
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
I hope to God that the Star Trek Enterprise folks supplied some of that Detox Gel so it can be spread all over American Maid! *DROOL*
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Looks like Patrick Warburton finally gets to spread some creamy Justice on our toast!"
I'm not sure I want any of Patrick Warburton's "creamy" stuff on my toast...
Every once in a while I like to masturbate a new word into my vocabulary, even if I don't know what it means.
I can't say I agree with the thought that the new show should be only as good as its original material-- has anybody ever actually read the comics? They just didn't have the spark that the cartoon did.
Of course, the cartoon was probably what Taco meant, in which case-- oh hell yeah. In no particular order, the new show is going to need a few things to match up with Fox's Saturday-morning masterpiece:
1. A running gag along the lines of the "CHA" written on the moon, popping up in episodes that have nothing to do with it anyways.
2. A rehash of "The Tick vs. The Tick" episode-- in which the Tick goes to a superhero bar (complete with Sidekicks' Lounge) and finds that there's another, more psychotic hero that already uses his name.
3. The Human Bullet: whenever things went wrong in The City, he'd be fired from a cannon in his backyard, only to somehow spend so much time in the air as to always show up late. ("Fire me, boy!"
It's nice to know that the legal problems aren't completely robbing the show of its charm-- I remember reading something about problems with Die Fledermaus, for example, so it looks like they've replaced him with "Batmanuel." And I think we can all agree that Patrick Warburton is the best choice for the job, judging from his "Seinfeld" work.
When the show aired, I was young enough to enjoy the cartoon show for what it was, and old enough to still get most of the grown-up jokes. Let's hope the live-action version maintains that delicate balance between smarmy irony and childish charm.
There is a great musical episode of LEXX titled "Brigadoom." The songs are so...elegaic.
Get the mp3s of the songs here:
http://lexx.warpedsystems.sk.ca/mp3page.php3
Mine would have to be...
Interviewer: "Can you blow up the Earth?"
The Tick: "EEGAD! I hope not, that's where I keep all my stuff!"
Re TV musicals: I get all the Buffy exposure I can handle from AtAT and don't bother watching, myself. And Salon's TV critic (last I saw which admittedly was over a year ago) is obsessed with the show in a way that's almost creepy. But the show that has done the most recently with musical numbers and other ideas is Drew Carey. I'm not a huge fan of that either but the musical gimmicks tend to be really good, as are the other stunts. For instance, it's the only TV show to do something interesting with a live broadcast (having improv done during it) instead of it just being an ego thing for the cast.
Of all the post-Seinfeld comics to drop their act directly into a sitcom, he's the only one to do anything interesting and novel.
The official TV Show website is here.
It's got some video clips of the show, stills from the set, and a little background on the characters.
It looks like the TV show will be borrowing heavily from the cartoon show. I hope that there is some new material besides the cartoon gags. I wouldn't mind seeing some new story lines.
Did you just say that to get the Jump the Shark reference in? Seriously. Once they use the phrase on a national TV show (last weeks ED) it is no longer cool to use
Yea, I'm gonna have to disagree with you on that point. As would all of the people at mightybigtv. Check it out for all of your Buffy and Enterprise recap needs.
Pete
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
None of the villains from the cartoon series will be there. But Ben Edlund has full rights to the comic book villains, and one of them--The Red Scare--is in tonight's episode! Edlund has also made noises about trying to cast someone for Paul the Samurai. (No word on any ninjas, though. They're my favorites! "We're a hedge. Move along. Nothing to see here.")
I dunno about the "Spooooon!" battle cry; it just doesn't seem to me that something like that should be copyrightable.
As a long time Tick fan I have been eagerly awaiting this show. You can view a few 45 second clips of the show at http://www.spe.sony.com/tv/shows/tick/video.phtml.
The Tick is played by Patrick Warburton, who was "Puddy" (Elaine's Boyfriend) in Seinfeld and Johnny James (Jimmy James's VP) in Newsradio. He also was the voice of Kronk in Emperor's New Groove. An excellent casting choice for what is obviously a hard role to cast.
Also of note, in addition to The Tick and Arthur are "Captain Liberty" and "Batmanuel". When you see these characters you will probably notice that they greatly resemble American Maid and Die Fledermaus. This is actually due to copyright negotiations (which actually held up the show for some time). The original comic book characters belong to Ben Edlund, but all of the characters that were created for the cartoon are jointly owned by all the groups that produced the cartoon (Fox Children's Network, Saban, Graz and Sunbow). Since Sony (who owns Columbia Tri-Star) could not reach an agreement on who received what proceeds among all the companies they simply replaced the characters.
It may not be available by FTP, but it will likely be available by NNTP, at least on servers that have good completion and no censorship of binaries groups. This is one series certain to show up on alt.binaries.multimedia, as the animated version of The Tick seems to have been a popular post in recent months. The only reason I never downloaded it myself is because I was getting too much other stuff already. That will have to wait until after I get a terabyte RAID or a DVD-R, if you know what I mean.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Oh my God! I just realized you just admitted to watching ED!!! Muhahahaha!
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
Article about it on CNN
If you really thought this episode sucked I'll respect your opinion. I think it is probably the second best episode of Buffy ever. Of course last seasons "The Body" takes top honors there.
"Once More, With Feeling" was probably the most untevision like show I've ever seen on TV. It was ballsy and quite cool.
Oh yea, I watch a lot of shows that are way worse than ED. Hey, I'm a media planner. It's kind of my job to know whats on.
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
In the cartoon, he was originally going to be called "Batmanuel" but they were worried about being too close to "Batman" so they (I assume Fox) nixed it.
I think I like Die Flaturmouse (I can't really improve on the spelling, so why try?) better as well, but at least it's meeting his artistic vision!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm astounded that it was able to get a PG rating with the Tara-Willow scene.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
"Once More.." was the title of the musical episode. Hush WAS great. Emmy nominated even, not that that means shit these days. I would put that as #3 on my list of great Buffy episodes.
The sole purpose of the Internet is to get porn and bomb making plans into the hands of children.
The Simpsons actually started ripping off the family guy lately. They never used to do Real Life product gags, they just had that episode with the Trix Rabbit.
That is a Family Guy gag, they did the Kool-Aid guy and the Two Scoops of Raisins thing, among others.
I just watched the musical Buffy episode - it was okay - and I have to say the salon reviewer's take on Buffy is just bizarre. She seems to be saying Buffy the Vampire Slayer is a masterpiece - it isn't. It's a show that once was semi-decent spoof-action and now is a soap opera with vampires. But even if you disagree with me there, surely you have to concede that the reviewer raving about what a great metaphor willow and what's-her-face's song and dance number was was a bit over the top.
I dunno, maybe it's me, but I think this lady spent far too long in a visual literacy class. Even a single lecture can scar one for life, believe me.
"Disinfectant Gel" Note: In the last 15 minutes or so of the buffy musical, Buffy sorta-kinda-almost strips. It's not much, but since I suspect the main demographic of the series is "Teenage girls and horney guys" I thought it was worth pointing out.
This post IS pointlessly offensive; please downmod it accordingly.
I'm the stranger...posting to
I mean, come on, it's not like they show anything. This isn't a pr0n flick, it's a little song-and-dance about two young people (arguably ditzes, but that's besides the point) in love. As such, it's just a sappy chick-flick "Isn't-that-sweet" moment, at least to my mind. And yes, I did watch the show.
This post is pointlessly offensive; please downmod it accordingly.
I'm the stranger...posting to
Bush is making a speech tonight on national TV.
I have a friend with "connections" who was kind enough to bring his copy of the pilot to a party of mine a few months back.
I will tell you all now, that it _is_ different from both the comicbook original and the animated series. Both were fun in their day, and both stand on their own merits.
However this new series is off to a very amusing start. I got quite a few deep laughs out of the humour, and Patrick Warburton's (SP?) delivery of the patented Tick Monologues(Tm) are nothing short of sterling!
The plot was nothing spectacular, but was very enjoyable. Indeed, if the writers manage to keep this level of quality, it will be a series to watch faithfully!
On the subject of the new characters: They're different. Get over it. They work in their own way, and can hold their own as supporting characters. (Why does this bring to mind visions of sidekicks like Brazier Boy and Leather Lass?)
I seem to remember hearing rumours (From my friend with "connections"? I can't remember) that Ben Eglund is part of the creative team on this series. If this is true, it should put to rest any complaints of deviating from the source material.
I can only hope that this show doesn't get buried in the typical FOX time-slot shuffle.
I'm sure that the story I submitted about Iron Chef USA (which was Rejected) will be posted soon, with Hemos or CmdrTaco's name plastered on it...
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
For those of you who will miss the premiere of the Tick live-action, or otherwise are unfortunate enough not to have a station which carries it, you can always find the 1st episode on Gnutella. I had the episode posted "privately" on my web-site for a while, but had to remove it due to space reasons. :-(
No. No. Iron Chef USA is Iron Chef, done in the USA, with William Shatner as the Chairman. No joke.
--- Jump!! Fire!! Bullet time!! - Lego version of the Matrix
I think you misspelled "Hush", and it was two seasons ago :-)
A musical is more untelevision then a show that goes without dialog (or spoken/sung words at least) for 40+ minutes?
I think Buffy has jumped the shark in that very few of the post-HS episodes have been as good as the pre-HS episodes, but that isn't really fair to the show...I mean it is still far better then most other TV shows. It earned it's #1 spot on my TiVo's Season Pass Manager... (oh, and thanks to TiVo I didn't have to know it would run 10 minutes long...sort of...if I had left it alone I would have gotten the extra 10 minutes, but it wouldn't have quite managed to make the most of the repeat airings; it needs a non-greedy algo to do that, but the simple didn't do too bad, and I got to tweak it)
I would love a /. inerview of Ben edlund(?).
He has had a much bigger impact a geek culter then Will Wheaton, boy genius.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
The only problem with the early comics is that they would take for freaking ever to come out, it seems like there was a time they were trickling out at a pace of one comic per year. (Either that, or my local comic shop had a tar-slow distributor.)
The problem with the Tick today, is that they've stopped taking all that time, and instead of a new villain each issue that makes you fall out of your chair laughing by mere concept alone, they've turned it into a formula where they just reuse the same characters over and over. It used to be that every story (or story arc as it were) was a new joke on some comic cliche. The first issue was a Superman joke, the next few were about ninjas, Chairface was a from Dick Tracy, that samurai guy was a great take on the Lone Wolf-type samurai character, etc. Take the Red Scare, for example, he was really funny because of his complete irrelevance - in the early 1990 the Soviet Union had recently become an also-ran in the super power race, and so a Soviet Union styled enemy attacking a memorial to the creator of the Dewy Decimal system was a great joke. (The irrelevant attack the irrelevant.)
That wasn't not the only problem, though. In my mind, the Tick doesn't translate directly to television. The funny part of the Tick was that it was a comic book making fun of comic books. When you make the thing a cartoon, if it was going to remain funny, it needed to become a parody of cartoons. When you just move the stories over from the comics you get a parody of comics in cartoon form... which isn't that great. So, if they miss their mark again, my guess is that it will be because they continue to parody comics but now in Live Action form. In fact, live action is probably the worst medium for the character... how many live action superhero TV shows have their been? Batman, Spiderman, Flash, Hulk... most of them either had an extremely short run or were *cough, Batman* self-parodying.
Of course, I hope I'm wrong, and the show turns out to be the best thing since the original run.
Thankfully, I saw this episode months ago (thank you Gnutella) so nothing completely missed. Next week, however!
And I want to see Chairface Chippendale!
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
It definetly wasn't as bad as I thought it could be! The intro was slightly lame, as were the intros of "Bat-Manuel" (Die Fleidermaus and "Captain Somethingorother" (American Maid). But the combination of very well implimented special effects and actors who delivered lines in ways that ADDED to the effect the story was trying to tell gave me great hope for this series.
Oh, and of course the tick isn't saying SPOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON(!) yet, they haven't gotten to that part - should be fun! It has about the equivalent 'kick' of the original show, with the same number of awkward not-so-funny parts. I'll be watching it whenever it's convenient to catch a show.
I just hope it can pay for it's budget!
:^)
Ryan Fenton
Grade: B-. It actually sucked less than I expected it to, though it wasn't in the same league as, say, Mystery Men. It's definitely not like anything else on TV. I give it six episodes before Fox pulls the plug. Catch it while you can.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Patrick Warburton doesn't have the ability to convey the childlike innocence of The Tick. He's just muscle and bravado. The guy who did the voice of the animated Tick had it all totally down. The Tick is Forrest Gump with superpowers.
There has NEVER been a decent live-action remake of a cartoon. Never. I think that a live-action Cowboy Bebop could work if someone like Quentin Tarantino directed and he infused it with the same kind of berserk energy he gave "Pulp Fiction." But that's about it. Think about the march of iniquity that has resulted from live-action remakes of cartoons. Rocky And Bullwinkle. The Flintstones. The Flinststones in Viva Rock Vegas. Dudley Do-Right. The list goes on, and on, and on.
If Fox had any decency they'd buy the original characters from the animated series like American Maid and Sewer Urchin from Haim Saban, and revive the show as it should be...ANIMATED.
The original animated Tick never had a chance. It was a show for Fox Primetime, not a show to ghettoize on Fox Kids' Network. Ben, if you are reading this, please stop the charade and give this hideous excuse for a show the early death it deserves.
"This is bad...duh duh definitely bad." -- Sewer Urchin
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
Okay, I did kind of like Die Fliedermaus in the cartoon, but Batmanuel will be a decent replacement IF:
he drives a mid-seventies El Camino Lowrider with hydraulic lift and a disco-ball instead of a dome light
His sidekick's name is "Rueben"
His secret hideout is in a storm drain under his low-rent apartment, and instead of a butler, he has a "dos equis" drinking uncle Chico that used to be a bullfighter in tijuana
But of course all this comes from Paul Rodruegez's (SP?) stand up sketch about "Vatoman and Rueben" fighting crime in their "chebby lowrider"
unfortunately, the article you pointed to doesn't say any more than you did ... anybody know what issue is behind the sticky legal confliction that would allow the show but not certain key elements such as characters and catch-phrases?
Even more surprising is that the credits do NOT mention New England Comics, the creators of the Tick comic that the cartoon series was based on. Christopher Lloyd made a guest appearance on this premiere and also was not in the credits. eech!
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
okay, perhaps I should have dug through the NEC website a bit first. There is a page on the TV show which links to a statement from Tick creator Ben Edlund (who is in the credits while New England Comics is not).
Regarding the concerns of "Spooon" and certain key characters and copyright issues (as discussed in the above link here), Ben says that "the material from the cartoon series has passed into the ownership of interests outside this current endeavor."
Note that the statement was written back when the pilot was the only episode filmed and while Fox was still considering the show. The statement clears up a number of issues leaving only the lack of NEC and Christopher Lloyd in the credits.
Use my userscript to add story images to Slashdot. There's no going back.
I just wish TV was available via FTP.
:)
Well CmdrTaco, as a famous sycophant once said 'your wish is my command'
This system (for which I'm the Software Architect) offers interactive digital TV via IP, this case study
reveals all the gory technical details of the disruptive technology that is going to bring Microsoft down, by bringing IP to every home in the developed world in the next five years.
Why can't I get VHF, damnit (my antenna picks up WB and FOX, nothing else). I would have much rather been watching Survivor than the stupid Tick show. Yeah, I too wish TV was available by FTP (although a streaming multicast protocol would be much better).
ok then your [sic] infringing on my copyright! Could you as [sic] me next time before STEALING my comments for your own?
> eliminate one out of 10.
Since Rome fell, perhaps? Did anyou actually use decimation after that? Come to think of it, did rome use it for anything other than slave revolts?
hawk