Comedy with a brain and soul
The Show: The Tick, Season 1, Episode 2 The Moment: Who’s crazy?
When Arthur (Griffin Newman) was a kid, his father and the superheroes he loved were killed by supervillain the Terror (Jackie Earle Haley). He’s been mentally fragile since. Now eccentric superhero the Tick (Peter Serafinowicz) is trying to convince Arthur that their destinies are linked. “You can’t let your sister talk you into this ‘normal’ thing,” the Tick says.
“Are you brain-injured?” Arthur asks. “Did you escape from a mental hospital? I’m a nobody. I’m a victim. I’m a bystander in a long line of bystanders.”
“Destiny is on the line and she’s calling collect,” the Tick intones. “Accept the charges. Accept them.”
“You’re crazy, Tick,” Arthur says. “You’re the crazy one.”
There’s a lot of arch comedy out there right now, parodic shows that exhaust their genres until they’re running on fumes. This one is much better than that. Though its tongue is wedged firmly in its cheek, it also has a brain and, most surprisingly, a soul.
Without insulting people who love superheroes, it gently asks: Who do you have to be to believe in them? Damaged? Lacking? (“I’m the you you always wanted to be,” Tick tells Arthur.)
It’s compassionate about mental illness, while acknowledging that the world itself is crazy.
It’s genuinely funny. But the humour is made deeper by an undercurrent of sadness. “My family doesn’t want me to be extraordinary,” Arthur says. “They want functional.”
Meanwhile, the Terror plagues his nightmares. “That pain you feel between your eye sockets is me,” the Terror howls. Who among us hasn’t felt that? The Tick debuts Aug. 25 on Amazon Prime Video. Johanna Schneller is a media connoisseur who zeroes in on pop-culture moments. She usually appears Monday through Thursday.