Tag Archives: Jackie Earle Haley

The Tick – Second Half of Season 1 Review

Amazon released the second half of the first season of The Tick a couple months ago, but I just got around to watching it. All my criticisms from the pilot and season 0.5 continue to hold true, only much more so. The writers seem to be attempting to solve the jarring juxtaposition of camp and depressing bleakness by throwing the camp out the window and going full dark. The lighthearted fun of the pilot and first half of the season is mostly gone, and all we’re left with is yet another grim, supposedly edgy superhero show. Continue reading →

The Tick – Season 0.5 Review

After a year-long wait, the first half-season of The Tick was finally released on Amazon. We got 6 episodes, but that included the original pilot, so, really, we only got 5 new episodes. And as a Tick fan, I was bitterly disappointed.

The show did get a couple things right. Peter Serafinowicz nails the Tick. His speech patterns, voice, and mannerisms are spot on. If you’re a fan of the animated series from the 1990s, Serafinowicz is a perfect live action version of the titular hero. The second major protagonist of the series, Arthur (Griffin Newman), doesn’t come off nearly as well, but more about him in a moment. Arthur’s sister, Dot (Valorie Curry), mentioned but not often seen in the animated series, plays a much bigger role in this incarnation, and that is arguably the only other good thing about the show. Dot is an active and ongoing participant in the action and in Arthur’s life, with some interesting subplots of her own. Expanding her role was a major plus.

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The Dark Tower – Like Watching People You Don’t Know Play Dungeons and Dragons

The Dark Tower incorporates elements from Stephen King’s The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger and other novels in the series into a condensed/derivative story for protagonist Roland Deschain, the titular gunslinger (Idris Elba). There’s a Dark Tower that protects various parallel universes, including ours, from a dimension full of demons. The Man in Black (aka Walter, portrayed by Matthew McConaughey) wants to destroy the tower and let the demons in. His plan involves strapping children into a big psychic cannon, painfully extracting their psychic energy, and blasting the tower with it. Roland, once a member of the mystical, knights-of-the-round-table-like order of Gunslingers, is a broken man simply bent on revenge. Jake Chambers (Tom Taylor) is a kid in present day New York with massive psychic ability who sees visions of all of this, but no one believes him, so he is subjected to escalating levels of psychiatric treatment.