The Tick S01E09 Review: In Which A Boat Flirts With A Man

The Tick, Season 1, Episode 9: My Dinner With Android

This episode features some... weird-yet-hilarious shenanigans as Dangerboat attempts to court Arthur, initially by prodding and massaging him in the shower and later just really coming on to him. It's funny, even though I'm not sure if it's sort of offensive to gays, in the sort of dated "oh, look at the gay man trying to flirt with a straight man" jokes? I'm hardly qualified to really commentate on these sort of things, though, because a boat voiced by Alan Tudyk trying to flirt with anyone is inherently hilarious. 

Anyway,  Arthur is driven off to do everything on his own, pissed off at Overkill's attitude, Dangerboat's flirting and just plain telling Dot and her non-superhero butt to go home. He and Tick end up facing off against a different antagonist in this episode, agents of the Urmanian government hunting down Dr. Karamozov. Tick ends up getting obsessed with the Urmanian killer robot Backup (no, really) and starts thinking that, he, too is a newer model robot, because they're both muscular, strong, blue and have glorious, glorious chins. It's funny, for sure, but it brings up Tick's main motivation that has been kind of brushed aside since his initial debut -- Tick is still looking for his origin story, and while he's happy to assist Arthur in all his heroics, I do like the show acknowledging in its own funny manner Tick's own motivations and goals. 

Karamozov ends up being more of an ally now, and we brush off the earlier dick-punching bit as Karamozov just being a bit to panicked to stick around. Oh, and Karamozov's attempts to revert himself to normal ends up just enlarging his head (and making his poor, poor neck muscles suffer), causing Arthur to end up running around to hide Karamozov in a baby stroller. 

Tinfoil-hat Kevin ends up being, as mentioned, highly competent, popping up in convenient moments to help out Arthur, first by showing off his impeccable home-improvement skills, then by fixing the moth antenna on Arthur's suit, and later showing up in the climax to help Arthur do a swap between Karamozov and some groceries, causing the Urmanian agent lady to blow up an empty stroller. He's essentially became an eccentric version of the hypercompetent superhero ally that mostly stays in the base, like your Alfred or your Jarvis or your Cisco Ramon.  Also, he apparently lives in a disembodied giant robot head, which is just fucking awesome.

And while Arthur, Tick and Kevin (mostly just Arthur) try to entangle Karamozov's story about the Terror's master plan, Superion himself shows up at Arthur's apartment after realizing that the VLM is the random dude that found the Terror's teeth so many years ago, leading some credence to some sort of weird, crazy plan by the Terror. Superion shows up... and collapses. Whoops!

Speaking of the Terror, apparently the next stage of his master plan is to take over a Cola company, claiming that he founded the company and slits the throat of the current manager and demand they market their next campaign around him. Unlike the weird "TEACH ME DRUMS" bit in episode 7, I found this scene to be so much more funny for two reasons. Firstly, because it seems that this is going to tie in with the rest of the Terror's insane plans and not just a random scene to show off Terror's eccentricities, and because it's a neat combination of Terror's ridiculousness in his plan to, y'know, use a soda company to 'market' him and the callousness of murdering people.  

The one other plotline going on in this episode is Dot and Overkill, who has some definite romance blooming between them. Dot goes back to Overkill to return his gun ("Shakira!"), and while the scene sets up for some "silly woman, you know nothing about manly superheroing!" Overkill actually criticizes her with the intention to allowing her to improve, picking out a new gun better suited to Dot's frame and teaching her how to properly shoot. And we get to the trope-y "touching someone to correct their posture" sexual tension scene, which Overkill flat-out refuses to do despite Dot's blatant permission, because he's been burnt in love by someone... who turns out to be Ms. Lint if the episode's cut is accurate. 

Overall, a pretty strong episode, and I'm definitely excited to see all the disparate storylines finally coming on together.