Destiny.
For some, it coldly turns its back.
Denying them a greater purpose.
But for a select few, destiny sneaks up and pounces on them unaware.
Like a cucumber in one of those surprised kitten videos!
Oh they'll fight it.
At every step.
Even when destiny hands them a supersuit with no instructions and teams them up with a new
friend that rubs them the wrong way and just expects them to know how to function in this
new reality, they’ll resist at first.
But in the end, they always give in to their destiny and earn the title of hero.
I’m of course talking about The Greatest American Hero.
Wait.
You thought I was talking about…
No.
That’s- no.
Okay.
Given the age range of my viewers, I’m willing to bet that you probably don’t know anything
about The Greatest American Hero, and understanding this show will help you understand how it
relates to 2017’s The Tick and how it’s all wrapped up in giant news dump that just
happened.
So before I break down Amazon Studio’s The Tick, let’s take a quick moment to tug on
the cape of Ralph Hinkley, the Greatest American Hero!
So here’s a quick history lesson.
The Greatest American Hero was a TV show created in 1981 by the late Stephen J. Cannell.
Cannell created or co-created nearly 40 television series including megahits like The A Team,
21 Jump Street, and - I’m sure to someday be turned into a comedy tentpole film series
for Jack Black - Renegade.
Pop culture mostly remembers the show for its goofy soft rock theme song by Mike Post
and Stephen Geyer which was released as a full song during the run of the show and topped
at number 2 on the Billboard 100.
It’s also remembered for its goofy effect shots of the wirey William Katt flouncing
around in his red spandex suit and curly blond hair smashing into things and screaming.
But the show is far more than “bungling loser gets super suit and tries to be a superhero
in the real world”.
Let me break it down:
The Greatest American Hero is the story of substitute teacher Ralph Hinkley.
A decent guy who is not only saddled with trying to turn around some problem teens languishing
in a high school special ed class, he’s saddled with a supersuit and the taciturn
scene stealing FBI Agent, Bill Maxwell, by some unseen aliens through the ghost emissary
of Bill’s recently dead partner.
Their single order: Accept the suit and the quest and save the world.
Then the aliens just take off leaving the two to their own devices.
Bill abandons Ralph in the desert, and as Ralph carries the suit away into the darkness,
he drops the instruction manual losing it forever.
Eventually Ralph accepts the call to superheroics, dons the suit, and works with Bill - who uses
his government connections to send Ralph on important missions that actually make a difference.
And that garbled mess is basically the show.
I mean, they also rope in Ralph’s divorce lawyer and bespectacled love interest, Pam
Davidson.
And the aliens mysteriously show up once per season.
But it doesn’t really matter.
The basic setup of every episode was Bill shows up with the problem of the week, Ralph
struggles with the suit to solve the problem, the end.
On average, it was about 10 minutes of bungling superhero stuff squeezed into fifty minutes
worth of filler.
Now before you old folk get out your pitchforks and torches, I am selling this show short.
Though I don’t really care for William Katt’s acting, he does have a goofy charisma he brings
to the role.
The series MVP really is Robert Culp.
He makes the whole thing watchable and worth returning to as he chews the scenery and delivers
some of the best lines in the series.
Plus he’s the only one who would have continued with the show if the spin off was picked up
- but I’m getting ahead of myself.
Those who remember the series sometimes mislabel Ralph and Bill as extremely politically left
and right respectively, and they kinda are - but given the radical difference and animosity
between those sides in today’s political climate, I think I need to better define what
what’s going on.
Ralph is depicted as a liberal peace loving educator.
One who loves teaching and takes the time to give people many chances and sees the inherent
good in people.
He’s shown as naive, but has a knack for thinking outside the box.
Plus he has relatable problems like being bummed about his globetrotting supermodel
ex-wife fighting for custody of his son because she’s rich, and famous, and can actually
afford to take care of him.
Oh did you see her today?
I spoke to her attorney.
He told me she has a beautiful tan from the modeling assignment in Brazil.
Apparently the bathing suit commercial was a total success!
She'll make lots of money and she's all set to lavish it on Kevin.
That's an encouraging tidbit.
Bill on the other hand is cynical and egotistical, but also world weary.
He’s a FBI agent who’s lost his partner and knows first hand that wheels of the government
move slowly because half of them are broken.
His mouth usually writes checks his body can’t cash, but that’s because he sees himself
as a bit of a Dirty Harry.
If Dirty Harry was clean and obsessively played by the book because he hates chaos.
He’s far more hawkish than Ralph, and originally planned on using his powers to take down Russia
and win the cold war!
Look, Bill - Can we cut the cloak and dagger stuff?
You know, we almost blew it on this one.
With people running around like Chicken Little screaming, "Oh I saw a man flying in the sky!"
Fortunately they all got written off as whacko coo-coos.
Our lawyer tells us some PI got a picture of you in the suit.
Now I gotta figure out a way to clean his windshield.
The show’s engine ran on seeing Ralph and Bill get past their differences and work together.
Oh, and I guess sometimes Pam, if the story remembered to include her that week.
Why am I going through this in such lavish detail?
Because it was just revealed that ABC has a Put Pilot order for a Greatest American
Hero reboot.
A Put Pilot means that if the pilot actually gets made, it will at least air as a TV movie
even if it’s not picked up for a series.
That rarely happens, so in actuality ABC is tipping their hand and saying that the series
is basically greenlit if they don’t really mess up making it.
Right now details are scarce, but we do know the series will center around a 30 year old
Indian-American Clevelandite named Meera who likes drinking tequila, singing karaoke, and
not much else.
No word on casting just yet, but we do know the show will be written and run by Fresh
Off the Boat writer-producer Rachna Fruchbom and Fierce Baby’s Nahnatchka Khan.
The reboot is making waves for two key reasons.
Firstly, the genderswap is ruffling feathers, because, of course it is.
And secondly, this property has been kicked around Hollywood for years.
Happy Maddison had optioned it as an Adam Sandler vehicle.
Jim Carrey was in talks to star in a film reboot that never happened.
Jack Black expressed his interest in the property at the height of his School Of Rock fame.
And most recently in 2015, Phil Lord & Chris Miller - the minds behind Clone High, Cloudy
With A Chance Of Meatballs, the LEGO Movie, and 21 Jump Street - another Cannell produced
show - had a pilot order with FOX that they seemingly bungled somehow.
The question is why?
Why now?
What’s different this time that makes ABC confident enough to basically greenlight a
new Greatest American Hero series sight unseen?
Two words: The Tick.
The Tick has been such a smash success in both construction and viewership that an executive
at ABC realized that they also have access to a comedy action adventure series that parodies
the hot Superhero genre, and quickly pushed the paperwork through to try to capture some
of the same success that The Tick is seeing.
I’ll be getting into the parallels between these shows in my next video, but in closing,
let’s focus on the reboot.
It’s getting a lot of negative comments all saying the same few things: It’s more
PC genderswap garbage!
The original is sacred and shouldn’t be blemished by a reboot!
Hollywood is out of ideas!
Hard drinking?!
This is just a Hancock ripoff!
That’s a lot of assumptions to make about a show that probably hasn’t even been written
- let alone cast - yet.
First off, older fans of the show will be quick to let you know that The Greatest American
Hero attempted a spin off 3 years after it was originally cancelled.
The pilot was called The Greatest American Heroine and the story was about how Ralph
became too famous using the supersuit, and so the aliens took it away because of arrogance
or something?
They in turn gave it to some new girl named Holly who was basically just Ralph again,
and teamed her up with Bill again - because he was the only thing that worked in the original.
So despite the flop of that pilot, gender was never really a core principle of The Greatest
American Hero.
The story was about the mostly off screen aliens and the suit they hand out.
In fact, Ralph and Bill weren’t even the first ones the aliens handed the suit to!
Jim "J.J."
Beck and Marshall Dunn had been tasked before them, and JJ went crazy and turned into a
supervillain.
So really ANYONE could be gifted a supersuit in the show’s reality.
And let’s face it.
The original is not the greatest.
Sorry, not sorry.
However, the concept is strong, and could stand being expanded upon.
Patton Oswalt once said that the best reboots/remakes happen when you take an aspect of the original
that wasn't fully explored and develop it, citing The Fly as a prime example.
So let’s cronenberg up The Greatest American Hero.
Given their logline, we know that Meera, the female lead, is 30, likes to drink, and likes
to sing.
Specifically karaoke.
People latched onto her tequila drinking as a sign of grimdark alcoholism, but that’s
far from the case.
These are all context clues.
Making Meera 30 places her at the doorstep of social maturity.
No longer in her twenties, people will be expecting her to settle down and accept responsibility.
Putting her party days behind her - but letting us know that she likes Karaoke is shorthand
two things: She drinks socially, and she’s not an “artist” - a singer songwriter
with lofty aspirations.
She just likes to sing for fun.
It also places her in the tail end of the now aging Millennial demographic.
A group nigh defined by their inability to build careers in today’s job market, find
purpose in a world where the odds are stacked against them, or adhere to the Baby Boomer
ideal of American Dream.
So it's clear that The Greatest American Hero will now be a story of maturity.
Dealing with a character that has little responsibility and no desire to get any more, and following
their journey as they learn how to adapt to the concept of being a hero and the abstract
ever evolving goal of “growing up”.
That would explain why there’s no mention of a Bill-like character in the Reboot.
Having a strong personality that desperately wants to take responsibility for everything
would give every excuse to Meera to never grow up.
She could regress to kid mode and let the Bill character be the parent.
So, don’t expect this show to just be a carbon copy gender flipped version of the
original.
What this sounds like, is Major Bummer.
A DC Comics series that follows the story of Louis Martin.
An easy going young man more concerned with playing video games, watching old movies on
TV, and living a relaxing stress-free life than doing anything constructive.
You see, Lou is what they would call in the 90s “a slacker”.
The term has mostly fallen by the wayside today, as the catchall term “millennial”
has taken over as the olds buzzword for underachievers.
The action starts when Lou receives a mysterious package that knocks him out.
And when he comes to, he finds that he’s now over seven feet tall, almost horrifically
strong, and nigh invulnerable.
Complicating matters, he’s fired from his job for being late (and suddenly being freakishly
big), a group of criminals suddenly decide to rob and destroy the supermarket he’s
just trying to buy some food at, a motley crew of superheroes shows up at his doorstep
and start pestering him to become their leader, and he finds two aliens on his couch.
You see, there’s been a mix up.
The two Orazians are college students Zinnak and Yoof, who are writing their thesis on
the superhero phenomenon in Earth’s pop culture.
They wondered, what if those stories were real?
How would it affect the lives of those involved and society at large if some individuals were
granted superpowers?
So they decided to set up an experiment.
The problem is, Yoof delivered the Extreme Enhancement Module designed to be sent to
Martin Louis paragon of morals and decency, to Martin COMMA Louis - the basement dwelling
slacker who makes ends meet by working part time in a VCR repair shop.
They try to undo their mistake by killing Louis, but he sees through their plot and
wrecks their ship.
Effectively stranding them on Earth.
Now THAT is something I want to see from The Greatest American Hero.
In fact, here’s a list of things I do and don’t want to see in the reboot:
Things I want to see: The aliens developed.
Who are these benefactors?
Why did they choose Meera, when there are hundreds of Martin Louis-es on Earth that
could make better use of a supersuit?
Was it a mixup?
Do they want the suit back?
Are they giving other people suits to make a super team?
Are they also making supervillians as well to keep the balance?
Why do they care so much about Earth?
Aliens.
More of them, and don’t remove them from the story.
A Bill-like character who IS a villain.
Not because of his views, but because of what he represents.
The personification of making the wrong choice and remaining developmentally arrested.
Having to outsmart someone like Bill at every turn could make for some fun stories.
A re-design of the suit - but one that still harkens back to the last days of disco.
There’s comedy to be mined from how stupid and outdated the suit can look.
Stakes.
Stakes that are real for all the characters involved.
The Tick made it look effortless, but it takes real work and a dedication to the world you
build for your comedy.
Make everything matter for the The Greatest American Hero.
A superhero team that Meera has to lead.
Please give a bunch of other hapless losers supersuits and force Meera to be their leader.
There is nothing more Meera won’t want to do than accept the responsibility of leadership.
And that makes the whole situation hilarious.
Things I don’t want to see: Meera have to overtly show that she’s as
good or better than men.
It’s lazy storytelling and even lazier commentary.
She can deal with overcoming sexism, just don’t make it over the top mustache twirling
sexism.
For example, don’t have her wreck a guys car after he callously cat calls her.
Have her crash through a literal glass ceiling.
That’s clever.
Meera’s suit turn transparent so she appears naked in front of a group of men.
It’s lazy objectification for a cheap laugh - and you KNOW they’ll pull that garbage
during sweeps week.
Respect Meera so we respect her too.
Bulky armor for the sake of “realism”.
If Iron Man can hide a glove in a watch, then you don’t need to overcomplicate the suit’s
design.
You can hide whatever you want in that thing, and we’ll suspend our disbelief.
And that brings you up to speed on The Greatest American Hero.
Again, I’ll be bringing it up again in my next video, so hopefully now it will make
more sense.
But that said, are you a fan of the original series?
Are you excited for the reboot?
Are you still confused about why super advanced aliens would think one superpowered human
could fix all of the world’s problems - or why they seem to be collecting and reanimating
dead people?
Sound off in the comments below!
Thanks for watching.
Until next time, I’m Douglas MacKrell, and I’m asking you to share and like this video,
and subscribe to my channel.
Because you’ll always have a ticket for my next Secret Screening!