Date of airing: February 4, 1995 (FOX Kids)
It didn’t take long for the show to have a poor fella dress up as Spider-Man and get into trouble because of the costume. I loved that the poor fella was Flash Thompson, who initially decided to play a trick on Peter (which quickly backfired, of course), and I loved that the story was used to get the Black Widow (unfortunately not Natasha Romanoff) confused for a hot minute, together with Spencer Smythe and his goons, who controlled the Black Widow and could not even figure out what was happening before their eyes and that there were two Spider-Men in front of them. Seriously, they captured Spider-Man, but the superhero wasn’t defending himself for whatever reason, and no one bothered to ask themselves why. One might have wondered about it being a little weird that the Spider-Man you captured would just sit there on the ground, barely say anything, probably be scared and wetting his pants after you unmasked him. Not that anyone should be expecting to always capture a Spider-Man who isn’t actually Spider-Man, but still, Smythe should have been asking himself why the wallcrawler was so fearful and non-responsive – that is usually the first sign of something rotten happening in the state of Denmark.
But this is a kids’ show on weekend mornings, so of course, the writers wouldn’t want to think about a story too hard or make the characters’ actions seem logical. Plus, they wouldn’t want to make their targeted audience (7-year-old boys) think too hard about the story, otherwise, they would miss the commercials about action figures and sugar-glazed cereals because their thoughts were too deep in the story of the episode.
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| Even Peter is surprised by that kiss. |
Anyway, I liked the story. Peter and Felicia have been developed somewhat as a couple, with the two officially being romantically interested in one another. Even the responsibility of being Spider-Man has been put into the story, if only just in the way of what the costume might bring for the one who wears it. I was quite impressed by Peter, while in his superhero outfit, telling Flash that this is what happens when you wear it, giving an even bigger reason why Peter should never give it up, that he would be nothing without it (to quote a line from SPIDER-MAN: HOMECOMING), and that anyone else wearing it in the future should count to be in trouble every day of the rest of their lives (to counter a narrative device from SPIDER-MAN: INTO THE SPIDER-VERSE). Maybe that line of dialogue could be considered a major plot point for all of Spider-Man’s adversaries, who hopefully begin to learn that Spider-Man isn’t just a random superhero in their city, and that they are being taken seriously by him. Someone who says that the costume comes with trouble, but never stops to fight said trouble, truly is a hero.
Meanwhile, the story of the Smythes was okay. I was wondering whether Spencer was working for the Kingpin or secretly for Norman Osborn to hunt down and kill Spider-Man. Considering that Kingpin was probably the financier of this operation, which could have never happened without OsCorp, I am asking myself how Kingpin and Norman were involved in each other’s businesses, if at all. Who knows, maybe Norman and Kingpin were working together in the background, and this is the first step toward a Sinister Six-type storyline? Again, this is still a kids’ show, so it should be expected that the biggest questions won’t find answers, especially when the characters are fighting or Spider-Man is evading laser beams fired from guns that aren’t allowed to shoot real bullets, because of censorship.
Spencer being unable to kill Spider-Man might have been predictable, but what I liked was that his fate was pretty much unknown by the end of the episode, with his son Alistair looking back at the exploding building, in shock that he just lost his father. Granted, even though parts of the OsCorp building exploded doesn’t mean that Spencer died (I’m pretty sure he came out of it somehow, since SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES can’t kill its characters, probably not even off-screen), Kingpin using that event to manipulate Alistair into continuing Spencer’s work was intriguing, especially now that the next episode would be able to work with a generic revenge plot built out of the events from this episode.
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| Never meet your heroes, they say. |
I would have hoped for something better with Eddie Brock though. Kidnapping Spider-Man with the help of the Black Widow robot? I don’t think I got the story here, because I can’t imagine that Eddie was using the opportunity to unmask Spider-Man while the superhero was being hunted down by a real villain at the same time. Does that also mean Eddie was perfectly fine doing some crime to level up in his journalism career? After all, if Peter had been kidnapped and unmasked for real, he may have had an opportunity to sue Eddie for kidnapping – realistically speaking. Here is a hilarious thought: Have a Spider-Man episode play out in the series universe of THE GOOD WIFE...
