Date of airing: February 11, 1995 (FOX Kids)
Well hello there, Miss Mary Jane Watson. It’s a shame you have to appear in this episode because I was just about to get into the premise of Peter and Felicia possibly being love interests for a little while, but apparently, the kiss in the previous episode was just male wish-fulfillment for some writers of this series, as well as getting Felicia confused as to whom she should be dating in this series. Although I have no idea why the latter is even a part of the narrative, even if I appreciate a Felicia/Flash Thompson story that was separated from anything else that happened in this episode. That Smythe would go after what he believes are Spider-Man’s acquaintances is a convenient way to bring Felicia and Flash into the story, but at least a couple of characters you would normally not expect turned up to be involved in the mayhem somehow, even if it looked unnatural for the story in hindsight.
Plus, now that MJ has been introduced, it probably means no Peter and Felicia for the time being. I guess there’s also no love triangle? In a live-action series, that would have been a given for at least two whole seasons. Considering a monologue scene from Spider-Man established that this episode is set months after the previous one, one might think something happened between Peter and Felicia during that time that may explain why the two haven’t gotten together and she is hanging with Flash now. But does the Y7 audience really need that backstory delivered to them? Do they even care?
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| It's time to spend a little quality time together to work on their anger. |
This episode was pretty much just a battle between Spider-Man and the spider slayers. Not much character development up until the very last scene, and as always way too much noise and destruction, although I wonder what got destroyed and what ended up still standing in the end, even after multiple rockets of explosions and misty gas have hit it. I’m also inquiring if New York has an extra tax code that would fix all the destruction caused by Spider-Man’s rogue gallery, so that the reconstruction of damaged property can be paid for. You know, this is why I would have loved for ABC to have ordered the MCU-adjacent “Damage Control” comedy pilot they developed way back when, because my mind would like to know such stuff. Things get demolished during superhero battles, and someone has to pay to fix it all back up again. The spider slayers even downed half an office building, in addition to the outer sides of various buildings across Manhattan. If CinemaSins ever decides to waste some time on the show and do a “What’s the Damage?” video, they might hit some gold with SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES and come out of the other end with an impossible sum of how much it will take for New York City to be rebuilt after every episode.
Alistair Smythe continued to be the villain, although he turned out not to be the smartest of villains here. He could have unmasked Spider-Man, just to know who he was, because if Spider-Man had escaped, at least Smythe could have hunted down Spider-Man’s alter ego. Like Doc Ock was doing it in the second Sam Raimi movie and like Green Goblin was threatening Spider-Man with in the first, it’s always better for a supervillain to know the secret identity of those they fight. But the wallcrawler’s rogue gallery was not that smart here. Instead, Smythe decided to make Siamese twins out of the wallcrawler and J.Jonah Jameson (which by itself was a great idea – shame that it wasn’t followed up on throughout the entire episode), made a timebomb out of the wrist cuffs, and took his time to hunt down Flash, Eddie, and Norman Osborn, instead of exacting revenge on the guy who, according to him, killed his father. Time well wasted, Smythe.
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| Some tiger has hit the jackpot with her. |
While I liked the race against the clock in the second half of the episode, maybe it could have been a much better idea for Spider-Man and Jameson to work together to save their, um, friends, because there really was a great idea behind Jameson being dragged along through the battle and be Spider-Man’s sidekick, albeit reluctantly. Plus, the visuals of Spider-Man and Jameson being linked together by indestructible cuffs that were about to explode in less than an hour were intriguing enough for comedy, and yet the premise was thrown out the window for the sake of good-old Spider-Man superhero boom-boom action.
I would love to know how the writing works for animated weekend morning shows, because at one point, the writers had to have some great ideas to enrich their episodes with suspense and comedy, but had to cut it all out for the sake of manipulating seven-year-old boys into buying toys through violence and explosions. Someone needs to do another study on whether or not this is still working for the merchandising department.
