Date of airing: March 11, 1995 (FOX Kids)
I think I will always be surprised about how many commercials a network was stacking into the airing of a weekend morning cartoon. This episode was 20 minutes long and scheduled into a 30-minute slot, which means that 10 minutes of commercials were airing – mostly advertisements about toys, cereals, milk, Disneyland, a new kids’ book on the shelves, or magazines for kids that deal with toys, and maybe a G or PG-rated movie that was about to come out in theaters for the family to watch. And because of those ten minutes of commercials, the writers and producers had to cut down their episodes as short as possible, meaning that there really was no time at all to bring some calmness into it, let the story or the characters breathe, and focus on something else than just a battle between the titular hero and the episodic antagonist. 20 minutes, in which the opening and the end credits are included, are not enough to tell a coherent story that doesn’t necessitate the depiction of a violent battle between a superhero and a supervillain. It makes for an extremely quick watch when you think you are bored, but is it entertaining? Well, I’m still watching this series, aren’t I?
 |
| J.Jonah Jameson has a prime seat for the latest superhero vs. supervillain fight. |
These 20 minutes began with Peter and Felicia on a sort-of date, talking about how he could be considered a boyfriend if he would ask her out on a date, which I found fascinating because it seemed part of a character arc at first. But then I realized that some of the episodes of this first season may have been aired out of order, as I became confused about Mary Jane’s involvement and whether or not she was in Peter’s life already. On Disney+, this episode is the sixth of the season, but a different source, as well as the fact that MJ was marked as “Anna Watson’s niece,” which wouldn’t happen if she hadn’t already been introduced by the end of the second spider slayer episode, makes me believe that this wasn’t supposed to be the sixth episode and was written for an earlier spot in the season. This episode may have been set before the two-part spider slayer arc, which would explain why Peter and Felicia were still roaming around like they were about to date, as they have been during the first episode and the first part of the spider slayer arc.
Anyway, after the Peter/Felicia opening, the remaining 18 minutes of
SPIDER-MAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES dealt with a battle of Spider-Man versus
Scorpion, including the J.Jonah. Jameson prequel that changed MacGargan
into the Scorpion, essentially turning Jameson into the villain as well. And the final few seconds went back to... uhm,
developing a romance between Peter and Felicia, with both of them moving
on to have lunch together. Basically, two minutes of these 20 minutes
(less than 19, if you exclude the title intro and the end credits) were
spent focusing on the characters and their relationships, the rest of
the episode was an overstuffed action sequence with a loud score that
almost pained my ears. It’s the standard kind of episode of SPIDER-MAN:
THE ANIMATED SERIES. And the kind of episode I'm scared will be too much for me after a while.
 |
| A quick phone call between battles to tell Aunt May that everything is fine. |
Well, at least I liked Jameson’s turn as the villain in the background of the events, although his decision to hate everyone who is masked up seems a little absurd. Jameson would surely be a very popular Fox News primetime or Newsmax host with that stance in the year of our gay Lord 2022 (now we know why the character is an Alex Jones-type person in the MCU/Sony film series). And considering that Spider-Man is not the only masked superhero occupying New York City, one might think that Jameson would have an aversion against every superhero wearing a mask, or every personality in the Big Apple operating under anonymity, which is definitely not just Spider-Man. One might also think that Jameson would have learned something from the events he caused in this episode, and maybe turn into a more creative and cautious villain in a future episode. It seems like he was only interested in unmasking and eliminating Spider-Man and not destroying the whole of New York City in the process – remember that when Jameson is guilty of the destruction of half of Manhattan the next time around.
