Date of airing: May 20, 1995 (FOX Kids)
This was an interesting episode. With one supervillain going after another supervillain, there could almost be a sense of Spider-Man getting thrown into a turf war between two New Yorker idiots with superpowers, having to deal with a fight he never wanted to be involved in and didn’t even need to be if he wasn’t a superhero bent to protect the city. It’s an interesting premise, and one that might help an animated show every once in a while, because then the writers wouldn’t have to force themselves to create one action set piece after another in which Spider-Man has to be involved all the time. With the idea of one villain going after another villain, the writers could have forgotten all about Spider-Man or Peter Parker for a minute or two and instead just went for the lore of the wallcrawler’s expansive rogue gallery, giving those characters some depth in the process.
Nevertheless, the writers did a great job in this episode by getting Spider-Man involved, since he was dealing with a bunch of his arch nemeses all at the same time – Kingpin is scheming as per usual, Norman Osborn is scheming against Kingpin, and in the middle, there is the Hobgoblin about to switch sides for whatever reason. That alone is ideal for a premise of an episode. Just having the villains do their manipulative and scheming stuff is good enough, and with Spider-Man getting in the middle of it, it almost turned into a complex narrative.
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| Tears for a nephew moving out of the house soon. |
It was a good thing I liked Hobgoblin in this episode. Although he was only the villain, he was at least fighting against two other enemies, even though he wasn’t fighting much against Kingpin, since the latter might have been a little too bulky to get into a fight. Anyway, the unexpected fight threw Peter Parker into the mix, and I found it intriguing that he had to execute some of his superhero stunts without being in his costume. It reminded me of the scene in Sam Raimi’s first SPIDER-MAN, in which he was webbing two people out of the way of debris that was falling on them during Green Goblin’s opening attack (as well as a deleted scene which had kids witness Peter’s organic web-shooter rescue), but in this show, Peter wasn’t using his web-shooters (since he wasn’t wearing them – by the way, where is he hiding those in his civilian clothing?), but was still a hero, and he was captured on camera. One might think that someone will keep Peter in his attention, just in case that someone was looking for Spider-Man’s secret identity...
The Norman Osborn vs. Kingpin story seemed okay, although a little bit of depth was missing in that story. At the end of the episode, it looked like an idea to get Hobgoblin into the story, and less like an idea for Osborn to take over the criminal underworld, because ... well, Norman wishes to be a badass and needs Kingpin out of his way. But midway through the half hour, it seemed like Hobgoblin wasn’t interested at all in his mission any longer and just wanted more gadgets, like he was a ten-year-old boy getting all excited about opening Christmas presents.
The back and forth between Osborn and Kingpin being Hobgoblin’s current boss annoyed me. At first, he worked for Osborn, then he worked for Kingpin and kidnapped Harry, and then he was back with Osborn, wanting to get his own bidding done instead of Kingpin’s, who could have easily asked Hobgoblin to kill Osborn. I mean, Kingpin is a world-class mob boss. And he just takes this attack on his life like it’s a thing that happens daily?
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| Peter crawls into action. |
The little moments of the episode between all the villainy action were great, however. Aunt May crying after she heard Peter talking he can finally leave and live his own life was close to dramatic, especially since she ended up in the hospital after Hobgoblin’s attack. Here was an elderly lady who came to realize that her nephew, who is pretty much her son at this point, is leaving the nest, and minutes later she is in the hospital, and Peter is indirectly at fault for that (again, very reminiscent of 2002’s SPIDER-MAN).
Also, I loved the idea of Harry and Peter being roommates now. It was about time that happens, and I can feel that this is just the origin story for Harry, since this is pretty much his first episode in which he wasn’t just a silent background character. Harry turned into a protagonist in this episode – probably because the writers wanted to slowly get into the Goblin story arc. After all, they used Hobgoblin in this episode, like it was testing the waters for how to use the Green Goblin.
