Date of airing: May 27, 1995 (FOX Kids)
Okay, maybe I was a little disappointed at the end of the episode. Just because Aunt May said that Peter was not ready to live by himself yet (because his apartment was a freaking mess), the writers killed the idea of having Peter and Harry be roommates and possibly returned to the status quo. Even if Peter moving out of Aunt May’s house could have created a narrative in which the nephew misses his aunt after a few days of living on his own, and the aunt misses her nephew after having raised him as her own child. Plus, it kind of delays a potential Green Goblin storyline, now that Peter will most likely stop hanging out with the Osborns for most of the time, since Harry and Norman would be in his distance again. But whatever, it was still a solid episode, although the final fight between Spider-Man and Hobgoblin was as much an add-on as Wonder Woman was in BATMAN v SUPERMAN: DAWN OF JUSTICE. Spider-Man brought Harry back to Norman, and said that the Hobgoblin was gone (why would Peter even say that to Aunt May?). But he turned up again only a few seconds later to take another shot at the Osborns. I guess it’s time for yet another battle between the wall-crawling superhero and the Green Goblin waste character.
I liked the notion of Norman Osborn and Kingpin working together to get rid of their troubled adversary known as Hobgoblin, even after they realized they wanted to get rid of each other. It showed that they didn’t keep their hired gun in check (what a pair of unprofessional villains), and that supervillains actually can work together for a common goal, which was most likely a tease for a future Sinister Six storyline. Because when the writers work with Norman and Kingpin being acquaintances for a fight against Spider-Man, you would automatically assume that a Sinister Six plot is in the works, even if it would include weird characters with Kingpin and Osborn. This is why I found it disappointing that Kingpin and Osborn were taking that opportunity to have one of their villains (Hobgoblin) fight against another one of their villains (Spider-Man), so that they only have to deal with one of them later and get their headquarters back. On the other hand, I don’t even know how to make this kind of story look less like a genre trope.
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| Spider-Man and Norman Osborn face off for the first time. |
The writers also forgot to do something meaningful with a kidnapped Harry Osborn. Apparently, Norman didn’t quite care a lot about his son to try and save him from Hobgoblin’s hand, because he wasn’t doing much about it, and even Kingpin didn’t seem to know what to do with Harry as a hostage. Kingpin could have leaked the kidnapping to the media and plotted an idea to destroy Osborn with it, or Kingpin or Hobgoblin could have simply killed Harry to make Osborn as destroyed and disturbed as possible after losing a child. I know that no one can get killed in an animated show for kids (so no deaths ever for any of the supervillains or the hostages they kidnap), but why do you even create a story of Harry’s kidnapping when you don’t do anything with the story in the end? Okay, the writers needed a plot device to have Spider-Man and Osborn work together for a scene or two, and have Spider-Man do his bidding, but I get the feeling the writers missed a huge potential here. If not doing more with Harry as a hostage, then with Spider-Man and Osborn working together to save him.
I did like how Spider-Man faced a few problems with the Hobgoblin though. Sometimes, being a superhero doesn’t help when you fight a villain with pure agility and speed and a weapons arsenal that would make North Korea blush and envious. But as always, those episodes are cut to the wazoo when it comes to battle sequences between Spider-Man and his foes. Sometimes I would wish for an episode to just go slow into the action and make me appreciate some of the art, instead of watching one explosion after the next (which happened when Spider-Man was carrying Harry through the tunnels and apparently through half of New York’s underground system to get as far away as possible from Manhattan) and be assaulted by boom-boom sound effects. One day, there will be an animated Spider-Man episode in which I will treasure the visuals instead of getting annoyed by them.
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| Cool guys don't have time to look at explosions. They have to run for their lives. |
Finally, the episode still needed a few seconds with Aunt May and Mary Jane in the hospital. It seemed like an uninteresting plot, and for a moment I even forgot that MJ was planning to move away and leave her own family behind, which was a plan quickly trashed into the bin after being the one watching over Aunt May in her hospital bed. First of all, it seems quite convenient that MJ was there for May when Peter couldn’t (doesn’t MJ have her own family to hang with?), and secondly, I actually appreciated that MJ was in the episode this way. It makes her more important as a character in Peter’s life, almost turning her into an invaluable person in his life who can stand in for him when he is busy doing his superhero thing. It keeps Peter’s home life present in the show when all he is being seen as is Spider-Man.
