[7.3/10] The thing about this episode is that it’s mostly a lot of undifferentiated spider monster combat. Sure, you have Peter having to subdue Aunt May, and the Gwen-Monster getting out, and the effort to cure the Norman-Monster. But for the most part, this is just the usual team of spider-friends punching and kicking and webbing various gargantuan arachnids across the city. That’s not bad, exactly, but it just gets tiresome.
The show tries to juice it up a little, by having Anya find a cure, even if she can’t exactly reproduce yet for semi-convenient reasons. And it also has the gang trying to subdue Norman in the hopes of stopping the outbreak, only to discover that The Jackal is behind it all. There’s not much to any of it, but it dutifully moves this story along.
Still, there’s two things I really like in this one that elevate this beyond the barest levels of “good” rating-wise. The first is that I really like Peter coming out as Spider-Man to Harry. The episode sets up a good excuse, where it’s either admit the secret identity to your best friend and donate your blood or watch his dad die. It speaks to Peter’s character that he barely hesitates to absorb the emotional blow of all this if it means helping keep Harry’s family together. The show gets a little impressionistic with the confession, and it’s not a homerun, but it has an emotional realism and resonance that this series can’t always master.
I also like the reveal that Jackal had Miles the whole time. I have to admit that I was wondering where he was in all of this, so name-dropping him early in the episode, only to throw in a late episode twist that he’s Jackal’s prisoner, worked as a minor gut punch for me.
Overall, this episode has a lot of undifferentiated spider monster combat, but finds another gear when it has Peter admitting he’s Spider-Man to save his best friend’s dad’s life, and gets past Jackal’s generic villain plot into who he has hostage.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2019-06-01T18:58:44Z
[7.3/10] The thing about this episode is that it’s mostly a lot of undifferentiated spider monster combat. Sure, you have Peter having to subdue Aunt May, and the Gwen-Monster getting out, and the effort to cure the Norman-Monster. But for the most part, this is just the usual team of spider-friends punching and kicking and webbing various gargantuan arachnids across the city. That’s not bad, exactly, but it just gets tiresome.
The show tries to juice it up a little, by having Anya find a cure, even if she can’t exactly reproduce yet for semi-convenient reasons. And it also has the gang trying to subdue Norman in the hopes of stopping the outbreak, only to discover that The Jackal is behind it all. There’s not much to any of it, but it dutifully moves this story along.
Still, there’s two things I really like in this one that elevate this beyond the barest levels of “good” rating-wise. The first is that I really like Peter coming out as Spider-Man to Harry. The episode sets up a good excuse, where it’s either admit the secret identity to your best friend and donate your blood or watch his dad die. It speaks to Peter’s character that he barely hesitates to absorb the emotional blow of all this if it means helping keep Harry’s family together. The show gets a little impressionistic with the confession, and it’s not a homerun, but it has an emotional realism and resonance that this series can’t always master.
I also like the reveal that Jackal had Miles the whole time. I have to admit that I was wondering where he was in all of this, so name-dropping him early in the episode, only to throw in a late episode twist that he’s Jackal’s prisoner, worked as a minor gut punch for me.
Overall, this episode has a lot of undifferentiated spider monster combat, but finds another gear when it has Peter admitting he’s Spider-Man to save his best friend’s dad’s life, and gets past Jackal’s generic villain plot into who he has hostage.