[7.4/10] I’ll say this for Spider-Man: The Animated Series -- you can’t fault it for having a lack of incident. Despite the omnipresent use of flashback (something that’s probably a necessary evil given how much the show admirably embraces its own continuity) this series always packs something on the order of five major developments into the average episode.
In this episode alone, we have Norman Osbourne donning the cowl of the Green Goblin again. We have Hobgoblin revealing to Felicia Hardy (and, by extension, Spider-Man) that he’s her fiance Jason. You have both goblins recovering and using Dr. Ohn’s portal device. You have Kingpin getting involved in an attempted heist of Fort Knox. And you have the two goblins meeting face to face and getting into a fight with each other.
It’s a lot, and that’s before details like Felicia and Hobgoblin getting captured by the Green Goblin, with Spider-Man having to save them, or Spidey’s continued (semi-convoluted) series of love triangles where Harry loves MJ and MJ loves Peter, but Felicia loves Spider-Man but was engaged to a dude who turns out to be a criminal and now Spidey’s not sure who he loves. Phwew.
But it’s all plenty enjoyable and comic-booky as hell. I got a big kick out of Mark Hamill selling the (pretty obvious) twist of Hobgoblin’s real identity by changing his voice considerable when he’s Jason vs. when he’s Hobgoblin. The goblin-to-goblin combat was cool visually, and I like that they have different motivations -- with Hobgoblin being purely profit-driven (which ties nicely into the “did you ever really love me?” exchange with Felicia), while Green Goblin is a case of multiple personalities where Green Goblin sees himself as separate from Norman Osbourne but wants to eliminate Osbourne’s enemies and protect his son.
Things got a little too over-the-top or cheesy for me in places. The ol’ “slowly dropping victims into a vat of acid” thing is a cliché, and I don’t know that we really needed Green Goblin to straight up announce who his enemies are, but it’s pretty forgivable stuff.
Overall, an episode with a lot going on, where little of it has any time to breathe, but the stuff itself was all fairly good.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2018-05-13T18:02:24Z
[7.4/10] I’ll say this for Spider-Man: The Animated Series -- you can’t fault it for having a lack of incident. Despite the omnipresent use of flashback (something that’s probably a necessary evil given how much the show admirably embraces its own continuity) this series always packs something on the order of five major developments into the average episode.
In this episode alone, we have Norman Osbourne donning the cowl of the Green Goblin again. We have Hobgoblin revealing to Felicia Hardy (and, by extension, Spider-Man) that he’s her fiance Jason. You have both goblins recovering and using Dr. Ohn’s portal device. You have Kingpin getting involved in an attempted heist of Fort Knox. And you have the two goblins meeting face to face and getting into a fight with each other.
It’s a lot, and that’s before details like Felicia and Hobgoblin getting captured by the Green Goblin, with Spider-Man having to save them, or Spidey’s continued (semi-convoluted) series of love triangles where Harry loves MJ and MJ loves Peter, but Felicia loves Spider-Man but was engaged to a dude who turns out to be a criminal and now Spidey’s not sure who he loves. Phwew.
But it’s all plenty enjoyable and comic-booky as hell. I got a big kick out of Mark Hamill selling the (pretty obvious) twist of Hobgoblin’s real identity by changing his voice considerable when he’s Jason vs. when he’s Hobgoblin. The goblin-to-goblin combat was cool visually, and I like that they have different motivations -- with Hobgoblin being purely profit-driven (which ties nicely into the “did you ever really love me?” exchange with Felicia), while Green Goblin is a case of multiple personalities where Green Goblin sees himself as separate from Norman Osbourne but wants to eliminate Osbourne’s enemies and protect his son.
Things got a little too over-the-top or cheesy for me in places. The ol’ “slowly dropping victims into a vat of acid” thing is a cliché, and I don’t know that we really needed Green Goblin to straight up announce who his enemies are, but it’s pretty forgivable stuff.
Overall, an episode with a lot going on, where little of it has any time to breathe, but the stuff itself was all fairly good.