[6.7/10] Eh, not bad exactly, but definitely kind of dull. This frankly felt like a throwback to early in the show’s first season, where you’d get a paint-by-numbers arc and a not very exciting dose of action to pad things out. The idea that Peter dislikes Amadeus Cho because they’re both smart kids competing for the same laurels, and Amadeus Cho hates Spider-Man because he buys J.J.’s “menace” smear campaign, isn’t the worst thing in the world. But it ends in one of those, “oh look, they learned to work together and appreciate each other” moments that the show earns, just not in a very novel or compelling way.
There’s also a lot of undifferentiated action in this one. I like Taskmaster and his opposite mission to recruit heroes, and I definitely like Clancy Brown, but just having him trade blows with various Spider-Men for twenty minutes gets tiring after a while. The whole suit-capturing bug and bomb-defusal routine throws a little spice into the proceedings but not much. And whatever...big things are waiting in Amadeus’s future, he’s kind of annoying here, which makes it hard to sympathize with him (which is tough on a show where I’ve often found Peter kind of annoying).
But hey, this episode is my introduction to the much ballyhooed Squirrel Girl, and her brief but silly appearance toppling Juggernaut was lots of fun, so it’s not all bad!
Overall, the setup of this one is fine, but the execution comes off a little generic and uninspired.
Review by Andrew BloomVIP 9BlockedParentSpoilers2019-01-19T02:27:00Z
[6.7/10] Eh, not bad exactly, but definitely kind of dull. This frankly felt like a throwback to early in the show’s first season, where you’d get a paint-by-numbers arc and a not very exciting dose of action to pad things out. The idea that Peter dislikes Amadeus Cho because they’re both smart kids competing for the same laurels, and Amadeus Cho hates Spider-Man because he buys J.J.’s “menace” smear campaign, isn’t the worst thing in the world. But it ends in one of those, “oh look, they learned to work together and appreciate each other” moments that the show earns, just not in a very novel or compelling way.
There’s also a lot of undifferentiated action in this one. I like Taskmaster and his opposite mission to recruit heroes, and I definitely like Clancy Brown, but just having him trade blows with various Spider-Men for twenty minutes gets tiring after a while. The whole suit-capturing bug and bomb-defusal routine throws a little spice into the proceedings but not much. And whatever...big things are waiting in Amadeus’s future, he’s kind of annoying here, which makes it hard to sympathize with him (which is tough on a show where I’ve often found Peter kind of annoying).
But hey, this episode is my introduction to the much ballyhooed Squirrel Girl, and her brief but silly appearance toppling Juggernaut was lots of fun, so it’s not all bad!
Overall, the setup of this one is fine, but the execution comes off a little generic and uninspired.