Spider-Man Season Five: Part Three

 

I should not like these last episodes. I really shouldn't. None of this is what I normally what I want to see with Spider-Man, at all. I own the entirety of Tom Taylor's excellent Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man run. Despite my dislike for his... antics... Taylor really wrote the only modern Spidey run I like: Spider-Man on the ground, talking to the locals, being kind, and just... well... being the uncle Ben of the Marvel Universe. That, to me, was always Peter's arc. And on paper all the craziness of Secret Wars and Spider Wars should have completely crashed and burned. It's clearly yet another toy pitch, another sign of corporate nonsense meddling. I. Should. HATE. This.

I really love the ending of this show.

Peter Parker is finally Uncle Ben. They go through some weird hoops to get him there, but at its core these are true Spider-Man stories. I don't say that lightly. I usually hate it when Spidey goes cosmic and I really don't like multiverse stuff at all. And I really love this last third of the season. Secret Wars and Spider Wars are the ending that this show needed. And no, I didn't want them to go on. I liked the cliff hanger ending as a kid and that definitely hasn't changed now.

The first thing that jumps out at me about these episodes is not just how out of his element Spidey is, but how open he is about it. The folks behind the show could have just had Spidey pretend to know what he was doing and had it be genuinely horrible. Fortunately, we had these folks. So Spider-Man was uncomfortable... but he stepped up. And everyone else he had to work with saw that he was choosing to step up and they chose to let him do it. Peter was working with good people, who could see he was changing and let him do it. If this was done today you wouldn't have anything half this noble going on. Even if you got this far with Peter in a modern context (and you probably wouldn't) the others wouldn't let Peter take point. He'd have to prove to a bunch of assholes he was worthy to lead them. For anyone who's going "Marvel characters were always assholes"... no... no they weren't. See. This. Show.

The pacing of these last few episodes is off the freaking charts. This show has always had freaking quick pacing, with season four going absolutely apeshit bonkers with the speed of dialogue. And while I'm not a fan of the incredible speed of the dialogue in season five it's not even in the same ballpark as season four. It's amazing to me how much the show writers get done in such a short amount of time. I could see even one of these episodes taking at least twice the time today... and that's not a compliment. Because this show manages to keep what's going on clear. All the time. I'm not sure how. But they do it.

But my favorite scene, the thing that makes this show, is:

That is how you use a multiverse, people! You don't just use it for cutesy "alternate versions" or "what could have beens". I didn't like it as a kid, I don't like it now. No, you use these alternate scenarios to specifically play off the emotional lives of the characters. You poke and prod at what happened and ask: "How do you respond to the different world?" And the fact that the obnoxious asshole Spidey in this arc is the one who stopped the criminal, thus saving Uncle Ben, is a  truly fascinating idea. "Our" Peter's failure and the loss of his Uncle Ben turned him into the person who would realize that Spider-Carnage would be unable to keep what goodness he had left coming to the fore. By playing through the emotional development of "our" Peter this arc really cements what finally makes him a true hero. The question of the series was answered.

Yes, I think it's done.

And that should answer what I think of the ending of this show, which is eschatological. An eschatological ending is one where you don't see the "true" ending, but given what you know of the characters and the story you know the situation will be resolved, even if you don't quite know how it will be done. You just have faith that it will. I know that this show was ended prematurely, but the ending as it stands is a fantastic eschatological ending! We now know what sort of man Peter has become, we know that with Madame Web's help he will find Mary Jane. And, really, that's really all I wanted. I can picture them being happy quite easily. This show has also given me that. Peter can grow and change. Marvel may not understand this about their property, but the rest of us?

I think we all think Spider-Man deserves some happiness, don't we? I mean, besides Marvel.

Spider-Man 94: Season Five, Part Two

 

Everyone has landmarks in their life. There was life before that moment and then life afterwards. The moment changed the way you saw the whole world so strongly that all that can possibly exist is life after that moment. Everyone has these moments, factual or fictional Usually we don't remember these moments consciously.

What I didn't remember was that a bunch of these moments for me are here, in Season Five. 

This is one of the most expertly handled final seasons I've ever seen. The web has been spun, the plot points have been built competently, at worst. It's now time for the chickens to come home, roost and bring forth the apocalypse. There's just moment, after moment, after moment that wouldn't have meant what they do without the four seasons of buildup. It's hard to understate just how good this season can really get, with all the bombs they drop.

And the big one is the death of Mary Jane.

Yes, I know it's a clone.

No, I don't care. This hurt to watch as a kid. There's a ton of complicating factors. For one thing, it just comes out of nowhere. Absolutely. Freaking. Nowhere. Yeah, Mary Jane coming back mysteriously is weird and all that, but a clone??? There's a level of cruelty in the writing that was not lost on me, at all, as a child. Peter wasn't even losing Mary Jane, it was that she had never returned at all and this was actually a stranger, had always been, and was now dying, but she looked like Mary Jane and just... she was able to just accept her death? That  was overload for me as a child. She just looked her death in the face and made sure that she could give to Peter one last ray of hope, something, anything. 

Let's not forget the incredibly badass way "MJ" takes out "Morrie". This show had always been really good about empowering female characters, and this was a wonderful scene where "MJ" got to send Morrie off one last time, directly. And it felt good to watch that. Morrie has always had the "whiner entitled piece of shit" shtick down to a T, and it was nice to see him get kicked down again. Catharsis much?

But "MJ" was dying. And Peter didn't fix it. Couldn't. For all the times that Peter had figured out how to save someone with his mind it was just flat out impossible here. There wasn't time. There was never going to be any time. Peter's failure was not his fault but it was a failure nonetheless. Granted, I had that concept from The Return of the Jedi, but it was a completely different thing here, given everything previously stated. All Peter could do was to watch and listen and try to absorb the horrors.

And then there's the clone stuff with Miles Warren. I didn't realize it as a child but this was a huge plot bomb to drop. Even if Peter managed to get Mary Jane back, he'd have to deal with Smythe finding out his identity, nevermind a clone! The implied problems coming in were enormous. Peter's entire life was about to be screwed up and he had no idea it was coming. The show had a moment to hit the audience and picked every last opportunity to do it.

The biggest advantage of serialized story telling is accumulation. You don't have to tightly construct a narrative to land a big moment. You just plop down plot point after plot point, on their own, and build them as well as you can. Eventually you'll have a web of points that don't look connected... until you pull the magic trick. And then you have these huge moments, where your context has been shifted and juggled and messed with and your understanding of the previous points are irrevocably changed. You can no longer see what happened in the past the same way because of what just happened. And when it's done well you're totally upended.

That scene at the top of the post is one of the best moments in serialized storytelling. I don't care who you are, it's hard to understate just how masterfully they pulled it off. You don't get much better than the death of Mary Jane. 

That howl of despair from Peter was stamped into my consciousness as a child, and it's carried forward into everything I've ever done. Sometimes there are moments where there is no good, no bad, no greater telos. There's just pain. The present, in all its awful glory. You can try and avoid it, but eventually the present has its reckoning, one way or another. You'll run out of tricks, escape routes, and flat denials, and the present will come crashing in and there's only thing to do.

Grieve.

A wise man once told me that grieving was the sum total of our activity in life.

The older I get the wiser that statement becomes.

Spider-Man 94: Season Five, Part One

 

I really dislike this version of Captain America. He doesn’t seem to have a stable character. Over the course of this season you could hand almost any of his lines to anyone and it would be fine.

Sorry, had to get that off my chest.

I like the first part of this season in theory. Peter shouldn’t stay single and miserable. Not only should Peter grow up but he really does have leadership material in him' Cable’s estimation of Spidey as the best superhero still doesn’t do Peter justice. Peter Parker is the Uncle Ben of the Marvel universe, and Marvel’s utterly insane need to keep him single and miserable shows just how creatively (not to mention morally) bankrupt the company has become. 

That being said: dear God this arc is a mess. 

While it is cool the Six Forgotten Warriors arc puts Spidey in a situation where he has to step up… not like this. Please. The Spider-Sense is nerfed in the most idiotic of ways, with scenes where it goes off and Peter just sits there, remarking on it… and then he gets hit. I got jarred out of this arc so many times I just couldn’t enjoy it. Electro is one of the few villains in this show that I just can't care about. It's not that he's a Nazi, although that doesn't help. There's nothing to him that I sympathetic at all. He wants power, to the exclusion of his relationship with his dad? That felt wrong to me. If you can take a character as pathetic and awful as Morrie Bench and make him sympathetic... you can probably do it with a Nazi.

Oh, and speaking of plot convenience, MJ gets hurt in this arc, in the most ham-fisted way possible. For a regular show? This is bad. It's plain ole bad writing. But for this show, which had done Mary-Jane so well? It's easily the worst writing in the show. This is something I'd see out of a bad/modern comic book, not this show. Period. I've ghosted shows for less.

But there's nostalgia.

So.

On I went.

But there's a lot of good to this arc, contrary to what the above rant would indicate. This is easily one of the biggest swings at Spidey lore ever done. Peter has to step up. It's not a question. The connection to his family is a fantastic hook and got me invested immediately. And they play up that angle really nicely! Peter's idea of his parents, the only thing he has left of them, is challenged, and he has to resolve the identity crisis, immediately. It's such a good hook that I wasn't really jarred by the bad writing until MJ got hurt.

And that ending scene, with MJ telling Peter to still be Spidey, that it's not a question of one or the other, that he has a responsibility to both her and  the world... I have nothing but love for this scene. Regardless of how clumsy the delivery was, getting to this scene was truly worth it. I really miss this aspect of Spider-Man: the idea of expanding responsibility, of love creating more opportunities for goodness, not just hardship. It's the next step of that arc.

And I have nothing but bile for Marvel's decision to steer away from it.

Part Two Next Week!

Spider-Man 94: Season Four

After a lackluster third season Spider-Man 94 had a lot of scrambling to do. And, while I was afraid they'd completely lose their touch at first, the fourth season manages to bounce back. By sticking with human motivations and keeping to their weird science roots Spider-Man 94 manages to turn in a good season. I'd not say it tops Season Two, but it's certainly in the ballpark. And hey, given how much I love season two that's something!

Let's get what I don't like out of the way first: production quality. Dialogue was always fast on this show, but the earlier portion of Season Four is downright unpleasant to watch. Had I not known from childhood how good this season can be I'd have given up! I find it that bad! Reused animation is fourth wall breaking at this point. There were various times throughout the season I was completely jolted out of watching because the show reused a shot that made absolutely no sense. Basic animation gets trampled on, and the results are repulsive.

Nowhere to go but up, right?

Actually yes!

After a disappointing and technically irritating opening featuring Robbie Robertson, we finally get this show's version of the Black Cat. This is definitely where my nostalgia kicks in. I love every second of these two episodes. The writers kick Felicia all the way into hot shit territory and, once again, surpass the source material.

Sorry comic book Black Cat lovers: she's boring.

@ me, go ahead. You're still wrong.

This version of Felicia (and Black Cat) is a beautiful combination of dangerous, inexperienced, and playful. I could never tell what she was up to, even with the benefit of seeing the show when I was younger. Every second of her on the screen is a good one. Cat breaks down "Spider's" defenses and baggage, helping him to recover from the grief of losing MJ. Spidey finally accepts Cat as a partner, two episodes later. Kraven returns and it's great to see him again. 

And then there's the Smythe/Silvermane episode. I didn't know if I was supposed to be laughing at Silvermane? But I did? Does that make me a terrible person? I don't really care. Cat was great and the reused animation was hilarious. And Silvermane's last line is worth it all. 

And my goodness, is this another two episodes of Morbius and Blade? With some damn fine work on Cat/Felicia as well? I think these are the best episodes of the season! This is another pair of episodes that just couldn't have been done earlier in the show. 

Oh, and they're actually building up the Harry subplot along the way this time! They learned!!! I love it when show runners learn from their mistakes. Harry's flip to the green side is really well done. I like how Norman manages to show up. And we also get the Punisher again, which is a most unexpected (but welcome) treat! If you're not choking up a little bit for Punisher's ray of hope at the end, then... Well, I'll have to call the battle van. Sorry.

The twist of MJ being back is so much crueler as an adult. This was such a sickening move on the writer's part. And I do mean that as a compliment.

Okay, honestly the next episode, featuring Mysterio, just isn't very good. I'm glad this season was shorter than three, but they could have cut this episode really easily and no one would have noticed. 

Yes, even with the unmasking at the end! I think just about anything else could have been done to make Peter realize he needed MJ more than anything and it would have been better.

The rest of the season is about these two deciding to love each other, regardless of cost. The rapport they build is so cool, so heartfelt, I just... Yeah. This is right in the nostalgia. I've no pretense to objective thought here. I just don't. This feels great to revisit. Even with the looming threat of the truth I can't help myself. 

They're happy.

 And they have it coming.

What the heck am I actually going to think of Season Five?

Spider-Man 94: Season Three

Welp, folks, hopefully it doesn't get worse than this.

Sins of the Fathers, the name of this season, is flawed. It doesn't have the thematic coherence of Season Two, nor are its episodic elements nearly as well-used as Season One. While the season is supposedly about the failure of the previous generation (summed up in Norman Osborn's defeat by the Goblin), there's more than a few episodes that derail the delicate balance between plot and character. The finale, while gut-wrenching, is brought down by hamfisted exposition and left-field developments. While there are some standout episodes and arcs the quality has taken a noticeable dip. Thanks corporate! 

The first episode features Doctor Strange. MJ has been kidnapped by Baron Mordo to help Dormammu escape. It's a good team-up, with some fantastic development for Mary-Jane, whose abandonment issues get sketched out, while being integral to the plot. This was a really strong opener! I'll liked it a lot, and with Madame Web being set up I thought it a good intro to the season.

And then Make a Wish and Octobot. Holy shit. Just, holy shit this was insufferable. For those of you who don't know, one of the best Spider-Man stories of all time is "The Boy Who Read Spider-Man", about a boy named Tim who asks to see Spider-Man and hang out. Spidey shows up at his room and the two talk about a surprisingly detailed account of Spider-Man's abilities, tech, and ethos. At the very end of a charming story Tim asks to find out who Spider-Man is, under that mask.

And Spider-Man does it. 

Is it a plot? Is Spider-Man being controlled? Is Tim a spy?

No.

Tim is dying of cancer. 

Soon.

And he wanted to meet the hero who helped him hold on for so long. Peter, moved by Tim's kindness and courage in the face of impending death, simply can't deny his greatest fan.

God, it's such a beautiful story.

Yeah, they try to adapt it. And it's horrible. They tie in a crappy plot about Doctor Octopus wiping Spider-Man's memory, a Jamaican (???) taxi driver who's so insensitively done! I cringed watching this shlock as a child who had never met a Jamaican before, but could tell this was badly done, and changes Tim to an actual Mary Sue (Rey haters, please reference these episodes so you'll know what a Mary Sue actually is) whose character was nails on a chalkboard.

But don't worry, she's dying of cancer too! Gah!

You can smell corporate demanding a freaking Octobot. I wanted to throw out my phone from the fumes of sulphur and... We'll just say discharge. Yeah.

Y'know, Navy folk. No, not sailors.

Yes, I think I'm funny.

My wife laughs at me, not my jokes, can you tell?

Fortunately the introduction of the Green Goblin is next. And is it done right or what??? Man I love this episode. This show is at its best when its characters are human beings handed awful power, which magnifies their worst qualities. And we've taken some time developing Norman! He starts off as a sleezebag with genuine affection for his son, buried way deep down. Over the first two seasons Norman has wrestled with his inner monster. And he wasn't a saint or anything, but Norman was better than he'd ever been.  And then the accident happens and it's all for naught. This is easily one of my favorite single episodes of the show. My nostalgia is fully earned here.

Rocket Racer's episode is another great one-off. The debilitating moral effects of poverty are called out. If you need to steal to survive it makes you a criminal. If you're a criminal why not just be a bad guy, since the rest of the affair is stressful enough without having moral ambiguity making it complicated.  Merloo in "Rape of the Mind" not only calls societal pressures like what's going on in this episode brainwashing, but displays one of the most horrible things about societal pressures: man's sense of justice is so acute, his need for right and wrong so absolute, that continuous pressure on him eventually makes him become what others think of him, because he knows that justice is external. So, in an effort to recognize justice, he'll become what everyone is accusing him of. 

Happy thought, right?

The Daredevil, Smythe, and Tombstone episodes are just incredible. Plotting, characterization, voice acting, even the animation is really well done! While I think the Tombstone episode is the best of the bunch I'd definitely not say that makes the others worse; it's a real embarrassment of riches in these episodes. This is real quality stuff.

Which makes the Venom and Carnage episodes just that much worse.

Please keep in mind that a show as thematic as this one has to stick the landing. Thematic arcs are generally more difficult to pull off than a strictly plot-based show. You have to have a solid foundation and be willing to explore all sorts of situations... that are related to your theme. Oh, and you have to be willing to let go of ideas that are thematically sound, but don't execute too well. 

I really want to not do those freaking kid episodes again, can you tell????

The issues I have with the Venom and Carnage episodes isn't that it isn't thematically consistent with the rest of the show; nature vs nurture is on full display here. It's that the sins of Norman Osborn do actually need to be set up for later on! MJ ends her engagement with Harry in the Daredevil episodes and the show drops the plotline entirely after that. I get not dwelling on it overly, but we don't know much about Norman and what he's really like as an attentive father. We've seen his wrestlings with his darker nature, sure, between the Green Goblin episode and this one we really don't know what Norman and Harry are up to. That needed to be shown. This ain't the Skywalker Saga, where points you'd normally consider important don't need to be shown. The Skywalker Saga is an intergenerational soap opera. Its points are on a grand sweeping scale. But that's not what this show is. Harry has been basically sidelined up until this point, and as we're about to see that's going to do some significant damage to the finale.

Also, there's the fact that Mordo and Dormammu are central to the plot of Venom and Carnage's episodes. Where the hell is Doctor Strange?? Y'know, the dude who has dedicated his life to stopping Dormammu? They spent time setting him up... and then he's not there. So multiple threads are dropped and ignored to create these two episodes. Even the time dilation stuff could be introduced another way, see the Spot episode that literally comes right after this. These two episodes are unnecessary.

Unless you have to please a toy line. 

New Venom with a swappable head to Eddy Brock? Carnage??? Iron Man and War Machine? 

There were clearly dollar signs at work here, folks. And it's a damn shame. I love this take on Carnage! He's just the right type of sick and twisted fun this show needed! Eddy and Ashley are pathetic and sympathetic, even with the major ethical breaches going on. Granted, the show doesn't talk about that, but the actual dynamics between the two of them are well-handled. It's such a shame.

And then we're back to fantastic stuff again with The Spot! This is a fantastic one off that goes back to the simplicity of Season One, while setting up for the finale. Like Hydro Man, this is the definitive take on the character. In the comics he's a joke. I wouldn't say the Spot isn't a joke here, but he is treated with the sensitivity and sympathy I've come to expect from this show.

Goblin War is a fantastically frustrating episode. On the one hand you've got Hobgoblin, Felicia, and the continuation of the time dilation device plot. Which is great! I love this version of Hobgoblin! Felicia is handled so well here! It makes sense the underworld would go nuts about the time dilation device. The ending scenes of this episode are absolutely perfect. But then there's the sudden drop of the Green Goblin. And that Harry has been poisoned against MJ and Peter since the Daredevil episodes. I've already given you my thoughts on that. I am not happy with the sudden snap.

And then there's Turning Point. For every pro of this episode there's a glaring con. The characterization is fantastic. The plot is rushed. Madame Web is used so freaking well. There's way way way too much Spidey narration, which outright destroys what should have been the best single scene of the show. The ending is gut-wrenching tragedy.

It could have hit so much freaking harder.

And that's really my takeaway on this season: it could have been so much better. When this season is on, by God it's more than a step up from Season Two. But what seems like really blatant corporate meddling takes a season that should have been perfect, a defining season of Spider-Man, a triumph of adaptation... and averages out to a compelling story compromised by the need to sell toys.

And therein lies the real tragedy.

Spider-Man 94: Season Two

As a child, I saw all the episodes of this show, which was well into re-runs when I began watching. So, while I know these episodes, I never saw them in the intended order. And the episodes from this season always intrigued me the most. This may actually be my favorite season of the bunch. I say may, because I've not seen the rest of the show, not yet, as of the time of writing this post. So no, there isn't much of a plan here. I watch, I write, and then watch some more. 

Season two of this show is a completely different picture from season one. Where season one is clearly an appeasement of the corporate powers that be, season two is where the writers were finally left to their own devices. Where season one was a loosely episodic show, the entirety of season two is labeled as one story: Neogenic Nightmares. It's an epic story, one arc thematically linked to another. It's daring and dark and.... well... brilliant. It's self-contained; if you wanted to just sit down and watch this one season you could do it really easily.

The season starts with the Insidious Six, this show's take on the Sinister Six. Peter loses his powers, just in time for Aunt May to be kidnapped by the Insidious Six. The writers not only manage to make a gripping story, but legitimately set up for the next arc with the surprise that Peter's powers are just the beginning of his transformation into... something. Something horrible.

The next episode is about Hydro Man. This is still the definitive take it on the character; he's tackled so well that I was disappointed when I found out that Morrie wasn't nearly so interesting in the source material; neither was Mary-Jane, by and large. There's so many little things about Mary-Jane from this season that I wished were adaptations. They weren't. They're original to this show.

Next up was the cross-over with the X-Men show! Peter goes to Prof X to get some help with his mutation disease. If you've not seen this thing I'm not sure how to comprehend how we're in the same reality. This was the first MCU, and it was done incredibly well. All the characters are written perfectly, with any inter-character conflict being logical and brief. No one is written worse off for forced plot convenience or fan service. And, while Peter's problem isn't solved, his desperation is contrasted against the mutants of the Marvel Universe really nicely. Peter's mutation wasn't the result of being born with that DNA; he's essentially one step away from being forced into being a monster. It's nice to see that desperation put agai

The Man-Spider arc is one of the best Spider-Man stories ever written, without exaggeration. I actually wish this was the finale of the whole show, I love it that much. If you're going to watch any particular arc from this show this is the one. All the characters are presented in sympathetic tones, especially the Punisher, who was my favorite version until Netflix. And Punisher's tech is almost hilariously over the top, like the rest of this show. I could go on, and on, and on, but this is something that needs to be seen for yourself. 60's weird science doesn't get much better than this. Spider-Man definitely doesn't get much better than this.

And right after that is another one of my favorites, the Morbius arc! Again, this completely defined my idea of what the character was like. It's just as good as when I saw it, with a lot of the subtleties being easier to pick out. The weird science finding tragic people trope of Spider-Man TAS is done so well, so tragically, so humanely, it's worth seeing this arc on its own, even with the silly hand suckers. The Morbius arc is probably better than the Man-Spider arc, but you won't hear me admitting it any time soon.

Tablet of Time, after all the awesomeness just mentioned is a bit of a letdown. It's a good arc, but it's definitely not as good as what just came before. Which, I mean, makes sense. Sometimes all you can do is go down. It's still immensely tragic and well-paced, but it's not quite the same. The more human element in the villains that's typical of the season isn't here as much and I think this arc suffers for it. That being said, the Connors and the Lizard are utilized really nicely, keeping the plot running at a good clip.

We close out the season with the most creative use of the Vulture I've ever seen. Adrian Toomes, afraid of dying, created a technology to steal youth... and spider powers. This was a really satisfying bookend, as Spidey started the season powerless and is then old... and thus powerless. It's a stellar close to the season, as multiple plot lines from season one collide here for a flashy finish. There's so many satisfying thematic clicking into place in these final episodes! I really want to rewatch the whole season with a notebook, just to see how many things actually do pay off here. It's pretty intense.

This is the season of Spider-Man 94 I think of when I get nostalgic. The characters are brilliant, the thematic build is intense and deep, and the risks the show takes with the source material still haven't been topped. If there's any season of Spider-Man cartoons I think anyone should watch and make a part of their canon, it's this season.

Yeah, I said it.

And I think Spectacular Spider-Man is a brilliant show.

But more on that in season three.

Spider-Man 94: Season 1

 

This was my Spider-Man until I was about eleven years old. I've been mostly disappointed ever since. Don't get me wrong, the original run until the Death of Gwen Stacy is the comics story. Anything else after that... well I have a head canon for that. I'll talk about that in another post. Corporatism hollows something out real and wears its skin like a puppet. I'd argue that's happened to Spider-Man in general, although that's not the case with this season of Spider-Man 94.

No, it's not perfect. The Chameleon episode has some really silly logic drops, and it's obvious the show had serious budget issues with animation, reusing every single frame they possibly could, sometimes overly padding out those "Previously On" sections. And the first season drops Felicia Hardy entirely. Now, having gone into a bit of the second season, I can see that the writers were deliberately building towards season two, and did not seem to intend season one to stand on its own. That's definitely not perfect, but it is deliberate. Make of that what you will.

But what this season does it does well. Season one is an episodic weird sci-fi, rooted right in the cautionary 60's genre. Horrible accidents happen to ordinary folks and they lose their heads. Peter is the only one who has been able to withstand the physical change, all because his selfishness led to his Uncle Ben's death. All of the antagonists are treated with a degree of sympathy that I admire. Even when they are outright evil there's a humanity, an appeal for mercy, deep down in each of these characters. Folks keep talking about how modern shows have such complicated characters, but there's stuff going on in these eighteen minute episodes that's nothing short of miraculous. And that's not nostalgia talking; I wish I was this economical in my RPG sessions.

Season One feels like it's building a lot of ground in a hurry, not to mention getting the "big names" out of the way. There's a very "check off the names corporate needs us to check off" feel to this season, and even then, none of the takes were by the book. 

Doc Ock being Peter's mentor? Done here first.

The Lizard trying to end weakness? Done here first and arguably better.

Other takes on the characters who haven't been adapted to movies are just as good as those two, if not better than the source material. Hobgoblin is just a common mercenary who was given a bunch of toys. Kraven was driven mad by the serum he received aaà but returns to normal. Smythe becomes a regular supporting villain after losing his father in a tragic accident. Scorpion is just a pathetic bully made dangerous. I particularly like Scorpion, as his patheticness doesn't go away, just that you want to dodge while laughing at how much of a loser he is. And Eddy Brock, the most built up supervillain in the season, is nothing more than a spiteful yellow journalist. Rhino is a large enforcer. He's got a job to do and will make sure you don't stand in his way, because he's a professional.

See the pattern?

They're just regular folks, writ large. In some cases they're even more human than what Lee had originally envisioned.

So, ultimately? A good season. I really enjoyed it. It's not Shakespeare, but they're clearly having to check off some boxes so they can go and do the things they want to do later. It's a good introduction to the world that the show creators want to explore. I really like that world. I'm definitely gonna keep going!