Spider-Man (1967) Episode Twenty-Six: Diamond Dust

Diamond Dust

First Aired: October 19th, 1968

Synopsis: Peter Parker is practicing baseball, since he wants to get onto the team. Meanwhile, a man in a chequered suit is talking to a group of men in gorilla suits about how they're going to steal a rare diamond. He has a replica, and it's compared to a baseball in size. Shortly afterwards, a gorilla is let free from a zoo enclosure, and police from all over the city show up to try and stop it before Spider-Man eventually turns up to save the day.

As a result of the gorilla rampage, there's only one guard at the museum where the diamond is, and the men go in to steal it.  Peter, meanwhile, is playing baseball nearby, and when a ball lands near the museum and he goes to retrieve it, he hears what's happening from an old man exiting the museum. Changing to Spider-Man, he goes in and defeats all of the thugs, but ends up with the diamond in the confusion. Returning to the baseball game, he ends up pitching it as the winning ball. Since it's the winning ball, people want to have it, but he says that he wouldn't give it up for a million.

"Spidey Swinging to Pad the Episode" Montages: Three, by my count, but there's plenty of repeated shots of people running away from the gorilla to make up for it.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Who's Peter practicing baseball with at the start of the episode? Why, it's none other than his best friend in the whole world, one of the most iconic characters in all of comics: Artie! Wait, who?
• In a bit of continuity which was probably less intentional and more reusing a backdrop, during one of the swinging montages, Spider-Man passes by the book shop of Miss Trubble, that lovable villain from the first season. There's another montage where he passes by a shop which I think was robbed by the Phantom, but he's a crappy villain so I don't care.
• Speaking of swinging montages, Peter retrieves the ball from just outside the museum. When he changes to Spider-Man and heads to the museum, the montage shows him swinging all over the city. Either he went all the way home to change, or the baseball was hit several kilometres away.
• When fighting the head of the goons, he sprays a smokescreen and gets around using some sort of mask. Spider-Man mentions that it won't stop him because he has infrared vision. No you don't, Spider-Man. Why would you lie like that?

Review: There's a quaint story in here somewhere, but I don't have the patience to find it. The moment the thugs mention that the diamond is just like a baseball, you know that there'll be some lame joke and/or mix-up involving it, and lo and behold, the episode delivers. Why the hell didn't Peter realise he still had the diamond when he left the museum? Why does he pitch it rather than saying, "You idiots didn't give me a ball to pitch"? Why didn't a single person notice that he threw a giant diamond at the batter? I know that it's supposed to be a cute joke and that I shouldn't be overthinking it, but it's not funny enough for me to overlook logic.

Other than that, we've got some terrible pacing once again. This plot easily could have fit into a ten minute window, possibly even five if you're good at compressing scenes and moving some dialogue around. The bit where the gorilla is released is some of the most egregious filler I've seen in this show, yet, and only seems to help the thugs in their plot because otherwise we wouldn't have an episode. I know this isn't the only episode to have something similar happen, but...this is just dumb.

On top of all of that, we've got Spider-Man having difficulty with the thugs, having to hide from them and then let himself be slowed down by their leader's gadgets. These are just thugs! Why can't we get a decent combat sequence which shows off Spider-Man's strengths and abilities? I'm not unwilling to accept recycled footage if that's an issue, you know.

This episode has a pitch which could work if the right tone was applied to it and the stupid scenes were cut, but it wasn't and they weren't, so take a guess at how much of your attention it deserves.