Spider-Man (1981) Episode Twenty-Five: The Return of Kingpin

The Return of Kingpin

First Aired: February 27th, 1982

Synopsis: Spider-Man saves a man from being mugged, and afterwards is approached by a man named Hal Hunter, who claims to represent a talent agency that wants to hire Spider-Man. Spider-Man is reluctant to do so, but after Aunt May says that Spider-Man is only in it for the money and being unable to afford a holiday to Hawaii for it, he changes his mind and goes to Hunter, not knowing that Kingpin is behind Hunter and that this is all a scheme of his. Spider-Man's first task for Hunter is to take photos of a museum exhibit, but unbeknownst to him his camera records the security systems at the museum, and it's robbed that night.

The next job Spider-Man is given is as a courier of a briefcase holding one million dollars, but when Spider-Man has to get involved in stopping a bank robbery, it's swapped for a counterfeit. By now Spider-Man suspects something, but nevertheless accepts his next job, to repair a clock tower. He's set up to trigger the clock tower's earthquake alarm so some diamonds can be stolen, but Spider-Man follows the Kingpin and his thugs afterwards. He defeats the thugs and Hal Hunter, then goes after Kingpin, managing to defeat both the crime boss himself and his martial arts instructors. In the aftermath, Spider-Man is given a monetary reward for fixing the crimes he'd inevitably assisted with, and he uses it to send Aunt May to Hawaii.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• In a news report on Spider-Man, it's mentioned that he's been around for ten years. Assuming that Peter Parker got his powers at fifteen in this universe, that'd put him at twenty-five years old. Also interesting to note is that the year this aired was the twentieth anniversary of Spider-Man as a character.
• A pet peeve of mine is when in fiction a bomb or whatever will display, say, ten seconds until it explodes, with each second taking considerably longer than an actual, real-world second to tick down. In a scene where Kingpin trains against the martial artists, he asks how long it took him and is told, "Fifteen seconds." I checked, and that value looks to pretty much be the exact amount of time it took. Good job, writers!

Review: There's definitely a lot in this episode which works pretty well. Spider-Man working for the Kingpin is, of course, nice and dramatically ironic, as is Aunt May assuming that Spider-Man only saves people for money, right after a scene where we've seen that that couldn't be further from the truth. Watching the different ways in which Spider-Man is unwittingly help to commit crimes is enjoyable to see how they'll turn into a criminal act, and the final fight scene with Spider-Man going after Kingpin is excellent. Something about Spider-Man being too impatient to wait for an elevator, ripping the doors open and climbing up the shaft, only to be met at the other end by not only Kingpin, but all of his martial artists, is just too cool to be anything but great.

At the same time, there are definitely some noticeable flaws. The third crime, with Spider-Man having to repair a clock tower, utterly baffled me in what was happening; in spite of Spider-Man strongly suspecting that there'll be a crime taking place somehow most of the action involves him dicking around with mechanical clock figures. Kingpin repeatedly talking about how he can toy with Spider-Man at any time also feels pretty short-sighted given that Spider-Man was suspecting things from the second crime. I guess it could be him being arrogant, and intentionally showcasing a flaw of his, but it didn't come across that way to me.

Still, overall, there's nothing that bad here. The best comparison is between this episode and the previous one - they're both fine episodes with plots that make sense, even if they're not reinventing the wheel as they do so. If this is the quality we get for the last episode of the series, then I'm honestly not complaining - we surpassed the bar the 1967 series set quite a while ago.