The Cat
First Aired: February 8th, 1997
Synopsis: Still feeling guilty over Mary Jane's disappearance into a portal, Spider-Man goes to Felicia Hardy since she's also experienced loss. He finds her and her mother being threatened by Doctor Octopus, who had been discussing some negotiations with Felicia's mother before Felicia came home. Doctor Octopus leaves after a brief fight with Spider-Man, and Spider-Man finds a photo of Felicia's father. Before Spider-Man leaves, Felicia tells him that Octopus and her mum were discussing something called the Ausbach Fortune. When Doctor Octopus gets back to his base, he's attacked by some men, captured, and taken to Kingpin, who explains that Octopus is getting in the way of one of his schemes, and forces an alliance. Kingpin then explains that when Chameleon was captured previously, he had a techno-organic virus put into him which lets him shapeshift without his belt, and lets Kingpin contact him remotely. Kingpin shows Octopus Chameleon's point of view, and that his cellmate is John Hardesky, Felicia's father. Kingpin reveals that Chameleon's imprisoned in the SHIELD Helicarrier.
Peter looks up information on the Ausbach Fortune, and discovers that it was a jewel robbery pulled off by Hardesky. He recognises photos of Nick Fury from Hardesky's trial, and uses the communicator SHIELD previously gave J. Jonah Jameson to get to the Helicarrier so he can find out more. Right then the Helicarrier's attacked by Kingpin, and in the chaos Chameleon escapes his cell, and swaps places with Hardesky, who's taken away by Kingpin. Later, Peter checks out the information he got from SHIELD, and discovers that Hardesky watched Steve Rogers get transformed into Captain America when he was a kid, and that he memorised the formula for the Super-Soldier Serum. Elsewhere, Doctor Octopus captures Felicia and takes her to Kingpin, who threatens her unless Hardesky gives him the Super-Soldier Serum formula.
Review: Don't let the Helicarrier heist fool you - this episode is pretty much a big info-dump, introducing the mystery of John Hardesky and then slowly revealing answers about him as it goes. It works surprisingly well, as the information we discover is actually a bit left-field. The Ausbach Fortune turns out to be a red herring, SHIELD are holding John Hardesky not because of his crimes but to keep the serum formula safe, and the whole thing ties into Captain America, who I don't think has been mentioned on the show before. It's all quite clever and uses continuity I didn't think would be relevant.
Weirdly enough, one of the problems with the episode might be Spider-Man's presence - the way he gets up to the Helicarrier feels jarring, and if you missed the season one episode that introduced Nick Fury and SHIELD then you have little context for it outside of the sparse exposition given. Once he's there he basically just gets the information then disappears, and we concentrate on the Kingpin and Doctor Octopus' heist - surely we could have focused on them more and had them do some more exposition?
Overall though, this isn't a bad one. It's at one of those awkward story points where it's doing so much setup that how good it is will really become apparent in retrospect as to whether it can deliver on the setup. I'm enjoying it so far though, and I hope that it does manage to live up to the expectations it's set.
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