Spider-Man Unlimited Episode Three: Where Evil Nests

Where Evil Nests

 

First Aired: October 16th, 1999

Synopsis: Peter Parker is getting kicked out of his apartment by Naoko Yamada-Jones since he hasn't paid rent and hasn't got a job, but he says he'll get a job taking photos of Spider-Man. As a result of their fighting Naoko's son Shane runs off since he hates fights and Naoko runs off after him. She gets grabbed by tentacles and taken into the sewers, which Shane sees. When Peter runs into him, he says that she was taken by the green thing. After Peter returns Shane home, he heads out as Spider-Man to find Naoko, and runs into Counter-Earth's version of the Green Goblin who he assumes kidnapped Naoko. They fight for a bit but Machine Men show up and they have to team up to defeat them. During the fight they see Shane head into the sewers, since he has a tracker for his mum and thinks he can find her. After defeating the Machine Men Green Goblin and Spider-Man go into the sewers after Shane and are attacked by a giant green blob, the source of the tentacles which grabbed Naoko.

The Green Goblin is captured by the blob, but Spider-Man gets away. Elsewhere, below the sewers, Naoko is taken to a place where Venom and Carnage are infecting people with insects which mind-control them. They explain that millenia ago the bugs arrived and had everyone linked together in a hive mind, but when the meteor which wiped out the dinosaurs hit, it drove them underground, where they have been waiting ever since. Spider-Man runs into Shane and gets Naoko's tracker, and he finds her right when she's about to be infected with an insect. He saves her but is surrounded by the green blob, but the Green Goblin, who freed himself by taking off his pants, shows up and saves Spider-Man. He evacuates Naoko, Shane, and the civilians being infected, while Spider-Man breaks some columns which cause the whole room to collapse, driving off Venom and Carnage. Later, Spider-Man takes photos of himself and manages to sell them to the Daily Byte, giving him money for rent. Naoko, assuming that Peter sent Spider-Man to save her, thanks him.

Subplots: 

• After Naoko and Shane leave the Green Goblin, he says bye to her behind her back and refers to her as his love. Presumably this means he's Shane's father briefly mentioned at the start of the episode as having disappeared, but what a twist would it be if he was just a crazy stalker.
  

 Miscellaneous Notes:

• Naoko's headed out to look for her son on the dangerous streets? Peter had better go after her...in his civvies, of course. What, did you think that was worthy of a change to his Spider-Man costume?
• We've gotten a few different ways to depict Spider-Man's spider-sense over the course of his different animated series. This episode reveals that this show decides to do it by flashing the screen wildly, like it's a Pikachu trying to frame a Porygon for seizure attacks.
• After taking photos of himself as Spider-Man, Peter says that it's "now time to claim my five thousand dollars!" A moment later, we see him enter the Daily Byte, where a large sign advertises the ten thousand dollar reward for photos of Spider-Man.

Review: We've gotten the setup mostly out of the way, now how does the show go when it's given room to start adding in actual plots and expand on the base of what we know about the characters? Not great, as it turns out. Spider-Man and the Green Goblin mistakenly fighting is a classic trope and I can't say I'm that fussed about it, but at the same time I'll be astonished if there's an actual explanation given for the Green Goblin coincidentally sharing a name and similar appearance to Spidey's greatest foe, beyond bamboozling the audience for a few seconds. His voice actor also sounds incredibly bored, and so when he and Spider-Man fight it's hard to feel like they're really getting into what should be an intense fight.

Then there's the stuff that goes down in the sewers. Okay, so I can buy that Counter-Earth also evolved life on it due to being in the Goldilocks Zone and that it had its own periods of dinosaurs being the dominant species. But a meteor also hit it? And the bugs - which are maybe the Synoptic; one of the symbiotes mentions it when referring to them but it's all a bit vague - survived it and...maybe turned into the green blob antagonist of this episode, judging by the visuals? But they're also still bugs that are actively being attached to people? None of this makes sense, and even if it did, it's not interesting.

So, yeah, it's kind of one step forwards, two steps back here. The Green Goblin does have potential, and Spider-Man getting a job (actually, new question - what was he doing for two weeks? Watching TV?) gives us a potential new set of supporting characters, although it would have been nice to see them push the boundaries a bit and give Peter the usual photography job. Other than that though, this episode is mediocre in its best bits, and not really a good way to convince me that, no, really, this show is different but great.