Spider-Man: The New Animated Series Episode Five: Keeping Secrets

Keeping Secrets

First Aired: July 25th, 2003

Synopsis: A cat burglar named Talon steals a television show award from a skyscraper, but Spider-Man catches her in the act. Their fight leads them to a construction site, where Talon causes a girder to fall which gives her enough time to get away. The next day, Harry Osborn is at a bridge when someone goes bungee jumping off it, leading him to declare that he's in love. At university later, Peter and Mary Jane are discussing that they find it odd how little they've seen of Harry recently when he shows up and explains that he's met someone and has been spending a lot of time with her. He invites them to have dinner at his place the next evening and meet her, and upon doing so, it turns out that Harry's girlfriend is Talon in her civilian identity, Cheyenne. Peter is suspicious of her only being with Harry so that she can rob him, but she mentions that she's a trust fund child as well. She leaves after dinner as she has a flight early the next morning, but Peter heads out as Spider-Man and finds her scoping a building. Although he tries talking to her about why she's doing what she is, she's evasive. Talon does, however, agree to meet with Spider-Man again at nine o'clock the next night.

Spider-Man creepily looks in on Harry Osborn's next, where Cheyenne has returned and claims she's putting off her flight. Peter angsts about whether he should tell Harry what's going on, but although he decides he will, when he goes to tell Harry Cheyenne is there, so he can't do it. He, Harry, Cheyenne, and Mary Jane go rock-climbing for the afternoon and Peter tries hinting at some stuff to Mary Jane, who thinks that Peter's jealous that Harry's not spending time with him. That night, as Peter prepares for his meeting with Talon, Harry shows up and says that he needs to talk about Cheyenne, but Peter has to head off for his meeting. When he meets her helicopters show up and try arresting Spider-Man, implicitly because Talon told them to, but as they shoot at him a bullet clips Talon. She refuses Spider-Man's help and jumps off the building they're on, escaping. The next day, Harry gets a call from Cheyenne saying that she's moving, implicitly breaking up with him. Peter comforts Harry by saying that they'll go out for doughnuts to talk about it.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Peter goes to Harry Osborn's dinner, then the next day he's invited to spend the afternoon with the gang, and he agrees to in spite of saying that he has a class he needs to do stuff for. That very evening, Harry is offended when Peter says he's got a meeting and tells him to ditch it. Sheesh, let the guy live his life a little, guys!
• When Talon is shot by the helicopter, there's a brief cloud of blood that's seen. I'm fairly sure we've seen blood in a Spider-Man cartoon before - during Morbius' origin, if nothing else (?) - but I don't think we've seen it so directly as such a consequence of violence. Come to think of it, have we seen anyone get shot on screen before?
• In the weirdest moment of this episode, when Peter's debating whether he should tell Harry about the fact that Cheyenne is Talon, he dictates his thoughts to his computer, which writes it out as text and apparently sends it out somewhere because he gets at least one reply. What the hell?
  

Review: I think that some genuinely good intentions went into this episode. Talon dating Harry Osborn is the classic Black Cat dilemma, only since it affects someone other than Peter, that arguably makes it a harder choice for him to make, and it also has implicit further complications in that Peter can't exactly explain to Harry how he knows that Cheyenne is a thief. Only...pretty much everything in the execution of this episode is done terribly. For a start, look at the way Harry and Cheyenne meet - he's standing at the edge of a bridge (contemplating suicide?!), she runs past him and bungee jumps with a bit of flirting, and that's the sum of the build up to them dating. There's obviously a time skip between that and Peter and Mary Jane going to dinner, but it doesn't feel like it's lengthy. The show also tries to hide that Harry's girlfriend is Talon until it's revealed at the party, but in the bridge scene her voice is so obviously identical that it's a futile effort. Cut the bridge scene and the episode is already much stronger.

Other than that - for all of Peter's worry about Harry dating a thief, we only ever see Talon steal one thing, so it doesn't feel like that much of a moral dilemma. On that note - why did she steal the award? She says that it's because it means something to the owner, which feels like a setup for something, but nothing ever comes of it. The only other thing we see Talon doing which is morally dubious is her implicitly tricking the helicopters into showing up to take out Spider-Man, but...how did she do it? And more importantly, why? He was honestly trying to open up to her and get her to talk to him, and while she does say that it was annoying and she wants him to drop it, that's hardly "the only way to settle this is with a helicopter" behaviour.

Take out the Spider-Man action and most of what you have here is young adult angst, but scratch below the surface and it's revealed to be pretty shallow and contrived. Focus on the Spider-Man action and it's mostly Spider-Man trying to understand Talon and being rejected, in-between her doing things which raise more questions than anything. There's not really much reason to stick around here, unless Black Cat knockoffs are your thing, I guess.