Spider-Man: The New Animated Series Episode Two: Royal Scam

Royal Scam

First Aired: July 11th, 2003

Synopsis: Peter Parker is trying to work out a budget when a helicopter flies past chasing a limo. He investigates as Spider-Man and discovers that it's piloted by federal agents who wanted to reach him. A special chip has been developed that can decrypt bank transactions, and they're worried that it could break the world's economy and want Spider-Man to get it so that they can work out how to neutralise it. Unbeknownst to Spider-Man, the agents are actually working for Kingpin, who wants the chip for his own nefarious purposes. Later at university, Mary Jane drops the bombshell on Peter that she's going to ditch class, since she's got an acting showcase, and wants him to come and see it. He says he can't as he has class, but when he goes off as Spider-Man to get the chip and has to wait for it to be unguarded, calls her up and says he'll come after all. He successfully steals the chip and delivers it directly to Kingpin, but is suspicious. His suspicions are heightened when he sees the "federal agent" he talked to is an actor in Mary Jane's play, and he realises that he's been duped. Spider-Man goes after Kingpin's limo and fights him, but is naturally taken aback by Kingpin's strength and the villain escapes. He calls up the local FBI branch and puts in an anonymous tip about what's happened.

The next day Mary Jane is annoyed that Peter didn't show up to the showcase but as there's another one that night she forgives him and says he can come to that one. When Peter arrives at it a van pulls up and he's taken inside by the FBI, who traced his call, and think that Peter's talk about the Kingpin is a red herring to let Spider-Man get away with the theft. Thanks to them, Peter can't show up to Mary Jane's play again, and the next day she tells him that that night is the last night it's on. Peter gets a call from the FBI who say that they intercepted a transmission showing that the digital heist will happen that day. Peter recalls overhearing Kingpin say that there'll be a mini-chopper at the heist for protection, and lets the FBI know using Oscorp, and then find the chopper himself as Spider-Man. The FBI arrest all of Kingpin's men but Kingpin himself escapes in the chopper, only for Spider-Man to stop him and leave him to be captured by the FBI. As Peter Parker he makes it to Mary Jane's play, but she says that she realised that she was making a big deal over him being able to show up, and walks off with a colleague.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Kingpin is voiced here by Michael Clarke Duncan, who also played him in the 2003 Daredevil movie. For what it's worth, both there and here he's an excellent Kingpin; if you ever want an argument against the stupid notion that "adaptations need to keep the same race as the original character!" he's a prime example.
• Kingpin here is implied to have his usual shtick of "ahaha you didn't expect that this was all muscle, did you?" but he's also got a weird trait of conspicuously eating unhealthy foods, such as covering his coffee in a stack of whipped cream or threatening his henchman if a single chip is missing from his takeaway burger. I don't know what they were going for either.
• When Mary Jane's giving Peter shit for not wanting to ditch class, he offhandedly mentions that he actually prefers photography to science. It's very much a depends-on-the-writer thing, but in general Peter's photography passion is usually shown to be a means for him to make money whereas science is his real passion. Come to think of it, if this version of Peter really does prefer photography, then why isn't he doing a course for it?
• Kingpin lists some of the banks he's planning to rob to a mysterious group of people, but stops short of the map of Australia he's got up. What the hell bank was he planning to rob there? The Commonwealth Bank?

Review: I wouldn't call it perfect, but if you want to know how to write a good example of Spider-Man interfering with Peter Parker's life, you could do a lot worse than looking at this episode. He's continuously trying to do one simple thing - attend Mary Jane's play - and it just keeps getting in the way, even when he's trying to plan around it. It also gets bonus points for its execution on two fronts - firstly, unlike the Raimi films where he can't take two steps without hearing sirens in the distance, sighing, and running off to change, here it feels less like convenient timing interrupting and more like there not being enough time for him to space out his activities. Secondly, the first night that he wants to attend Mary Jane's play he doesn't technically have to be Spider-Man - nothing's stopping him from just walking in and attending the play other than his morals. There's not an emergency going on; he theoretically has time to do this one thing. But he makes the sacrifice anyway, because that's who he is.

Kingpin's got a good showing in this episode, too, in spite of the aforementioned weird eating habits. His plan legitimately would have worked perfectly if Peter hadn't happened to run into the actor playing the FBI agent (more on that later), and he puts up a solid fight whenever he has to. He's clever, tough, and competent, and while he does benefit from having a simpler plot to be in than Turbo-Jet from last episode, that doesn't change the fact that he comes out of the episode with a much stronger showing than the aforementioned villain.

Probably the biggest complaint I have is Peter running into the actor playing the FBI agent - it makes sense that he would run into him in a theatre, but why would Kingpin need to hire an actor for this one role in the overall plan if the other fake agent is one of his henchmen? The more you think about it the more you realise that it's all done so that Spider-Man can get in on the plot, and then it takes away from the serendipity of Peter running into the guy and realising what's happened and undermines the whole episode. It's not enough to ruin the episode - this is a pretty good one overall - but it definitely is a thing that I wish I hadn't thought about as much as I had.