Spider-Man: The New Animated Series Episode Six: Tight Squeeze

Tight Squeeze

First Aired: July 25th, 2003

Synopsis: At the board meeting of a generic company, a group of mercenaries armed with jetpacks and high-tech suits calling themselves Pterodax burst in, intending on breaking into the company's vault and selling the diamonds within. Elsewhere, Peter, Harry, and Mary Jane are using binoculars to spy on people making out, but Harry makes excuses and leaves, thinking that Peter and Mary Jane should get together. They start flirting when Peter spots Pterodax and heads off to be Spider-Man. He manages to fairly easily defeat most of Pterodax but their leader, Sergei, throws one of the company members out a hole in the wall, and while Spider-Man's saving her Pterodax get away. Later, Peter sells photos of the incident to J. Jonah Jameson, and since Jonah undersells him, he tries selling video footage to another media company, Empire One. They don't take it, but Peter runs into a researcher named Indy who he hits it off with, and is able to convince her to take his footage. She manages to get it run on the news. Peter makes her a custom CD to thank her and tells Harry Osborn, but Harry still thinks that Peter and Mary Jane should get together. Mary Jane runs into Peter shortly afterwards and they arrange a date.

Peter goes to Empire One to give his custom CD to Indy, but the place is attacked by Pterodax since the footage of the robbery was broadcast by them. Pterodax hold everyone there hostage and say that if Spider-Man doesn't show up within an hour and a half, they'll kill everyone there using bombs which use sonics to kill without damaging buildings. Peter volunteers to be the cameraman who broadcasts this message, and while doing so uses his webs to steal one of the mercenary's communicators without anyone realising that he's responsible. Elsewhere, Mary Jane thinks that Peter stood her up, but Harry explains to her about the hostage situation, and the two of them head towards Empire One. There, Peter manages to duck out of the group of hostages, change to Spider-Man, and return, but in that time Pterodax have left. He gets the hostages out and narrowly manages to disable the bombs in time, then overhears on the communicator that Pterodax have returned to the company they previously attacked to get the diamonds. Heading over there he takes them out in spite of the leader taking him on a brief jetpack ride. He returns to Empire One and comes out of the building as Peter, but as Mary Jane runs over to him, Indy beats her to it and kisses Peter, leading Mary Jane to run off.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• I realise it's not really that bad in the grand scheme of things, but in case the italics didn't make it obvious, the zeitgeist of Peter making Indy a custom CD really hit me. These days I guess the romantic thing to do would be to share a Spotify playlist with someone?
• Pterodax claim that their name is "...a nod to our winged dinosaur friends - we fly, we've got tough hides, and we will snap your heads off...". I mean, I get it when they say it, but if you've got to explain your supervillain name it's not really a good name, is it?

Review: Pterodax are incredibly, incredibly generic, from their name to their motivation to their powers to their design to probably some other things that I can't think of right now, but the episode manages to work fairly well in spite of it. They don't need to be flashy or memorable; they just need to provide a threat and hold Peter hostage, and I'm not going to deny that they do that competently enough to make the episode work. It's a fun premise, having Peter being held hostage while the villains want Spider-Man, and while I'm sure that it's been used before both by Spider-Man and other superheroes, there's no denying that it's a solid, fun plot.

Aside from the fun of that, we've also been introduced to Indy, who feels like enough effort has been put into her that she'll be a recurring character - if she just gets forgotten after this episode, especially given the ending, I'll be annoyed. She's quite fun and friendly, and honestly, given how annoyed Mary Jane is in this episode at Peter not dating her in spite of the fact that she's never actually talked to him about it, I'll take Indy as Peter's girlfriend over Mary Jane.

There's definitely some stuff to complain about here - Peter and his friends spying on people making out is an incredibly weird thing to do ("this is what uni students do, right?"), and while Pterodax are competent enough to make the episode work I'm not exactly keen to see them return - but overall the episode manages to both have an interesting situation for Peter to get out of and advance his personal life a bit. Overall, call this one of the good ones.