Natural Selection
First Aired: March 15th, 2008
Synopsis: Spider-Man stops some robbers from stealing from a bakery and gets photos of it, but when he returns home he finds that the bakery window caught the flash so the photos are useless. Meanwhile, Curt Connors tries injecting himself with his new lizard serum, and is amazed when his lost arm regenerates. The next day, Flash Thompson throws water balloons at Peter, who dodges at first but eventually lets himself get hit to preserve his secret. Gwen and Randy Robertson step in to defend him, and Flash gives up. Gwen and Peter then head to the lab, where Curt reveals his new arm and they all celebrate. Curt's wife Martha notices something though - namely, Curt has started growing scales. Curt's son Billy is sent out of the room while they all look into a fix for Curt, whose mind is starting to degenerate. Peter suggests that they make a serum to clean all non-human DNA from Curt, and also notes that it could remove his spider powers. Curt fully transforms into the Lizard, and transforms further before escaping. Eddie runs after him, and when Peter does so too so that he can change to Spider-Man, Martha and Gwen assume that he's a coward since he could otherwise be working on the cleansing serum.
Spider-Man follows the Lizard's trail of destruction to the subway station, and the two of them fight on and around it before jumping on a train. The Lizard is able to knock Spider-Man off and escape on the train, but Eddie manages to stay on the train and follow him. Back at the lab, Martha and Gwen have finished the serum, and Spider-Man conveniently shows up so that he can give it to the Lizard. Eddie calls and reveals that the Lizard is in the Bronx zoo. Spider-Man heads there and tries fighting the Lizard in the house of reptiles, but is dragged underwater and only saved when the Lizard fights a crocodile and Eddie drags him out. He realises that if he can fight the Lizard someplace cold, his reptile blood won't like it and he'll be slowed down enough that Spidey can get the serum into him. Spider-Man plans to lure him to the polar bear exhibit, but the Lizard manages to beat him up. Billy Connors suddenly arrives, having listened to Eddie's call, and distracts the Lizard for long enough that Spider-Man gets him into the polar bear exhibit and changes him back to Curt Connors. Peter sells photos of the fight to the Daily Bugle, but when everyone at the lab finds out, they're furious as they think he ditched helping with the serum to do so. He's fired from the lab. He takes an extra vial of the serum from the lab and plans to drink it and stop being Spider-Man, when he sees a photo of Uncle Ben and remembers about his responsibility. He puts away the serum and decides that he's still needed.
Miscellaneous Notes:
- Martha first gets Billy out of the office when Curt starts transforming further by saying that Eddie installed Space Whackos 2 on the office computer, to which Billy replies "Whackos? WICKED!" Damn, it must be a good game if he's saying that it's wicked!
- When we see the newspaper that Peter's photo appeared in, the article looks to be taken from the text displayed in the opening, which means that it mentions villains that haven't appeared in the series yet (namely, Shocker, Sandman, Rhino, Green Goblin, Doctor Octopus, and Venom). Whoops. There's also one bizarre line which says, in its entirety, "Spider-Man creates J. Jonah Jameson."
- A polar bear exhibit in New York feels pretty plot-convenient, so I had a check and it turns out that, yeah, polar bears really do show up in zoos from time to time. But it's also not recommended, which absolutely makes sense, so we'll call it a draw.
Review: As with last episode, the weak point of this episode is definitely the action scenes. They display a good usage of Spider-Man's agility and reflexes and show some clever moves from both sides, but ultimately when there's fighting going on there's not a lot of plot happening, and the plot is really what we're here for. None of the fighting is bad, and it doesn't take too long or anything like that; it just isn't the most interesting part of what we're watching.
The best part of the episode, by far, is the post-climax stuff. For the past few episodes there's been a subplot of Peter wanting to get Spider-Man photos for the Daily Bugle, and he's finally achieved that...but at the cost of his job, and possibly his friendship with the others at the lab. It's logical, it absolutely makes sense, and it's not as if Peter can come up with a believable excuse for what's going on. What a fantastic twist. While there's not a whole lot of drama in him taking the serum - even if he took it, we know that he'd be back as Spidey within two or three episodes, tops - it is a nice Chekhov's Gun for him to keep.
While this isn't as heavy on the horror aspect of the Lizard as his last appearance - Spider-Man: The New Animated Series' Law of the Jungle - one last thing that I'd like to comment on is some excellent use of colour and tone at the start of the episode. When Curt takes the serum and his arm regenerates, the lighting is muted and low, and it conveys an ominous tone brilliantly. The arm regenerating is fantastic too; for a few moments it almost looks like something out of Akira. We're still in the early ages of the show, so things are still being set up, but in spite of that there's not really a whole lot to complain about here.
No comments:
Post a Comment