Spectacular Spider-Man Episode Five: Competition

Competition

First Aired: March 29th, 2008

Synopsis: Aunt May discovers that Peter's school is hosting the Fall Formal and suggests that he ask out Mary Jane Watson, but he's not too keen on the idea. At school Harry forgives Peter for not helping him out with his calculus, and says that he wants to try for the football team since there's two openings available. Peter doesn't want to join at first, before hearing that the jocks are planning on beating up Harry, so he agrees to audition with Harry. The jocks want their friend Hobie Brown to join the team, but although they conspire to stop Peter and Harry, the two do pretty well in their tryouts. Elsewhere, criminals Flint Marko and Alex O'Hirn, who have been captured by Spider-Man, are freed by Hammerhead. Marko is taken away to a lab where Otto Octavius performs an experiment on him, turning him into the superhuman Sandman. Although Hammerhead wants Sandman to get revenge on Spider-Man, Sandman refuses and instead robs a bank, which still works fine for Hammerhead. Spider-Man encounters Sandman shortly after this, and Sandman ends up fleeing after a brief fight, although he doesn't get away with his money.

The next day Peter and Harry do more tryouts, but Harry's disappointed since Peter is stealing his thunder, and didn't want to join at first. When the jocks invite Harry and Peter out to the Silver Spoon Harry joins, while Peter jumps on a bus with Gwen. She forgives him for prioritising taking photos, and starts to ask him out to the Fall Formal, but before she can their bus is stopped by Sandman robbing an armoured car. Peter runs off and changes to Spider-Man, and he and Sandman soon end up at a construction site. Although Sandman gets Spider-Man trapped under a pile of girders, Spider-Man escapes and manages to coat Sandman in liquid cement, stopping him. The next day Peter intentionally lets himself do badly at the tryouts so that Harry (and Hobie) will get on the team, and as a bonus, cheerleader Glory Grant is impressed by Harry after dumping her boyfriend Kong for being immature. Although Peter feels that he missed out on an opportunity, Gwen joins him for ice cream afterwards, so it's not all bad.

Subplots:

• Sandman mentions that he was given his powers by the Big Man, who Spider-Man's never heard of. Spider-Man is intrigued, although he doesn't get any more information.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• When Peter tells Aunt May that he isn't going to the Fall Formal, she says that he lives an unadventurous life. A brief half-mask appears over his face; a classic visual from the comics.
• Hobie Brown is, in the comics, the Prowler, often an ally of Spider-Man's.

Review: Another episode gone, and like the previous ones, while I have some complaints here, they're really more nitpicks than anything and I'm still overall impressed and entertained with what we've got here. For the good, it's great to see Flint Marko turned into Sandman - he's been established as a recurring character by now and is a familiar face; no need to endlessly tease out his transformation when we could instead do it here and then have a fight with Sandman. Otto Octavius is also now wearing his tentacles, setting up him for a villainous role, and if you think that O'Hirn was freed for no reason, you're clearly not paying attention.

For the bad, we've got some more pacing issues again. At the construction site Spider-Man's trapped under a bunch of girders, we cut to Harry at the Silver Spoon, and then when we return to the construction site it's dark and there's a police cordon being set up. Was he knocked out and Sandman was just waiting around for him to come to? It's an odd decision, especially given that there's no real reason I can think of for it to be night, story-wise. Peter's also oddly enthusiastic about joining the football team and his last day of tryouts is shown as something of a sacrifice - while he did seem to be having fun, he also seems to be completely ignoring how Flash and Kong were bullying him.

Other than the above, we've also got subplots moving along nicely. Spider-Man's now aware of the Big Man, who is still a mystery to us viewers too, and heavily hinting that Gwen has a crush on Peter is cute...not to mention dramatic, given that Harry was thinking of asking her out to the Fall Formal. Sandman's debut episode is therefore overall pretty strong, and yet another one that goes to demonstrate why this is such a good Spider-Man show.