Spectacular Spider-Man Episode Eleven: Group Therapy

Group Therapy

First Aired: May 31st, 2008

Synopsis: Electro is released from therapy and contacts Doctor Octopus, who is in prison and has contacted him, as well as Vulture and the Enforcers; Vulture in turn has contacted Sandman and Rhino. That night Electro shuts down the prison's transformer which lets Rhino and Sandman free themselves and the others, who are given their gear by Hammerhead. In the Parker household, Peter finds out that Aunt May is feeling weak, but encourages her to go to a play she was planning on seeing with Anna Watson regardless. He goes to catch up with Eddie Brock, who's annoyed at him once more for seemingly taking photos of Spider-Man stealing the alien organism rather than calling the police. In the city, Rhino goes on a rampage and Spider-Man shows up, but is soon ambushed by the rest of the group. Aunt May is coincidentally in the area, and Spider-Man ushers her into her theatre, but unbeknownst to him she has a heart attack once inside. Spider-Man tries fighting the villains, but they've anticipated the tricks he used to defeat them last time and prepared for it. Spider-Man ends up escaping via the sewers, and when the villains futilely try to follow him they soon end up bickering.

In the aftermath of the fight J. Jonah Jameson discovers that Aunt May had the heart attack and tries calling Peter, but Peter ignores it since he thinks Jonah is calling him to yell at him. Peter goes to sleep, exhausted, while the villainous group have dinner. Their goals are at odds with each other and they soon start arguing, but Ock convinces them to work together and that they can draw Spider-Man out. Later that night, the alien attaches itself to Peter and he goes into the city, staying oddly silent while fighting the villains. He eventually manages to defeat most of them by tricking them into hurting each other, but nearly kills Doctor Octopus before George Stacy tells him to stand down. The next day Peter wakes up, still exhausted, and sees a newspaper saying that Spider-Man defeated the villains. He realises that the alien used his sleeping body to fight, and initially has no problem with it since everything worked out in the end, but then Mary Jane comes to his house and lets him know about Aunt May's heart attack.

 

Subplots:

• Eddie Brock goes on a date with Mary Jane and tells her about his history with Peter. He's bitter and angry enough about it that she ends up leaving him and telling him that Peter's twice the man he is.
  

Miscellaneous Notes:

• When George Stacy and his police officers approach the big fight between Spider-Man and the villains, he tells them "Carter! DeWolff! With me!" Jean DeWolff was a police officer who often worked with Spider-Man in the comics before she died. Stan Carter was the villain who killed her, the Sin-Eater.
• Spider-Man getting exhausted from the symbiote using his body to fight crime while he slept was his primary reason in the comics for wanting to get rid of it, although Peter's thoughts also show him to be a bit moody and angry in this episode.
  

Review: There's a number of Spider-Man concepts and stories that are too good not to use, if possible, and this episode does a smart thing by combining two of them into one (namely, the Sinister Six and the black costume saga). Aside from helping to make the pacing of this season nice and snappy, it also gives a good justification as to how Spidey's able to defeat all six villains - because the suit enhances his abilities and is more pragmatic than him, duh! The fight itself - the big one, not the initial one - is very impressive too, with a lot of clever tricks used to take out the villains. Some of them feel a little convenient (one of Shocker's gauntlets can destabilise Sandman? Electro's electricity can travel through the ground and up Ock's tentacles? Sure, I guess) but overall it's very fluid and dynamic.

That being said, if I had to choose a weak point of the episode, it would probably be the fight, as contradictory as that sounds. Spider-Man not talking or being seen waking up makes it pretty obvious that something is up, even if you've never heard of the symbiote before, and for a body that the symbiote is supposedly controlling like a puppet, he moves very fluidly and naturally. It also feels like the episode is setting up that the villains' conflicting goals will lead to them turning on each other, or deciding not to bother with Spider-Man and go their own way, but, no, after the restaurant scene it never really comes up and Spider-Man just ends up bashing their skulls in.

All of the above are, of course, minor complaints. Villain team-ups can often be fun, and this one is no exception - there's still room for the characters' personalities to shine, like Shocker being a bit more of a team player, or Ock all but saying that the others were just pawns that he was manipulating. The stuff with Aunt May having a heart attack is also excellent - I'm sure that some people would consider it contrived that Peter doesn't find out about it until the end of the episode, but I consider it to be an excellent use of dramatic irony. A great episode all around.