Spectacular Spider-Man Episode Twelve: Intervention

Intervention

First Aired: June 7th, 2008

Synopsis: Peter heads to the hospital to see Aunt May and runs into Eddie Brock there, who's still angry at him. Aunt May insists that she's fine, but doesn't realise that Peter's gotten a massive bill for her hospital stay since the American healthcare system sucks, which is causing him to stress out. He lashes out at his friends when he returns to school, and goes to Tombstone to ask if he can have a job. Tombstone agrees on the condition that Spider-Man not fight any street-level crime for a week, which he agrees to. Unbeknownst to Peter, as a result of the symbiote still missing from the lab they can't afford to keep Eddie hired, so he's fired. When Peter heads to hospital later Flash Thompson is there, and he calls Peter out on how he's dismissing his friends' attempts to help him. Peter realises that Flash is right, and also that the symbiote is affecting him negatively. At a nearby church's belltower he tries ripping off the symbiote, but it resists him doing so and starts attacking Peter in his mind, showing Peter a flashback to his origin - of how he was bitten by a spider, let a robber get away at the wrestling ring he went to, and how that action led to Uncle Ben's death.

The symbiote tells Peter that the world is always taking from him and that he's entitled to be selfish, but the Uncle Ben in Peter's head encourages Peter to resist, reminding him of all the good he's done. The symbiote tries again, telling Peter that he's all alone, but again Uncle Ben helps him, reminding him of all of the friends he has. Peter realises that the symbiote feeds on negative emotions, and gains the strength to rip it off. He returns it to the lab and lowers the temperature in its environment so that it will die, but Eddie Brock shows up and catches him. Spider-Man ignores Eddie questioning what he's doing and leaves, but unbeknownst to him the symbiote isn't dead. Eddie opens up its container and embraces the symbiote, discovering in the process that Peter and Spider-Man are one and the same. Blaming him for everything that's gone wrong in his life, Eddie swears revenge.

Subplots:

• Mary Jane catches up with Gwen over lunch, and in the process deduces that Gwen has a crush on Peter. She encourages her to tell Peter about it, since he won't notice otherwise.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Not that Peter could have known it, but when Uncle Ben reminds him of all of the friends he has, amongst them is good old Norman Osborn, the man who worked with Hammerhead to create some supervillains. Great judge of character, that Ben.

Review: While I can understand the desire to make removing the symbiote a more involved process than just standing near a bell and bonging it a few times, I've got to say, I think I could have done without the flashback to Spider-Man's origin. It's not the show's fault that I've seen Spider-Man's origin a tonne of times by now, and it's not presented badly at all, but at the same time, it's hard to feel like there's anything new here. (Hell, given that this show, like all others I've seen, has been happy to jump in with Spider-Man already an operating superhero, I question whether we even needed it at all).

Unfortunately, the majority of this episode is the origin flashback and Peter fighting the symbiote in his mind, and I just don't find it that engaging. Strangely, one of the things that I think weakens it is that the symbiote starts speaking to Peter, but in a more evil version of his voice (one of the things that took me out of the episode for a moment was the line "No...we do not like the vibrations.") - I get that they're trying to make the symbiote the personification of the negative thoughts we all have from time to time, but I don't think it pulls it off. Even outside of the battle in the mind there are a few odd moments here, like Spidey turning down the temperature to kill the symbiote, then happily turning his back on Eddie, still in the same room as it without any thought as to what could go wrong here.

Don't get me wrong, there's some good stuff here and there - Flash being the one to call Peter out on his behaviour is a standout, and Eddie's slow spiral downwards over the last few episodes does feel like it gets good payoff here - but this is the closest that the show has come to having a bad episode. It's just a little too drawn out, and while I do appreciate the applicability of the symbiote as being a mental illness, I've seen better elsewhere.