Spectacular Spider-Man Episode Fourteen: Blueprints

Blueprints

First Aired: June 22nd, 2009

Synopsis: Peter's unsure how to proceed with Gwen after she kissed him, and wants to look for Eddie, who's disappeared. He resolves to talk to Gwen, but when he goes to school things are awkward between them. At the city docks a shipment of computer parts for Empire State University has just arrived. A flamboyant man, Mysterio, shows up and says that he'll save people from the evils of technology, then says some vaguely Latin-sounding words and makes the shipment disappear. Back at school, Peter tries to talk to Gwen, but Liz Allan interrupts and asks Peter to tutor her, which he agrees to. Later, Mysterio goes to liberate a truck of its cargo, but Spider-Man appears and fights him. Mysterio ends up using his magic to throw the truck off the bridge they're on, and while Spider-Man's saving the driver Mysterio disappears. When Peter mentions what's happened to Liz, in the context of reading a Daily Bugle article about it, she mentions that if Mysterio is doing magic, it's probably all about misdirection.

Curt Connors, his wife Martha, Peter's science teacher Professor Warren, and Warren's brother Miles are all having dinner at Norman Osborn's house, and Curt is convinced to take Peter in as a lab assistant again. Norman gets a call about an issue at Oscorp, which is of course due to Mysterio. Spider-Man shows up again and fights Mysterio, and notices that some bats Mysterio seemingly conjures are actually robots, in spite of Mysterio's apparent anti-technology motivation. When Mysterio seemingly causes more computer parts to disappear in a cloud of smoke, Spider-Man jumps into the smoke, and finds himself taken to Mysterio's base. Mysterio attacks Spider-Man with more robots and illusions, but Spider-Man blindfolds himself and trusts his spider-sense to warn him of the real dangers. Spider-Man's eventually able to defeat Mysterio, who turns out to be one of Chameleon's accomplices. Returning home, Peter finds out that he's gotten an exclusive contract with the Daily Bugle and goes to call Gwen, but before he can do so gets a call from Norman about the new lab position. Norman offers to be a mentor for Peter, and although Peter is suspicious, he can't find any reason to decline. Later, it turns out that the Mysterio that was captured was actually an android, and that the parts Mysterio stole are all safe. Mysterio's ally, the Tinkerer, contacts their boss, the Master Planner, who confirms that his plan is still going ahead.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• This is the first episode of the second season, and the opening credits have changed slightly - Harry Osborn and J. Jonah Jameson no longer appear, being replaced by Liz Allan and Norman Osborn instead. Of note, Norman's brief spotlight has a heavy green background. Oooooohhhhh.
• One of the dock workers at Mysterio's first robbery has Stan Lee's appearance, and is voiced by the man himself. It's pretty cute.
  
• In science class, Professor Warren tells the class to remember concepts they've learned so far such as survival of the fittest and natural selection. Both are names of episodes from the first season.
• Liz mentions that her dad runs hotels. In Amazing Spider-Man #17, Flash Thompson was able to throw the first meeting of the Spider-Man Fan Club at a hotel her father ran, so it's accurate to the comics.
• Miles Warren is, in the comics, Peter's university teacher and the supervillain Jackal. And speaking of deep continuity bits, his brother really is also Peter's high school science teacher there, too.
• In the comics, the Master Planner was an alias briefly used by Doctor Octopus. Foreshadowing, or a red herring? 
• IMDB strikes again! The first aired date listed for this episode doesn't match up with what's listed on Wikipedia. As with Spider-Man: The New Animated Series I'm going with Wikipedia's data, since it seems a bit more accurate.
  

Review: I'm sure I've said this before, but Mysterio's a fun villain to use in stories - unlike some of Spider-Man's other foes, his "powers" are diverse enough that you can do a lot of different things with him, and it's pretty hard to stray too far from his core concept. The interpretation here, that he's pretending to be a sorcerer saving people from the evils of technology, is great - you can definitely see Mysterio choosing that portrayal in the hopes of getting some sympathy, and disguising his illusions as being real magic as a form of misdirection is clever. The show also respects our intellect enough that it doesn't feel the need to sit down and explain, "Hey kids! Mysterio is really a supervillain, and while he's pretending to be saving people, he's actually stealing the technology for his boss!", which is appreciated.

There's a little bit of clunk in the pacing of things - Spider-Man just sort of shows up where Mysterio is without any explanation as to how he got there, or even how he heard about Mysterio. The implication at the end of the episode, judging by Peter going through a to-do list he wrote at the start of the episode, is that all of the events happened within the span of one day, which means that Peter ran off in the middle of the school day to fight Mysterio on the bridge. Which is in-character, sure, but the pacing still feels a bit weird. A more minor flaw of the episode, but one that I want to bring up regardless, is that for some reason when Norman calls up Peter we get a shot of him ominously...eating a hard-boiled egg. Huh?

Overall, while I do think that the fights could have been a bit snappier, this is a good start to the new season. Peter's worrying about the consequences from the previous episode and trying to deal with them, and between Norman's offer and the Master Planner stuff, we've got some good plots starting to be stirred up. This show is more than happy to keep things moving at a brisk pace, and I'm damn glad that it is, because it makes it pretty damn enjoyable.