Spectacular Spider-Man Episode Eighteen: First Steps

First Steps

First Aired: July 13th, 2009

Synopsis: Spider-Man's swinging around when he thinks he sees Eddie Brock, but a moment later he's gone. Sandman robs a jewellery store and Spider-Man fights him, but when the police arrive Sandman makes a hasty getaway, losing his loot in the process. At school, it's now common knowledge that Peter and Liz are dating, and while Flash Thompson is initially jealous, he invites one of his classmates, Sha Shan, to his birthday party that's happening that weekend. Harry Osborn turns out to be back at school, and although Peter momentarily hallucinates that Harry is the Green Goblin again, he figures he's being paranoid. After a school assembly, where it's mentioned that Captain Stacy will be giving guest lectures, Harry asks Gwen to be his date to Flash's party. She's reluctant until she sees Peter and Liz together, then agrees to. Later that night, Spider-Man once again thinks he sees Eddie but a break-in at a museum, caused by Sandman, distracts him. He fights Sandman and tries convincing the villain that he could do some good with his powers, but Sandman takes the opportunity to make a cheap shot then gets away with his loot. After the Big Man's cut is taken out, however, it's barely anything, and Sandman's told about a new job that will be successful - stopping an oil tanker so that it can be drained.

On Saturday Peter, Harry, and their dates show up at Flash's party. Flash insists that Peter shouldn't be there before realising that his mum took care of the invites, and that she invited Peter since they were best friends when they were younger. Peter briefly feels jealous of Harry and Gwen being together, but is distracted when he yet again thinks that he sees Eddie. He overhears that Sandman has stopped the oil tanker and goes after him as Spider-Man, where he finds that Sandman has grown gigantic. Their fight soon leads to the tanker being badly damaged, causing Hammerhead to call off the job, disappointed by Sandman. The tanker catches on fire, but Sandman unexpectedly saves the workers still aboard, explaining to Spider-Man that he was only ever in it for the money. He surrounds the tanker with his body before it explodes, and is seemingly glazed and killed by the heat, but after Spider-Man disappears he appears, alive and well. At his party, Flash realises that Sha Shan isn't showing up, and for the first time in his life has to deal with rejection. Spider-Man goes and checks on the symbiote, worried that Eddie's found a way to free it, but finds the concrete it's trapped in is intact. Unbeknownst to him, Eddie's followed him, knowing that if he made Peter paranoid enough then it would lead him to the symbiote.

Subplots:

• Liz mentions that her brother's back at school, and it's mentioned that he spent some time in juvenile prison. One of his classmates tries to entice him to make a bet on a race, but he says that he doesn't do that sort of thing any more.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Sha Shan is a character from the comics (where else?), who Flash met while he was fighting in the Vietnamese war. I'm no expert, but I'm pretty confident that Sha Shan is not a Vietnamese name.
• As mentioned in the synopsis, Peter suggests that Sandman could do some real good with his powers. In the comics, there was a lengthy period where Sandman reformed, to the point that he briefly joined the Avengers.

Review: With the Master Planner arc over, the show makes the wise choice to give us a bit of a lighter episode (while not forgetting to set up some new plot threads, of course). I wouldn't exactly call it a deconstruction, but the way that it focuses on Sandman and how his goal is nothing more than to make a quick buck is pretty interesting - as Sandman himself demonstrates, he doesn't actually want to hurt anyone, and in spite of his powers, it's not actually that easy to make a lot of money when you're on the lower end of the criminal pecking order.

Unfortunately, the Sandman fights - which make up a good majority of the episode - don't really do a lot for me. Having Sandman grow gigantic is a logical extension of his powers, yes, and him pulling out tricks like growing multiple arms is also a logical extension, but it also starts to make him feel less like a Spider-Man villain, and more like a Hulk villain. There's great action sequences during these bits, and there's something incredibly satisfying about seeing Sandman explode into a cloud of sand from Spider-Man hitting him yet again, but for most of the fight Spider-Man's less fighting Sandman, and more avoiding the environment around himself.

Setting up Eddie's return as Venom is an interesting plot thread, as is all of the things around Harry and Gwen. Peter's starting to realise that maybe he shouldn't have jumped straight to Liz, but hasn't quite come to the conclusion himself yet, and even if he does, how does one untangle oneself from a situation like that? On top of all of that, there's a few neat little moments, like Flash realising that Sha Shan isn't automatically interested in him, and him realising that Peter was invited thanks to his mum. Overall, I'd like the fight scenes to be scaled back a bit, but other than that, this episode was pretty enjoyable.