Spectacular Spider-Man Episode Twenty: Identity Crisis

Identity Crisis

First Aired: July 27th, 2009

Synopsis: Peter manages to convince the staff of the Daily Bugle that he's not Spider-Man, but Jonah gives Ned Lee an assignment to interview Peter's friends and family regardless. Shortly afterwards, Norman Osborn, Curt Connors, and Aunt May are all interviewed, and each of them agree that Peter isn't Spider-Man. After school, when Peter and Gwen are helping out at Curt's lab, Eddie shows up, saying that he's been taking a break. He threatens Peter, who makes excuses to leave, but is soon ambushed by a group of reporters who want to know whether he really is Spider-Man. Peter and Gwen, who is with him, escape them, but almost kiss while hiding from the reporters. That night, Spider-Man confronts Venom, and the fight soon takes them to a group of reporters. Venom tries unmasking Spider-Man on camera, but Spider-Man escapes. After Flash Thompson is interviewed by Ned, he realises that anyone could dress up as Spider-Man, and does so before going to the media, but is attacked by thugs who see that he's still got an injured leg. Spider-Man saves him, but out of nowhere Venom attacks him.

Venom reveals that he's got genetic cleanser, which he plans to make Peter drink after unmasking him, thus leaving him vulnerable to all of his old villains who will no doubt want revenge. As the two of them fight, they brawl all around the school. When some chemicals in the science lab mix, they cause a small explosion which reveals that Venom is vulnerable to sound, but when Spider-Man tries to exploit this by hitting lockers to create a shockwave Venom soon stops it. They eventually end up in the gym, and Venom gets in the perfect position to get genetic cleanser down Spider-Man's throat, but Flash distracts Venom for long enough for Spider-Man to get free. He manages to get the genetic cleanser and make Venom drink it, which causes the symbiote to leave him. In the aftermath, Eddie's taken away to hospital, with nobody believing that he's Venom due to the difference in size. Flash's brief apperance on television as Spider-Man gets him a role as Bottom in the school's play of A Midsummer Night's Dream, getting him closer to Sha Shan. Miles Warren notes that some genetic cleanser is missing, and says that he's taking over Connors' lab from here. When Jonah asks Ned when he dug up, Ned reveals that Peter appeared in a Spider-Man costume for Halloween, which is probably where the rumours began. Unbeknownst to Peter, in the sewers below Manhattan, the symbiote still lives.

Subplots:

• Mary Jane and Mark Allan both seem to be mutually interested in each other, judging by her staring at him and him drawing a picture of her.

Miscellaneous Notes:

• Flash dressing up as Spider-Man also happened in the comics, back in Amazing Spider-Man #5, but it led to slightly worse consequences for him then - he got captured by Doctor Doom.
• Identity Crisis is also the name of a Spider-Man arc from the comics, wherein he started using four new identities of Ricochet, Prodigy, Hornet, and Dusk, but it's a common enough concept that I'd be willing to guess that the naming is coincidental.
  

Review: This little arc has turned out better than the first one we got with Venom, but honestly, I've still got a feeling of disappointment now that it's done. Venom's overall plan of unmasking Peter, robbing him of his powers, and leaving him at the mercy of his old foes is sinister, if not sadistic, but there's never a real sense that the show has the guts to go through with it. Even the stuff with Peter's identity being revealed - sure, we know that it's not actually going to become public knowledge, but nobody ever really takes it seriously, or decide to do their own investigations, and by the end of the episode, it's swept under the rug.

The episode also has a bit of a pacing problem - a good chunk of the first half is focusing on some drama going on around Peter and his schoolmates, and while Ned's interviews keep the identity issue in the spotlight, the aforementioned problem of nobody really taking it seriously is still present. After Venom and Spider-Man's fight really gets going, most of the second half of the episode is that fight, and while there's some good moments in it - I'm particularly thinking of a point where it's implied that Eddie's knocked out and the symbiote controls his lifeless body - the thoughts I'm having are less "wow, how will Peter get out of this?" and more "get on with it!" 

The ending in particular doesn't make a lot of sense - Eddie is fed the genetic cleanser, and somehow this means that the symbiote wants to leave him? There's been no mention of it bonding with him on a genetic level, and even if it had, that shouldn't stop it from still being able to be used by him, like how Spider-Man used it. Furthermore, from the dialogue the implication is that the symbiote's decided that Eddie's hatred isn't enough for it anymore, which, again - what does this have to do with Eddie's DNA now being baseline human?

Even a weak episode of Spectacular Spider-Man is a good one, and this one is still watchable, if only for the advancement of several subplots. But the show really doesn't know what to do with a villain that knows Peter's identity, and to be honest, I'm kind of glad that we won't be seeing any more Venom.