Spectacular Spider-Man Episode Twenty-Two: Probable Cause

Probable Cause

First Aired: October 14th, 2009

Synopsis: Shocker is fighting two costumed people, who are soon revealed to be his partners in the Enforcers with suits that enhance their abilities. Tombstone is impressed with them, but his working with the Enforcers irks Hammerhead, only for Tombstone to point out that Hammerhead screwed up the oil tanker job and getting the Rhino suit specs. At school, students get randomly assigned partners for a police ridealong, and Peter ends up getting Sally Avril as his partner. Before the ridealong, Peter goes out as Spider-Man and encounters the Enforcers in their new suits, robbing a bank. They manage to defeat Spider-Man but leave as they're on a timetable. Spider-Man quickly shows up to the ridealong, and George Stacy takes he and Sally to the bank, where it's discovered that the Enforcers broke through a wall into a dry cleaners from the bank. Meanwhile, Flash tells Harry, who is his partner on the ridealong, that he's annoyed at Harry for dropping out of the football team before the finals, and Harry admits that he was recovering from the Globulin Green he was taking at the time. This only enrages Flash further, as if it's discovered that Harry was on drugs, it could disqualify the team from the games they played.

George discovers that the Enforcers robbed the dry cleaners since the uniforms of some federal reserve employees are cleaned there, and sure enough, the Enforcers have used the uniforms to infiltrate the federal reserve and gain access to an entire vault full of gold. George takes Peter and Sally to the federal reserve, and Peter says he'll get closer to take photos for the Daily Bugle, naturally changing to Spider-Man. He makes his way down to the vault, where the Enforcers have trapped themselves inside by destroying the elevator leading to it. With Spider-Man's appearance the villains are only able to get away with a single cart full of gold, which they load onto a small train when they bust through the wall of the vault. Spider-Man goes after the train and is able to knock the cart of gold in front of the train, causing it to derail. The Enforcers grab a few bars of gold and head to the street. They jump into a getaway van and try escaping, but some spikes on the road slash their tyres and leave them at the mercy of the police. Unbeknownst to them, the spikes were set by Hammerhead. In the aftermath, Flash reveals the truth about Harry being on Globulin Green, and the team's trophy is temporarily taken away. Although the team are annoyed at him, Sha Shan is impressed. At home, Harry debates taking more Globulin Green.

 

Subplots:

• Hammerhead asks Norman Osborn to make another supervillain, and Norman agrees, saying that he's found a new scientist to help him.
  

Miscellaneous Notes:

• With his new suit, Fancy Dan takes on the new alias of Ricochet. It's the same name as a former alias of Peter's and of a later successor, one who I've got a bit of a soft spot for.
• The police officer in Flash's car, Officer Carter, agrees with Flash that Spider-Man does good, but also comments that if anything, Spider-Man doesn't go far enough. Presumably, if we'd gotten another season of the show this philosophy would have led to him becoming the Sin-Eater.
  

Review: While the stakes don't feel as high as last episode, this is still nevertheless the same sort of underworld fun that we had last episode, and for the most part I enjoyed it a lot. The Enforcers are fun villains, and the twist that robbing the bank is misdirection for them to rob the federal reserve is a good one. It's also nice to see Tombstone reappear for the first time in a while, and him going over Hammerhead's head after Hammerhead's perceived failures is actually quite clever, showing that the events of the previous episodes have actually had consequences. Hammerhead's quiet betrayal is the cherry on top of all of this.

There are a few small problems with the episode - while I can appreciate giving the Enforcers an upgrade to make them more of a threat to Spider-Man, it could be a bit more elegant. Why not make Ox and Fancy Dan this show's version of comic villains, much like Montana became Shocker? Ox could become Grizzly, and Fancy Dan could be, I don't know, Beetle? Instead, we get a random comics name slapped on Fancy Dan, and Ox doesn't get anything new. Furthermore, while the suits are shown to be effective, they make the Enforcers a little too good - something like three times in the episode, they beat Spider-Man then just leave, the justification being that they've got a job to do. The most egregious example of this is towards the end of the episode, when they're about to get away, and then Shocker's gloves randomly short out for the sake of Spider-Man living.

Still, none of that really ruins the episode, and aside from the Spider-Man action, there's some quality character drama here. Flash and Harry have quite a bit going on (although another flaw - last time Harry's decision to start using Globulin Green made a lot of sense from the pressure he was under; here he doesn't seem to have nearly as much going on. I guess that's why they call it a relapse.), but the real highlight for entertainment purposes is Sally Avril. She's mostly been a shrill, bitchy cheerleader, and she still is here, but she's pretty funny throughout. There's a running gag about her saying something incredibly rude then immediately following it up with "No offense," and she has a great moment when it momentarily looks like Peter's dead, saying, "What will I tell Liz? She looks awful in black!" On top of that, she also admits that while she doesn't like Peter, that doesn't mean that she wants him dead, a realistic and humanising moment.

All in all, the episode probably isn't one of the strongest of the show, but that's merely because the rest of the series is usually so strong that it's hard to compete. In any Spider-Man show, this would be a great episode, but in a series as strong as this, it's about average, which I mean as a compliment.