House Arrest
First Aired: April 7th, 2013
Synopsis: Spider-Man's fighting the supervillain Grizzly, and thinking about how cramped his home life is getting with his team around. They show up to help him with the fight, but after Grizzly is defeated, they all disappear while Spider-Man has to deal with the police. When he returns home he discovers that they're planning on throwing a party while Aunt May's out. There's SHIELD surveillance in the house, which for some reason means that Spider-Man doesn't want them throwing a party, but Nova says he can shut it down for the duration. Thanks to Spider-Man's interference, he instead accidentally activates SHIELD's security measures, locking the team inside the house and activating all manner of traps, not to mention a robot. After Nova and Spider-Man stop the robot, they start heading for the attic, since Nova thinks that the antennae there might let them shut down security. Nova reveals to Spider-Man that he genuinely does enjoy spending time
with Aunt May, as he hasn't had much of a family, before the two of them
save White Tiger, Luke, and Iron Fist from traps.
The security robot repairs itself using kitchen appliances, and as Spider-Man's team fight it he realises that they're not cramping him, they're protecting him. The team make it to the attic, and while there isn't an antennae there, there is a convenient killswitch which disables all the security in the house, which Spider-Man activates. Shortly afterwards, the house collapses from all the fighting. Everyone's devastated, but Peter says that he'll take the blame, since Aunt May won't throw him out but she might for the others if she thinks they're behind it. Suddenly, SHIELD drop in a new house for the team, having apparently made a replica in case of a situation like this. Coulson also reveals that the helicarrier has been rebuilt, so Spider-Man's team were moving out - the party was a going-away party. All of them had things planned to thank Peter for letting them stay with him, but he tells them to stick around for a moving out party regardless.
Review: I want to like this episode, and its story of one man learning to accept his teammates in spite of their flaws, but how can I with material like this? For a start, Spider-Man complaining about his teammates at the start of the episode - that's something like the third or fourth time since they moved in with him, isn't it? It's like the writers had a mandate that they had to put in a moral for every episode, but they were too lazy to think of new ones and so just kept reusing the same one. The team appearing then disappearing during the fight with Grizzly is also incredibly jarring, as is Spider-Man casually mentioning that he spent a bunch of time talking to the police; a scene we never see.
I'm not going to get started on the logic of SHIELD's security measures - they're random, conveniently tailored to each of the team members in spite of there being no reason for them to be, and it doesn't make a lot of sense as to how SHIELD installed them (something the episode itself even points out - note that this doesn't justify them being there). Equally baffling is SHIELD having an entire replica of the house made (what, with all of Peter and May's belongings, too?), ready to drop in within moments. Or, y'know, they could have just had remote shut-off controls for the security measures. But then we wouldn't have an episode, of course!
But wait, there's more! Spider-Man's revelation (this episode) of how his teammates are protecting him comes out of nowhere, and doesn't really address the complaints he had about them at the start of the episode. His decision to tell Aunt May that he's responsible for the house collapsing is...what is the logic here, actually? Does he honestly think that she would throw out the others? Does he honestly think that she's going to be so eager for someone to blame that he needs to be a scapegoat? Between all this and Peter assuming that Nova's frienship with Aunt May has an ulterior motive, he has absolutely no faith in anyone.
I trust that the many, many flaws with this episode should be apparent by now, but let's wrap this up by looking at the status quo of the episode. Nine episodes ago we got the promise of Spider-Man's team living with him, and have we gotten any actual mileage out of that premise? Have any plots drastically required the team to be living with Peter? Have we gotten any insights into their characters as a result of this? No, and now they're apparently going to be back on the helicarrier (I think; it's a little ambiguous given Peter welcoming them back for a party). This whole subplot has gone absolutely nowhere and brought nothing to the table. In short: fuck this episode, and fuck the shitty duplicate house it air-dropped in on.
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