Ultimate Spider-Man Episode Twenty-Three: Not a Toy

Not a Toy

First Aired: October 7th, 2012

Synopsis: Spider-Man and his team are doing a training session with Captain America, who easily defeats them all. They follow it up with another and Captain America warns them all that they focus too much on their powers over their other assets. After the second session Cap leaves his shield for the team to have a look at while he goes to talk to Coulson, explicitly telling them not to throw the shield. Spider-Man disobeys this order for some reason, and it goes flying out of the helicarrier. After bouncing through Manhattan it lands in the Latverian embassy, where Doctor Doom claims it. Spider-Man follows the shield and Doom fires a missile at him when he shows up, but Captain America arrives and stops it. He then breaks into the embassy with Spider-Man, saying that the shield's unique properties mean that if Doom can reverse-engineer the metal it'll make him unstoppable. After fighting their way through the embassy's defences, they discover a computer which says that the shield is in Latveria, and that Doom is planning an invasion of American cities.

The Doombots chasing the heroes are shut down with a computer, and the heroes make it to the roof of the embassy. Doom is starting to escape with the shield in a small hovercraft, even though the computer said that it was in Latveria. Spider-Man uses his webs to get himself and Captain America to the hovercraft, and they confront Doom. Spider-Man suggests that if Doom gives back the shield, they won't reveal that Doom was defeated by them. Doom doesn't agree, but Spider-Man reveals that he was stalling until SHIELD arrived, who arrest Doom for planning attacks against America. Doom declares that he'll be out by nightfall in response. Back on the helicarrier, Coulson gives Spider-Man a lecture about responsibility, but Spider-Man says that it's okay since they wouldn't have found out about Doom's plans otherwise. Coulson then gets given the shield to hold by Cap, but he too accidentally throws it out of the helicarrier.

Sam Alexander is Actually the Worst:

• During the initial training session against Captain America, Nova panics like a complete moron when fighting Captain America, as though he was actually in serious danger.
• Cap issues a friendly challenge to the team before the second training session, saying that whoever defeats him can have his shield. Sam's response is "Do you know how much I could sell that for on the internet?!"
• During the second fight against Captain America, Nova decides that rather than fight Captain America, he'll hang back and film his teammates getting defeated for most of the fight.
• When Spider-Man heads out of the helicarrier to chase after Cap's shield, Nova says that he'll go get Spider-Man...then does absolutely nothing.

Review: After debuting Thor, Hulk, and Iron Man earlier in the series, it was inevitable that we'd get Cap appearing at some point (but not Black Widow, because she's a woman and we all know how a lot of Marvel executives feel about independent women). While this episode is able to showcase an excellent Captain America, who's consistently capable and likable, it comes at the expense of most of the rest of the plot. Spider-Man's actions are, let's be fair, pretty damn stupid. He has no reason to throw Cap's shield, no reason to treat it with anything but the utmost care, but the writers don't want to think of a good reason for the shield to get into Doom's hands, so fuck it, here we are.

So, the premise is pretty miserable, and it doesn't really pick up from there. The fights inside the Latverian embassy are, like most things in this show, pretty bland, and Spider-Man's jokes are, as always, pretty bad. Ostensibly Spider-Man's learning a lesson about how to use all of his resources, best showcased when he reveals that he doesn't intend on fighting Doom and is just waiting for SHIELD to show up, but it doesn't really fit together that well. Let's be real, SHIELD is a deus ex machina, because we never see any attempts from Spider-Man to contact them, and the show itself acknowledges that Doom won't be locked up for long.

If you want to see Captain America being pretty badass and likable - much more than the protagonist of this show - then this episode is alright for that. But if you want a good Doctor Doom story, a good Spider-Man story, or heck, a good story that features Spider-Man's teammates, you're out of luck. I'll admit that this isn't the worst episode of this series, but that doesn't mean that it's automatically good.