Things have been kind of interesting for Boomb Tube lately. Both Young Justice and Green Lantern ended this week, resulting in my need to find a substitute show to write about. Well, to my simultaneous disgust and delight, I awoke from my usual drug -and-ice-cream-but-mostly-ice-cream induced hangover on Sunday morning to find a new episode of Ultimate Spider-Man on the DVR. I started the episode expecting to find another 20 minute showcase of Drake Bell saying something quirky, punching a bad guy and saying something quirky while Phil Coulson and J.K. Simmons wasted their talent, when I noticed the title of this episode: “Spidah-Man”. I read the description of the episode and could not contain the sheer happiness and ice cream remains that discharged from my face.
Drake Bell Spider-Man moves to Boston.
And what a treat it was.
“Spidah-Man” starts, as most Peter Parker stories do, with Spidey being an outcast in the Big Apple. Aunt May, who here has had her characterization swapped with the mom from Napoleon Dynamite, is going away to visit her sister, Spidey’s Squad are going to water park while he has to stay home and read SHIELD handbooks (and the Nick Fury memoir: Eye on the Prize), and Jameson has put out a ten million bounty out on anyone who can unmask Spidey. As Parker swings around the city, he hears tell of the mayor of Boston offering Spider-Man the key to the city if he moves and becomes Bean Town’s super hero. Drake Bell Spider-Man’s motto is “With great power comes great skateboarding” so he ditches his responsibilities in Manhattan and moves to Boston, which is when this show turns into Batman: The Brave and the Bold levels of fun.
Spidey meets Mayor Diamond Joe Quimby who gives Spidey a Spider-Cave, Spider-Vehicles, a butler (even Bostonians wouldn’t play God in the efforts of creating a Spider-Butler) and a boy sidekick named Webby. Webby and Spider-Man do the Mr. Incredible/Syndrome shtick of not letting the young kid go out and get hurt due to his lack of powers and training so he totally won’t be resentful and attack later on. That night, Spidey takes out three crooks and everything seems to be coming up Parker. Cut to the next day, and those same three criminals have been outfitted with armor that totally wasn’t made by Webby and have rechristened themselves as The Boston Terror-iers. This is the type of pun that’s such a stretch that Mr. Fantastic winced. Actually, it’s such a stretch that they had to have an actual Boston Terrier walk on so they could make sure you got the terrible wonderful joke. They introduce themselves one by one: Salem’s Witch, The Plymouth Rocker (“I ROCK THE HOUSE… and spiders”), and Slam Adams who sounds like if Sylvester Stallone was cast in The Departed and immediately gave up. Clearly we’re already off to a better plot than Assassin’s Creed III.
Spidey swings around town trying to avoid getting beaten up by the extras from The Crucible when he’s accosted by an additional villain: The Steel Spider. While getting his butt whooped, Drake Bell Spider-Man makes a remark about how Plymouth Rocker looks like a librarian which causes him to spout of my favorite line of anything: “SHE’S A WITCH, HE’S A PATRIOT AND I’M A NAHTIONAHL LAHNDMAHK!” I don’t have a joke for that, it just made me smile for ten straight minutes when I watched it. Steel Spider unmasks himself as both the man who created the Boston Terror-iers and Webby, surprising no one. He has a heart to heart with Drake Bell Spider-Man in which they reconcile but Drake Bell Spider-Man accidently lets the Boston Terror-iers (an English professor dies every time that pun is typed) know that there’s a ten million dollar bounty on his unmasking. They give chase to Webby and Spidey who are able to defeat them by pressing the shut-down buttons on their suits, including the one switch on Plymouth Rocker’s butt. They make a joke about how weird it is for the switch to be there but uh… yeah. Still not acceptable.
Drake Bell Spider-Man and Steel Spider reconvene and agree that Steel Spider shouldn’t have made those new super-villains and, even then, their shut-down switches should be voice-activated. He agrees and Spidey decides his time in Boston is up so he returns to New York and leaves Bean Town, leaving Steel Spider as the sole hero of Bean town. A hero with an anal fixation who created the pun “Slam Adams”.
Finally, a hero we can all relate to.
Review Score: 9/10 – Was this objectively artistic and stuff? No. Slam Adams? YES.
