Welcome to Boomb Tube, where all of your favorite TV shows and Ultimate Spider-Man recapped on a weekly basis! This week: The Final Showdown! Spoilers ahead!
Avengers is off this week, DC Nation is still in limbo until January, and as I write this column, a hurricane is destroying the east coast and the towns around me, four horsemen have settled onto my front yard and they are thankfully not My Little Pony cosplayers this time. Hurricane Sandy arrived not as a “natural” incident, but as an omen. An omen of the great battle that shall be chronicled in this column. This week, the one hour long season finale of Ultimate Spider-Man is the only new cartoon airing. Let the battle begin.
This week’s two-parter begins with Peter and Harry Osborn on their way to celebrate Harry’s good report card, because, rich people can celebrate anything they want to. Peter has to go and do Super-Hero stuff . Norman is called away to do bad guy stuff, but not before casually remarking how Harry probably would have failed without Peter and saying “Order yourself something worthy of a B-.” Man, he’s a worse father than a wood chipper at an unsupervised playground.
Peter meets up with the rest of his team, who infuriatingly refuse to have a group name. The Fearsome Four broke into an OsCorp warehouse and are in good need of punching since just talking doesn’t get anything done in a superhero world. The team is doing uncharacteristically well which you can tell because Peter declares “THE TEAM IS REALLY GELLED!” Glad that the new team member, Dr. Scholls proved useful. However, The Trapster unleashes some Doctor Octopus robots and, after some flailing about, Peter is kidnapped and taken to Doc Ock. Peter cracks some jokes and Doctor Octopus acts all menacing but he’s voiced by Tom Kenny so it’s very easy to imagine that Octavius is just the Ice King.
Ice King, or as Spidey calls him “DOCTOR OCTAPEST!”, takes some blood samples and explains how he used a sample of Peter’s blood to create the flawed Venom a few episodes in an attempt to clone Peter but he won’t in fail creating a Spider-Clone this time because now that he has Spidey in his custody he can just take as much blood as he needs. Spidey almost escapes but Oh Shnap! Norman electrocutes him with Phantom Limb’s gauntlet. Peter wonders how he could have missed Norman being evil, leading to a truly wonderful montage where Peter hangs out with Norman while he frowns at pictures of Spider-Man. Before I can make a joke about Sins Past, Ice King injects Norman with a serum that totally won’t be Green Goblin potion. Ice King does some exposition on how much Norman put him through and says Osborn is involved with Spidey’s origin, a point articulated when Spider-Man does a fake “1920’s” voice and recounts his origin like a news reel from 1942. Sometimes this show is wonderful.
Spider-Man’s Amazing Friends show up to rescue him and fight Doc Ock while osborn transforms into a creature. Spider-Man then LITERALLY SAYS THE FOLLOWING WORDS: “Hey, Norman! You’re looking a little Green! AND GOBLINY!” Cartoons can’t kill characters like they do in the comics, but I think it was brave of the show runners to kill off subtlety. At this point I’d like to point out that it literally makes no sense for Norman to turn into a goblin creature. The formula he was given was half-Venom DNA and half-Drake Bell DNA. Why would that concoction turn anyone into a Goblin like-creature? Only exposure to full Drake Bell DNA transforms you into a goblin. Either way, we’ll call Osborn just “The Goblin” since he’s a noted fan of The CW. Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends runaway from The Goblin who, thanks to his Phantom Limb suit, now has electricity powers, because Spider-Man doesn’t have enough villains with electric powers. Peter and Goblin clash for a bit until The Goblin gets away. Nick Fury picks up the squad and tells them he’s tracking down Osborn as they speak. Peter says no, The Goblin was made with his blood and he’s his responsibility since this show is called Ultimate Spider-Man not Ultimate Nick Fury and Agent Coulson Bro-Up.
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A few days later, Peter gives some exposition on how he’s been on the lookout for Goblin for three nights straight and something about Great Power and Great Responsibility. Goblin attacks Harry’s limo at school, but The Amazing Friends show up and Peter conveniently forgets his “I have to do this alone” shtick in time to allow his teammates to fight Goblin for him while he gabs with Harry on how his dad is totally a Goblin now. The school looks to be in trouble of being destroyed until Principal Phil Coulson equips some SHIELD armor and laser rifles and declares today a half-day, but instead of getting to spend the next twenty minutes watching Coulson kick but we have to watch Spidey give Harry some more exposition. After everyone else defeats The Goblin, Fury and Spidey argue over Peter wanting to tackle Osborn alone, but Nick Fury reminds him that he’s the director of a government agency and he’s a teenager so he can shut up. The group then escapes takes away Harry to the Helicarrier to escape the recently revived Goblin. Goblin pursues in a stolen jet and crashes into the ship, while displaying his new power of being able to perfectly mimic anyone. Why the hell not. After declaring himself now perfect, Osborn tells Harry how Spider-Man transformed himself into a monster and Spidey takes 30 seconds in a cut-away gag of a chibi version of himself playing a game show about how to explain everything to Harry. At least Family Guy admits to not having a point anymore. Osborn, in the laziest origin of how he got his equipment ever, then trashes the SHIELD Lab, crushing Dr. Connors’s arm and stealing a familiar glider.Goblin takes his new glider out of the lab and destroys the Helicarrier’s engines and electrocutes his son, triggering Harry’s transformation into Venom, thanks to him being infected with the symbiote in an episode I completely forgot about. The new father and son team scuffle with Spider-Man while he tries to talk Harry out of being Venom. Harry electrocutes the symbiote off of him and Norman takes the suit away to put it on someone else, pulling a “You haven’t seen the last of me!” On the beach, everyone tells Peter how ultimate he is, until Harry irrationally blames Peter for turning Norman into a monster and storms off. Since the Amazing Friends lived on the now sunken Helicarrier, Peter invites them to live with him and Aunt May and we all know what this means! Roommate antics!
This episode was pretty bad. Aside from the usual corny dialogue and flat characters, there was just so much off with Norman’s transformation into the Goblin. Aside from the non-logic of a Spider-DNA serum turning someone into a Goblin, there was just so much lazy “This happens in the comics so it must happen here” moments like the previously mentioned Goblin Glider. Also, this may be a personal thing, but I prefer Green Goblin to be a little bit of a criminal mastermind, not just a brute. Sure he was pretty good at manipulating people, but Osborn’s plan consisted of “Smash engines. Corrupt son.” Spider-Man has dozens of “brute villains” and not enough “evil masterminds”, the writers didn’t need to further skew that ratio. Also, whenever Spider-Man gives a comeback to anything, my fist automatically seizes and tries to punch the nearest living thing which at the moment is me.
3/10 – There’s some fun puns and nonsense but the plot and characters are just so one dimensional.
