Spidey And His Amazing Friends

This version of Sandman sucks. 1 1/2 stars.

A rather egregious toy commercial.

Electro's kinda cute though. 2 1/2 stars.

Electra's Gotta Glow:

Oooh, new main title!

Cute! 4 stars.

Black Cat Chaos:

Stamos as Iron Man? Perfect. If you ask me, he'd be a pretty great LIVE-ACTION Tony Stark too.

Black Cat is too cute. The feminine body movements she does in the Iron Man suit made me laugh.

Unusually strong cartoon by this show's standards. 5 stars.

Episode Overall: 4 1/2 stars.

Lights Out:

A little boring. 2 1/2 stars.

Sandman Won't Share:

I don't much like this version of Sandman. Plus, his sand castle WAS the best so if I were a beachgoer I'd just want to stick around to watch him add stuff to it. 2 stars.

Episode Overall: 2 1/2 stars.

Bootsie's Day Out:

Bootsie is still cute but I'm already tired of Black Cat learning the same damn lesson every episode. 2 1/2 stars.

Trouble at Tony's:

I still maintain Stamos would be an excellent live-action Tony Stark. 3 stars.

Episode Overall: 2 1/2 stars.

Sonic Boom Boom:

Sort of bored with this. 2 1/2 stars.

Mini Golf Goof. Ditto. 2 1/2 stars.

Episode Overall: 2 1/2 stars.

Lil' Hulk:

Baby Hulk is so cute! His voice is adorable! 4 stars.

Surprise Party Surprise:

I saw this one on my birthday.

I may not have mentioned yet that Electro has a neat design but she does.

I kind of feel that there was a noticeable lack of puns in the first battle between Black Panther and Black Cat. And that sort of thing is sort of begging for that.

Also cute. 4 stars.

Episode Overall: 4 stars.

Can't Stop Dancing!

Reptil is actually cute, but the premise is stupid, even for this show. 1 stars.

The Ant Thief

Boring. And I'm sorry, those donuts at the beginning sounded gross. 1 1/2 stars.

Episode Overall: 1 star.

Sand Trapped:

I'll tell you what I liked about the beginning sitcom scene. Peter doesn't dismiss Gwen and Miles' ideas about his game outright over some sort of possessiveness. It's cool he actually gives their constructive criticism a bit of weight. Sort of refreshing, actually.

Speaking of science. Nobody ever mentions the scientific way to exit a maze in cartoons: Pick one wall on the left or right at the beginning of the maze, and stick by it the entire way, dead -ends and all, and you will eventually end up out of the maze. Solving real life mazes is a lot more banal than genre would have you believe.

The smashers seem to be a rare instance of the kids having to navigate a potentially lethal threat.

Interesting. 3 stars,

Too Much Fun:

Peter believes that scientifically the best way to have fun at the amusement park is overeat corn dogs and go on a ton of spinny rides. Quick question: Isn't Peter supposed to be smart? Because that idea means that notion is not readily apparently. He's sounds like a total dumbass, actually. 1 1/2 stars.

Episode Overall: 2 1/2 stars.

Halted Holiday:

Don't mess with the Grannies!

That being said, her accent is so exaggerated I think it bordered on offensive. 2 1/2 stars.

Merry Spidey Christmas:

All villains repent during the holidays! Even Skeletor can learn the true meaning of Christmas!

Merry Spidey Christmas is a good song too. 4 stars.

Episode Overall: 3 1/2 stars.

One of the worst episodes ever.

The show always tries to play it cute and say Black Cat is either misguided or misunderstood in her thievery but stealing an egg that is about to hatch is pretty much indefensible.

"Gosh, I didn't know there was a baby bird in there!" Are you friggin' kidding me? And then she decides she wants the baby for herself.

I hate this character and I hate that the show has foisted her on us. She is the absolute worst thing about Season 2. 0 stars.

The Hangout Headache

I suppose this wasn't terrible in comparison, but the first cartoon pissed me off so much I couldn't enjoy this one. 1 1/2 stars.

Episode Overall: 1 star.

The rubber duckie ending sort of put a few things into focus for me and I'll more fully talk about them in my review of the second cartoon. But the gist is that was NOT good, and it was much worse than it actually needed to be. This is a problem for the show in general. 1 star.

It's Bad To Be Gooed

What really struck me about the poor quality of the writing of this cartoon is that the show does NOT need to be as badly written as it is. Make no mistake. This show isn't the disaster Transformers: Rescue Bots Academy was. The bad writing there was so egregious because it was teaching toddlers improper safety tips. I feel like the toddler morals on this show are sound. But the bad writing bothers me because it doesn't actually need it for the stories to function.

Funny jokes in shows for little kids are permissible. As are characters talking like people instead of cliches. It's not just Bluey that made me believe this. Other toddler shows like Elena Of Avalor also refuse to talk down to kids and pander to their baser senses of humor and low intellect. This show's poor writing quality exists for the exact same reason as it did on Muppet Babies. The writers don't believe it NEEDS to be better than it is. It's designed to both sell toys and garner toddler eyeballs. Making the show not thunderingly stupid doesn't help either of those goals. I would argue it wouldn't hurt those goals. But the writers don't make the show better than it is because the committee who designs and comes up with the stories and morals simply don't believe kids deserve any better.

What bothers the HELL out of me, is that this is the exact mindset of cartoon executives when they made all of those substandard toy commercial cartoons in the 1980's. I recall some parents at the time were frustrated at what Pablum and dreck the animation landscape had become, and lamented why cartoons for kids back then weren't as good as when THEY were kids. The answer is they didn't need to be. Same answer here, and it seems like no matter what TV offers, no matter how sophisticated audiences get, there are always going to be really stupid things on the air for kids. And the thing that kills me, and is probably the real reason things don't change or improve TOO much decades later, is that the dumb stuff is the stuff little kids really love and respond to. Yes, Batman: The Animated Series and Gargoyles were well-received by kids back in the 1990's. But watching those shows were about as far as it went. As far as starting fads and toys flying off the shelves went, it was garbage like Power Rangers, Pokemon, and the 1987 incarnation of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that drove kids wild. It's why Transformers and Scooby Doo became evergreen franchises despite their actual shaky premises and crappy original incarnations and why Greg Weisman has never been able to relaunch his best loved show decades later. And Spidey And His Amazing Friends sucks and is badly written because the writers clearly believe little kids prefer badly written, stupid shows. What bothers me about this level of cynicism is based on past TV history, they aren't wrong. Bluey gives me hope for the future of children's TV. In the meantime, parents must suffer through dreck like Spidey And His Amazing Friends, because that's what sells the toddler merch. It's depressing to actually sit down and think about it. The show doesn't NEED to be this bad. It simply chooses to be. 1 star.

Episode Overall: 1 star.

Black Cat remains the single worst character on the show and I will never forgive season 2 for saddling us with a person this unforgivably obnoxious. Every single damn appearance is her pulling the same damn crap she always pulls and always being shocked that it pisses people off. I'm sick of that crap and I'm sick of her. What she teaches toddlers is it's perfect okay to continue to misbehave if you offer an apology you don't mean and go right back to the poor behavior next week. They wanted to make Black Cat not entirely bad to fit her comic book history, but they don't realize all they are doing is screwing up the toddler morals. This is not an iteration of the show that can (or even should) tolerate nuance. 0 stars.

Green Goblin's Dino Disaster:

No lie, I found Gobby kinda funny this episode. Now I didn't actually LAUGH at any of his dumb antics (I'm not an actual Philistine) but I found a lot of his "I totally meant to do that," posturing humorous. 3 1/2 stars.

Episode Overall: 2 stars.

Somebody want to explain to me why Sandman, who is clearly a grown-ass adult, wants to use his scary and unstoppable powers to take over a sandbox and bully people on the playground? Maybe I could forgive it if he were portrayed as a little kid. But he's not, so it's super dumb instead. *.

Oh No, Tomatoes!:

Speaking of which, the villain stealing... tomatoes, feels so random and ridiculous even for a toddler show. And upon the revelation that Rhino actually thought they were apples, I was like, "Nope, that helps nothing. This is still idiotic." *.

Episode Overall: *.