Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man: Season 1 (Disney+ Series)

Big Donovan has a great character design. Best yet, the voice is perfect for it. That doesn't happen often.

I love and feel for Lonnie. What a great downward spiral arc. It's because he's good and loves his brother.

By the way, Dre is a dope.

Norman Osborne is interesting as hell, but I'm not sold on the concept of him being Spider-Man's secret ally. It's a really intriguing and unique premise, but I think the show isn't doing it remotely successfully. It's not working. Why not?

My favorite animated show is Justice League Unlimited. There was a period in the first and second seasons where the writers were suggesting Lex Luthor's morality was ambiguous instead of evil. They wanted to raise the idea when he ran for President it wasn't possibly as a supervillain, but as someone who wanted to reform and make the world a better place.

It didn't work on that show, and it's one of the few things on that show that didn't. And the reason it didn't work is the same reason Norman doesn't work. The animators couldn't HELP but giving his character design sneaky and untrustworthy expressions at all times.

It's definitely a hazard of the medium, and neither this show nor JLU are the first animated projects to give away a bad intention via a much-too-obvious character design. But for this show, I must take note this is NOT a specific problem for Lonnie Lincoln. And since it isn't, it really shouldn't be for Norman either. That is a failing.

By the way, there is too much swearing on this show. It's a Spider-Man cartoon for kids, for crying out loud. There shouldn't be ANY.

The ideas the episode put forth are interesting, but the execution leaves much to be desired. I am still a skeptic about all this. 3 stars.

I like that Harry finds out so quickly simply because Peter is a dope.

I also like that Harry is genuinely nice. This is refreshing.

Norman is too pushy already.

The references to the Sakovia stuff and Ultron suggest this Multiverse is at least ADJACENT to the MCU.

Doc Ock, huh? Cool.

Love the dude I think is supposed to be Rhino. He's both super dumb and super funny.

Feeling bad for Lonnie. No good options. Donovan is a bastard.

Pretty good. But the costume shouldn't be white. 3 1/2 stars.

Birth of Tombstone. Terrible.

Nico is the girl of Peter's dreams and he just doesn't know it yet.

Donovan is still a rat bastard.

Mikhail has this weird sense of honor and honesty I appreciate. Plus he says scary things at the end scarily.

Bad things? Brutal honesty. Hugh Dancy's voice sounds ALL wrong coming out of THAT Otto Octavius character design. A rare miscast for the show.

Solid. 3 1/2 stars.

Good first appearance for Daredevil.

The truth is Harry is a dope (and perhaps a liability) but Nico learning the secret might be a good thing in the long run. The longer she was kept in the dark, the worse it would be for their friendship. They can still come back from this at this point.

Norman offering up Spider-Man to Ross at the banquet is the shadiest thing we've seen him do so far.

Lonnie is in a bad way, but I'm having a hard time keeping up my sympathy.

I love that Aunt May is cool enough to put the R-rated movies (which Peter should NOT watch) on the top of the pile of VHS tapes.

Good episode. 3 1/2 stars.

First appearance of the Goblin Glider, and it saves Spider-Man's life. Interesting continuity.

Really enjoyed the stuff between Nico and Harry.

Lonnie's stuff is also interesting with Pearl learning the truth too.

Scorpion is a rat bastard.

Solid. Peter got fucked up. 4 stars.

We have been going back and forth over whether Norman Osborne is good or bad, but once he perverts Ben Parker's most cherished philosophy, we are finally made aware this will not end well.

Hugh Dancy's voice may be wrong for Doc Ock, but there is no denying he has a great character design. His dancing around while escaping from the lab proves it.

I have to say parts of this episode made me feel a little uncomfortable. I don't know. Things feel more dangerous than I prefer in my superhero cartoons. I treat superhero cartoons as comfort food, and a lot of stuff in this show is just plain alarming. It's a solid episode, but I feel like this show is a couple bad episodes away from totally falling apart. And the pieces for those bad episodes seem to be have put into place in the past few episodes. I very much hope I'm wrong about that.

Good episode, but the show is on a worrisome track. 3 stars.

Norman Osborne is a bad guy. But when he praises Peter for his mercy, you understand he's not an ENTIRELY bad guy. At least not yet.

Hugh Dancy is growing on me as Octavius. I kind of liked that although he got mad at Norman, Osborne's gloat sesh was far less effective than he had been hoping. Because as far as Otto is concerned, Norman taking advantage of and credit for other people's hard work is his entire brand. It's not a brag, or something for his specific ego to feel threatened by. He's plenty pissed at the horrible low-down actions. But Norman hoped to bruise his vanity instead, and that didn't remotely happen.

Supposedly no more secrets with Nico. I sense Runaways stuff coming in Season 2. I thought Nico was a very good viewpoint character this episode. Like she already KNOWS he's Spider-Man, but seeing it is different, I would think mostly because it's real and not a potential prank. She gets it, and the life-threatening stuff also paints the stakes pretty clearly.

I love that Lonnie Lincoln is involved with Spider-Man's redemption arc in the episode. How perfect is that?

Mac Gargan is pretty fucking despicable. If Peter had actually killed him, I wouldn't have blamed him one bit.

I've been running a little hot and cold with this show but I liked this one. 4 stars.

I suspect most of the fans will adore that, and truthfully, I liked most of it, and thought one of the turns was really neat. But I will be that one fan in a hundred with an odd complaint that you never hear directed at superhero projects. For other fans, bigger is always better. I felt the episode tried to do too much. There were too many unresolved false endings. Not only have I never been crazy about season ending cliffhangers, the problem with these literal dozen tags is that as far as cliffhangers go, they are more speculative, than dire and pulse-pounding. They don't suggest a danger the hero is in, and must get out of next season. They suggest larger plot elements that could either go anywhere, or even be dropped if the writers decide they can't find a good angle. That's the precise reason I have come to loathe the tags in the movies. They always ultimately turn out to be neither here nor there and that's obnoxious.

Truthfully a TV show definitely has far more license to do that than a movie does. But it was too much to hit us with all at once.

That being said, having Josh Keaton voice an alive, but imprisoned, Richard Parker says that Feige knows exactly which fandom buttons to push anyways. He could have cast Christopher Daniel Barnes or Drake Bell. But Josh Keaton was the Spider-Man hardcore fans took the most seriously. It's ironic because I think The Spectacular Spider-Man is unmitigated shit from start to finish. The more time and distance I have from it, the less I like it. But Keaton was the right person to cast. I may not love that show, but everyone else does.

Norman's biggest, most unforgivable mistake in my book was foolishly giving away his most important weapon, for no good reason whatsoever, and ultimately no gain to himself. Norman has no more plausible deniability left. He has evaporated every last benefit of the doubt. And the thing that annoys me a bit is that Norman wouldn't have had to change ANY of his actions this episode if he had tempered what he said, and not sounded like a lunatic. If his words had been measured instead of megomaniacal, when shit went South, nobody would have even blamed him after the fact. That's how Dr. Connors gets away with their shit in most continuities. I guess that's what bothers me. Is it the real Norman Osborne coming forward? Or is it bad writing? Both? Neither? Since I don't feel his specific goals in the episode crossed a line to supervillainy, maybe he shouldn't talk and act like one. Just in case this shit doesn't work out.

Noticed Ned Leeds on Harry's sign-up sheet. I mentioned the episode tried to do too much? That! That!

Hell, I might even have enjoyed the Watcher's cameo if I thought it would lead to bigger things, but I'm cynical enough to believe it's fanservice and nothing more,. Fanservice pleases many fans. It seldom pleases me.

I mentioned there was something about the episode I dug. I loved the time travel aspect. It suggests Peter got his powers from HIMSELF, and when he's talking about things that were meant to happen to Doctor Strange at the end, that's a bullseye, because Spider-Man's entire origin story is a predestination paradox. In this Universe, Spider-Man always happened because he always creates himself. I think that's a really cool and far-out idea. That interested me far more than learning where Baby Venoms come from.

So yeah, my suggestion for next season? Maybe dial it back a smidge? What kind of superhero comic fan demands THAT? The kind of viewer who isn't remotely a superhero comic fan. 3 stars.