Ultimate Spider-Man, Season 1, Episode 5: Flight of the Iron Spider; Episode 6: Why I Hate Gym
A pair of episodes that really tries to focus on world-building. Episode 5 finally introduces Marvel's big-name character, Iron Man, who, in this incarnation is pretty much the same golden-boy superhero as he is in the live-action movies. And, interestingly (I'm not sure how much of this is true in the comics), the episode ends up focusing around the themes of Iron Man being a mentor for Spider-Man, potentially 'stealing' Spider-Man away from Nick Fury.
And... and it's not particularly well-handled. Sure, the setup is decent. Iron Man shows up and one-shots the seeming monster-of-the-week, Living Laser. And then Spider-Man and his Junior Avengers all fangasm about Iron Man. Iron Man himself tells Spider-Man to basically see him because he has potential, while Nick Fury tells Spider-Man to not do so because Iron Man's a bad influence. Although honestly, what with Fury basically preventing Spider-Man from having any personal time by putting his agents as his schoolmates and principal, as well as guilt-tripping Spider-Man to be the leader of a superhero team, doesn't really give the one-eyed man any high ground to stand on.
And then Spider-Man goes anyway, obtaining the badass-looking Iron Spider armour, which honestly is easily one of the coolest-looking Spider-Man costume variants ever.
And then the rest of the episode basically becomes an exercise in Spider-Man learning that technology isn't everything, and that he shouldn't think himself better than the rest of the Junior Avengers just because he is Tony Stark's new best friend. Spider-Man's armour gets hacked by the Living Laser, which in turn hacks Iron Man's armour, and then they team up with Iron Man to defeat Living Laser with the aid of a Chekov's Gun, which, in this case, is a device that rips you atom by atom and scatters you across the multiverse. Brutal.
Although in practice, it just sends the Living Laser to a weird chibi universe that I think is a reference to another show I'm not aware of.
Ultimately, though, it's an episode that, despite its pretty promising themes, the episode feels like it sort of needed a couple less gag jokes and a few more passes through an editor. The concept of the episode is sound for a basic superhero episode -- the main character is given more power than usual, and then learns that he has to use it responsibly -- but the episode's pacing, I think, is kind of off. Plus, I don't get a good chunk of the references here. Still, it's kind of nitpicking and I did find myself liking Iron Man as an absent-minded, tired-sounding super genius who might not be the best role model, but is definitely well-intentioned. It's genuinely surprising to find out that this Iron Man is voiced by Adrian Pascal, the same voice actor from Avengers Assemble... and considering how enjoyable Iron Man is in this episode and how dire Iron Man was in Assemble, this really tells me that the problem with that particular show is, well, the writing and definitely not Mr. Pascal.
Episode 6, "Why I Hate Gym", has a less-recognizable guest star than Iron Man, but I feel is a much more solid episode. See, the villain of the week this time around is Taskmaster (voiced by the always excellent Clancy "Lex Luthor" Brown), a martial artist with the most badass skull-faced hooded martial artist that can mimic anyone's moves after seconds of observing them. Taskmaster is hired by Oscorp (or maybe just creepy Dr. Octopus? It's unclear) to try and figure out which student in Midtown High is Spider-Man.
And Taskmaster does it by... disguising himself as this hilarious-looking gym teacher that does jumping jacks with the most hilarious porn-stache ever. JUST LOOK AT HIM! The end of the episode reveals that this 'stached face is a mask that Taskmaster wears over his real face, but throughout this episode I just find it hilarious that Taskmaster apparently looks like that under his mask.
It's also a very solid episode, too, cutting down the amount of noise. Throughout the past three or four episodes, the Junior Avengers are sort of clumped into this one conglomerate of characters that just are there to mock and/or support Spider-Man as demanded by the script. Here, only two of them have prominence -- White Tiger and Iron Fist -- and it does wonders at making them feel like individuals instead of four flat characters with a one-dimensional character trait. Throw in the fact that Taskmaster is actually furthering the plotlines set up by the premise of the show -- SHIELD's micromanaging the school, as well as Oscorp/Dr. Octopus's quest to study and figure out Spider-Man, and it ends up as an interesting premise. Spider-Man also keeps his cutaway gags and commentary to a minimum in this episode, too, which is contrasted heavily with the previous one.
After throwing the students through an obstacle course, Taskmaster ends up selecting three boys who seem athletic enough to be Spider-Man, namely Danny Rand, Harry Osborn and Flash Thompson. Thanks to some jealousy on White Tiger's part, though, she ends up discovering that Taskmaster's taken over the school, put Coulson above a vat of acid, and activated the insanely deadly weapons that SHIELD has incorporated into the school's infrastructure. Poor Stan Lee the janitor! Why did SHIELD see the need to do this? No wonder Coulson has problems dealing with the budget.
Taskmaster shows off his powers by taking down Danny Rand despite his, y'know, Iron Fist and his K'un-Lun kung fu, which I found hilarious, before facing off against the combined powers of Spider-Man and White Tiger. There's sort of a running theme where White Tiger ends up too focused on training and on two possible choices, whereas Spider-Man ends up coming up with a trick to defeat Taskmaster by shutting out the lights and swapping weapons with White Tiger, ensuring that Taskmaster can't predict their moves. It's kind of a cop-out, although as an episode meant to debut a new character like episode 4 did with Venom, it's a fun enough episode.
We also get some solid themes with Taskmaster revealing to Spider-Man that he, too, was a former SHIELD agent that was apparently betrayed at some point by Nick Fury, although how much the series will explore this particular can of worms is up to debate. Spider-Man himself seems to brush it off as the ramblings of a villain, although I guess it's seeding plot threads for some future conflict.
There is the question, though -- Taskmaster clearly knows now that Danny Rand is Iron Fist, and from White Tiger's commentary about not being picked for whatever elite sports regiment, he would probably narrow down which of the students she is. Why doesn't Taskmaster make use of either of those secret identities? Oh well.
Overall, I definitely liked the Taskmaster episode a whole ton. Clancy Brown's performance might've won me over a lot, but the fun setup and the focus on characterizing one of the secondary cast instead of overcluttering the hell out of the show (like episode 5) is definitely a good move for these standalone episodes. Episode 6's cutaway jokes also felt like they are at a neat enough balance to be funny but unobtrusive. I dunno. Episode 5 just felt really messy to me despite its potential.
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