The Peter/Mary Jane romance takes a left turn when a new love interest threatens to keep them apart!  Screenplay By: Morgan Gendal
Directed By: Aude Paden
Music By: John Digweed, Nick Muir and William Anderson
Animation By: Mainframe

 THE PLOT: Mary Jane, utterly frustrated with the go-nowhere relationship between her and Peter, tries to figure out how to express her feelings. Meanwhile, Peter meets an aspiring reporter named Indy at the Empire 1 news room who’s immediately taken with him. Suddenly, a gang of KGB trained techno-thugs hold the building hostage and demand for Spider-Man’s presence within the hour or everyone dies.

LONG STORY SHORT: Peter escapes the group of hostages long enough to change into Spider-Man and defeats the thugs. Mary Jane, worried sick once she learned Peter was taken hostage, rushes to the scene only to find Indy putting the moves on Peter rather forcefully. The love triangle for the MTV series has officially begun…

MY THOUGHTS: Hey, remember when I used to review this show?

After a year off from viewing this series analytically, it took a surprisingly short amount of time to get back into the swing of things. Mary Jane and Peter still have this wonky relationship, Harry’s still written to be 20s McCollege Guy, and the villains still primarily suck. All that being said, the series does continue to be marginally entertaining six episodes in, and with the introduction of a new character to spice things up it’s given leeway to forge its own ongoing story in an attempt to free itself from the confines of the movie and comic book continuities.

This episode is mainly concerned with the relationship between Peter and MJ, finally doing something by making MJ as confused as the viewers had to have been. Her characterization in this show is one of the series’ biggest drawbacks, through no fault of Lisa Loeb who continues to be one of the best voice actresses to do the character. She’s still very good, and while up to this point MJ has been an inconsistent character this episode does its best to have her try to end the confusing mess that the end of the first Raimi movie put her relationship with Peter in. We see that directly referenced, and Neil Patrick Harris maintains the hemming and hawing that Tobey Magure gave Parker in the first two films, so a sense of consistency and continuity is firmly established right at the beginning.

Well, sort of. Harry is actively trying to get the two together in a way that James Franco never did or wanted to have, but nevertheless…

  One of this episode’s strengths is how is starts off being more of a Peter story. He tries to cash in his exploits as Spider-Man to the Bugle (with the debut of J. Jonah Jameson seen here…I think), then goes elsewhere when that doesn’t pan out. Unfortunately much of the emotional heft is given to Mary Jane, and the witty banter given to Jameson, Harry and Indy. Again, Peter ends up being somewhat relegated to a background character in his own series which is the show’s worst aspect. With this script especially in which two females want a piece of him, this should have had Peter mulling over his current predicament all over the episode. It’s classic Silver Age Spider-Man, but for some reason the plot just gets away from him. He has no real sense of urgency shown at all, even when Pterodax threatens to murder everyone in the room. Granted so far in the show Peter’s never really had difficult threats in his Spider-Man career. Shikata and the Lizard were rough but for the most part guys like Pterodax shouldn’t, and don’t, give him and problems. I like seeing Spider-Man capable of handling any threat, but a little interest into what’s going on around him would be nice.

Speaking briefly on Jameson, the voice actor Keith Carradine is by far the weakest Jameson actor in the history of the character. He closest resembles the 60s show’s voice actor, and even that guy sounded more appropriate. The conflict here is that Carradine is made to do a J.K. Simmons impersonation, which he does decent enough in terms of the dialogue. It was actually very Stan Lee-esque to watch Peter and JJ haggle over 40 bucks, with Jameson moaning about being sent to the poor house. That was good, but the voice all but kills the fun. It’s also a big shame since Jameson to my memory barely has a presence in the series. There was always the rumor that the show couldn’t have old people depicted on the idea that they would scare off the audience. First, WHAT. Second, many of Spider-Man best characters and villains are folks older than him. It just makes the show fall all the more flatter to not have a rounder cast of characters, and whenever Jameson shows up, you’re reminded of that.

Now Indy is a character that I’ve been wanting to talk about for years, simply because she’s probably the most memorable aspect of the whole show. Like Toonzone’s review said, the producers of the show for some reason avoided using any of Peter’s dozens of other female love interests and instead made up a new one. I’ve no problem with that whatsoever. It gets old comparing and contrasting iterations of characters that are 50 years old after a while, and by adding in someone new it gives Spider-Man someone a bit more interesting to bounce off of because we don’t know how the character is going to turn out yet. I find myself highly amused by Indy, both for the fact that she’s a blatant attempt to shake up the Peter/MJ love-plot, and also because she’s a disgusting product of her time. I mean…look at her. She’s decked out in purple leggings and go-go boots, an ugly pea-soup green jacket, dorky glasses and pig-tails with long stalks of hair. She looks like the perfect result of how a character designer working at MTV in the year 2003 would make someone look: atrocious. However you can’t say that her woeful sense of style doesn’t mesh with her hyperactive personality. She talks out loud often and is very sardonic, often displaying both intelligence and wit while still being a bit insecure about herself. Whether that’s because of her crush on Peter or not has yet to be determined. Then there’s the name, which in full is “Indira Daimonji”. That has to be the wackest name given to a character since Doctor Who’s “Perpugilliam Brown”. I couldn’t believe my ears when she said that, so a few minutes of research reveals that “Indira” is derived from Hindu mythology, where she was the wife of Vishnu, and “Daimonji” is Japanese. So Indy’s essentially half Indian, half Japanese. That’s pretty cool, as I don’t recall if that’s ever mentioned in the show. Finally there’s the voice acting of Angelle Brooks, who gives Indy a deep, down to earth timbre to her voice. Some people may not enjoy that, but I like it as a change of pace. She makes Indy sound like she’s from New York without relying on a silly accent. It’s an extra-dimension which endears me to her more and almost offsets the goofiness of her wardrobe and general look.

As for her crush on Peter, it was alright. It’s a naked attempt to solely make Mary Jane cry at the end, but I just about bought it for the episode. Peter appears in her eyes to be tall, nice and thoughtful, so I can see her being attracted to him, and the acting on it immediately once they’ve gone through a close-call with death.

Personally I’m looking forward to how things develop with Indy. With 13 episodes in the series and 6 down, and one or two shown out of order I can imagine that we may not get much. I remember how she ends up in the finale, so it will be interesting to see what happens between now and then.

As for Pterodax and his goons, there was nothing to them. Pterodax himself, voiced by James Marsters was suave and cool, probably because of his soul-patch. Interestingly enough, his main hencheman got repeatedly name-checked as “Aleski”. This universe’s version of the Rhino, maybe?

I like this episode, but again in keeping with the trend in this series, it was good but could and should have been better. I think Mary Jane was done well enough and aside from Pterodax, all of the other characters were fairly entertaining. Still, this show needs to keep its focus more on Peter and not just people who concern themselves with Peter. In any case, here’s to the future with Indy.

3/5 MUSIC VIDEOS

All images taken from Marvel.toonzone.net