"Final Curtain" Season 2: Episode 26 Discussion Thread

[Syncos]

I don't want to download it because (a) that would be wrong (that was a sarcastic joke, in case you couldn't tell) and (b) that's a sure fire way to get a computer virus.

Torrents are not a sure fire way to get a virus. If you're going about getting torrents the proper way, you'd have to be actively trying to get a virus, to download one.

 

[kguillou]

Originally Posted by Dread

I'm grateful for two seasons and 26 episodes, in an era where animation has never been more expensive and many shows die after only one season, especially the last two for Spider-Man. It's been almost unequaled excellence from any recent comic themed cartoon in many years. It's the Spider-Man cartoon that after some 40+ years, has everything and gets it right; good animation, action sequences, acting, and especially writing. After ONE MORE DAY, it honestly could not have come at a better time for me, giving me something excellent of Spidey's to like again, and even surpassing the third film (which I didn't hate as much as some did). For the body of work that stands so far, thanks Sony for funding it, and thanks Wiesman, Cook, Keaton, and everyone else for making it.

FINALLY. I thought i was the only one who didnt hate the 3rd movie. I feel like people overreacted waay too much about it. It wasnt a bad movie, yea they screwed up wit venom and had peter dance a little, but to me that didnt absolutely destroy the film imo.

 

[Blade X]

Torrents are not a sure fire way to get a virus. If you're going about getting torrents the proper way, you'd have to be actively trying to get a virus, to download one.

Are torrents safer then limewire? What are the safest torrent sites?

 

[TheAQU4M4N]

Are torrents safer then limewire? What are the safest torrent sites?

i'd say, mininova as one of the more safer and popular ones. I've also used Awesome Toons just for Spidey. I usually seed enough to let everyone else get a chance then i put it on zipdrive or something.

 

[Dread]

When you think about Liz's last few months, she broke up with a long-time boyfriend, her brother got turned into a supervillain and sent to jail, and then her new boyfriend dumped her for someone else.

Next season, with Gwen being emotionally blackmailed by Harry, I'm wondering if we'll start to see Peter dating/partying/whatever with MJ.

Yeah, Liz had a rough season. The only show where I can remember cheerleaders or jocks sometimes being treated as more three dimensional was X-MEN EVOLUTION, and that was basically because in that show, Jean Grey was a star soccer player for her school. Liz softened up in the first season but really became a tragic character here.

It would be interesting if Peter started shifting to MJ, although I imagine MJ still wants Gwen and Peter to hook up; she may not be willing to date Peter until he's not just settling for "not Gwen" via another girl.

It is kind of sad in a way that the best thing in Liz's life was a boyfriend who was distracted by a truer love and spandex crime-fighting.

Anybody else like the "Mace Bullets"? Hell of an improvement over vague lasery things.

I liked them. I think they added variety to the combat. Sure, we all prefer bullets, but it beats boring old lasers. Being hit in the face with a giant mace shot from a bazooka would friggin' hurt.

Another great review dread.

Thanks. I tried to make it special.

Best Spider-man Animated Series of all time!!!

While some may note that it hasn't lasted five seasons and over 60 episodes yet like the 90's show, it certainly is looking that way for me.

FINALLY. I thought i was the only one who didnt hate the 3rd movie. I feel like people overreacted waay too much about it. It wasnt a bad movie, yea they screwed up wit venom and had peter dance a little, but to me that didnt absolutely destroy the film imo.

Not to get too distracted by mentioning SPIDER-MAN 3, but to me, while the film wasn't as good as SPIDER-MAN 2, I didn't find it that offensive. It was overstuffed, and full of a lot of corporate haggling. Ironically, I felt that the film clearly liked the idea of dark/good Spider-Man with the symbiote and had they nixed Sandman to focus on Venom more, the entire picture would have been stronger even with the odd THE MASK style dance number. But, Venom was the corporate villain, while Raimi wanted Sandman, and much like the moral in SPIDER-MAN 2, Raimi was only willing to compromise, not abandon, his dream. But for every awkward dance number or clunky line, there was some great stuff with Harry, or a cool battle, or an incredible scene with Sandman (who was a wonder to watch). Off the top of my head I could rattle off a slew of comic book films, sequels and otherwise, that SPIDER-MAN 3 was better than. Quite frankly, if SPIDER-MAN 3 is the WORST film of the Spider-Man movie franchise, we got off light.

I do think SPECTACULAR SPIDER-MAN did a good job of blending story ideas from the film franchise together with a lot from the 60's-70's Lee/Ditko/Romita Sr. material as well as pinches of Ultimate.

I mean, no comedians skied off skyscrapers in that one.

 

[Pep]

(b) that's a sure fire way to get a computer virus.

Actually, using torrenting is one of the best ways to avoid downloading viruses compared to other P2P programs. I've never heard of anything like that happening with bittorrent.

 

[Persian]

Great review as usual "Dread". The second season sure ended with the greatest episode of the entire series.
By the way, we just celebrated the New Year in Iran. You really have to accept that Persians had a great taste in choosing the first day of spring to mark the beginning of their new calendar year! It is a tradition that goes back to thousands of years ago.

 

[Asteroid-Man]

Persian, that was completely irrelevant to the topic at hand. There is already a Noruz thread in the community forum (I believe page 2 or 3). Go discuss it there.

Back on topic, I really enjoyed this episode and it was a relief that they didn't keep dancing around Norman being the Green Gobby.

 

[SpaceWay2009]

i'd say, mininova as one of the more safer and popular ones. I've also used Awesome Toons just for Spidey. I usually seed enough to let everyone else get a chance then i put it on zipdrive or something.

Veoh can also be another site to watch the new episodes.

 

[Venom 1988]

I don't want to download it because (a) that would be wrong (that was a sarcastic joke, in case you couldn't tell) and (b) that's a sure fire way to get a computer virus.

Only if you're downloading porn

 

[Blade X]

Veoh can also be another site to watch the new episodes.

True, but Veoh only has the youtube version of this episode (which is broken down into 3 parts). I'm surprised that no one has put the complete episode up on Veoh yet.

 

[Blade X]

Only if you're downloading porn

Which is another reason why I don't download porn.

 

[SpaceWay2009]

^lol!

 

[Dread]

Great review as usual "Dread". The second season sure ended with the greatest episode of the entire series.
By the way, we just celebrated the New Year in Iran. You really have to accept that Persians had a great taste in choosing the first day of spring to mark the beginning of their new calendar year! It is a tradition that goes back to thousands of years ago.

Thanks. The holiday is an interesting coincidence.

According to Greg Wiesman in a Toonzone interview, Peter Parker's rigtone was, literally, "The Itsy Bitsy Spider". Personally I always liked the sound effects for the Pumpkin-Bombs. It made them sound like some of those cheesy Halloween toys, only they explode so they are dangerous.

 

[Webhead2006]

yea

 

[Mike059jig]

Best Spider-man Animated Series of all time!!!

Without a doubt, seriously this show is one of the best this decade. The episodes have been to well done and capture spider-man themes so well.

 

[Syncos]

Are torrents safer then limewire? What are the safest torrent sites?

much, much safer than limewire.
It's just a matter of paying attention to the files you're downloading.

Someone else mentioned it, http://mininova.org is a great site.


back to the episode at hand...

The question of MJ and Pete someone brought up was a good one. Yes, MJ was fighting for Gwen and Peter to get together, but I highly doubt Gwen is going to make it obvious that Harry is manipulating her, if she even realizes it. Who knows how Peter is going to react to her basically making him break up with Liz and then ditching him. And what will MJ think of that? Don't know. could be sketchy.

 

[CaptainCanada]

Yes, MJ was fighting for Gwen and Peter to get together, but I highly doubt Gwen is going to make it obvious that Harry is manipulating her, if she even realizes it. Who knows how Peter is going to react to her basically making him break up with Liz and then ditching him.

The ending of this episode made it pretty clear Peter is exactly aware of the circumstances, ie, that Gwen won't leave Harry when he's in such a state.

 

[Anwar]

From the look on Gwen's face, and seeing how she's used to Harry "using" her to an extent before I'm guessing she knows it too but isn't willing to take the risk that Harry just MIGHT end up on the Green again.

 

[Anwar]

In addition, while I do think he's just taken the first real steps toward being like Dear Old Dad I actually CAN understand why Harry did what he did at the end of "Final Curtain": He was just sick of always being shown up by Peter in nearly everything for the last few months. I mean, Norman preferred Peter to Harry (in fact Peter is one of the only chars Norman ever showed respect towards), when they tried out for football Peter did better than Harry (momentarily crushing Harry's dream) even with Harry using the green, at the dance Peter showed up with a hot girl and stole all of Harry's thunder with the in-crowd and now it turns out Harry's girlfriend's been in love with Peter for years.

So yeah, I still wanted to throttle the guy but adding all that up does add to it more than just one-episode jealousy/being like Norman.

 

[Ratcrawler]

Is norman's inability to apologize something from the comics or did they give him that for the show?

 

[SpaceWay2009]

I find it hard to believe that anyone is able to never apologize. But I guess I can make an exception for Norman.

 

[nygma619]

"I'M SEEING DOUBLE HERE. FOUR NORMAN'S!"

So this now concludes, the 2 season long mystery of the Green Goblin. And in all honesty it’s probably the strongest episode in the entire series to date.

Obviously behind the goblin mask was the worst kept secret. Norman Osborn, “It was him Pete, it was him all along.” Okay enough of that.

There’s so much to say about this episode I don’t know where to start. How about with the Goblin himself. The Green Goblin is perfect, though he has yet to do anything to damage Peter’s life yet like the 90’s series did, but he could (but honestly I hope they don’t go for the obvious). His design, his glider, his mannerisms, how he uses people, how much of a jackass his alter ego Norman Osborn is, to the perfect voice for the goblin in Steve Blum everything about GG here is pretty much The Green Goblin of our dreams.

Whilst Steve Blum might not get as strong material to work with on Wolverine and the X-Men, his performances on this show are 1st class all the way. This man IS The Green Goblin.

The episode starts off with Spidey still looking for the Goblin and taking down his new posse. I don’t know how they keep toping themselves with the action sequences here but they did again, even from the first fight, to Gobby bringing out the big guns, Marvel finally has a show with 1st class action, the kind you could expect for Spider-Man.
I also have to give props to my man Adam Van Wyk for continuing the stunning storyboarding he’s done with his action sequences. Adam’s the kind of guy you don’t have to ask twice to go the extra mile. He’ll do it without you having to ask him to.
The animation was also fantastic for this episode, as Hanho Heung Up does it again. Whilst the only work I was familiar with for them was there animation on Kim Possible. Their animation on this show is nothing short of stunning.

On another note I love the music cue once Gobby started dragging Spidey lower to the street. It’s the one moment after Green Goblin said to Spider-Man, “Menken? Seriously, you bought that?” anybody see what moment I’m talking about?

Despite the mystery being obvious to most, the performances of everyone here were so convincing that I almost started questioning myself and I like how they set Menkin up as a potential suspect. (To be honest, I think they should’ve kept Chameleon from dressing as Norman in Persona, so it would’ve been even more shocking at the moment). When Harry unmasked Chameleon, you can’t say he doesn’t know his father to a fault.

And Norman Osborn was pretty much the devil himself in this episode, and you could actually feel that level of disgust from Spider-Man/Peter Parker that I felt was appropriate for this whole ordeal. The kind of appropriate emotion that I felt was lacking from the Venom episodes, where they just didn’t go for any sort of “pain” in those episodes. If they could do that for these episodes, why couldn’t they do it for the Venom ones? The Venom episodes to be honest, just IMO lacked that “emotional truth” that the episodes in this last arc had.

I’m willing to bet that half the money Norman used was to buy all his weapons. The other half was for his escapade in the Caymen Islands as Mr. Roman, which is a better twist than even what the comics did with that whole amnesia angle. And I’ll be honest, this version of Norman Osborn has been portrayed as smart enough that I could buy him eventually finding a way to buy his company back over time as Mr. Roman, through Stock Trades (or some nonsense like that).

Now onto the romances on this show, Peter finally comes clean with Gwen about how he wants to be with her , and Gwen tells Peter she’s been in love with him since the seventh grade (IMO I think it started out as friendship and over time, she eventually came to discover that she had feelings for him. Then came to think that she stayed his friend because she had an unknowing crush, I don’t buy that she wouldn’t do anything about those feelings until five grades later) It was a sweet moment between the two.

As far as Pete breaking up with Liz, well the relationship wasn’t entirely honest on either end (Pete wanted to be with Gwen, and Liz wanted to be with Flash). So I don’t have 100% sympathy for Liz, since it felt like she wanted to have Peter so Gwen couldn’t. But she gave Pete a lot of leeway I’ll give her that.
And don’t worry Pete I’ve been in your situation before, I think she’ll eventually forgive you over time, especially when she see’s that you’re not with Gwen right away.
As for Harry still being with Gwen, boy that apple doesn’t fall that far from the tree does it? Don’t worry Pete, it’ll happen eventually (and honest to god I hope we get more seasons).

As for his part in the mystery, one thing I think they could’ve done a better job with in the mystery was making Harry a more convincing suspect as the goblin.
For example they could’ve made him more of a mechanical whiz/car guy that sucks at science. They could’ve showed off his handling of other technological vehicles (like here with the helicopter), to make us think maybe he can operate the glider.
Also have Norman’s explanation include how the globulin had faulty test results that showed psychological problems and the person developed a different persona. Make it more believable to the audience. On one more note Harry shouldn’t have known Hammerhead by that name.

If this had to be the end (and I hope it’s not) it went out on top. While the Venom and Gangwar arcs were a little disappointing for my liking. The Master Planner and Return arcs were brilliant, there’s still some nagging plot threads out there.
The one that intrigues me the most is Miles Warren now being in charge at the ESU labs. Though to be honest it’s not all perfect.
I still don’t think this arc justified Tombstone being jobbed the way he was, no matter how much I love this version of the goblin.
But still aside from Accomplices none of the episodes were even bad in the slightest.

They just don’t have shows like this anymore, and I almost wish this show was still on CW4Kids (stupid Kids WB going under). It would be foolish for this show to be cut down in its prime, and I’m going to do my part to watch the show at my house during Spring Break since there’s a Nielsen box there and not at my college apartment. I don’t get the justification for the dumb Nielsen boxes to begin with, but oh well.

*****


Now here's hoping that Disney XD gets the led out of their butts, and renews the show as soon as possible. If their serious about trying to get XD over as a new brand channel they need a top show(s) to lead it; and the Aaron Stone fad seems to be dying down. It would be pretty ridiculous for Disney XD to buy Spectacular Spider-Man and not do something with it.

Note to Disney XD, don't screw this up. If we have to choose one Spider-Man cartoon thats going to be the definitive Spidey cartoon of our time, we might as well make it this one, cause this show is the closest it's going to come to for that goal.

Don't screw it up XD.

 

[Persian]

by the way folks, somebody has updated the reception section of Wikipedia's page on teh show. it contains fabulous praise for the show even from variety!
hit the link below:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spectacular_Spider-Man_(TV_series)#Reception

if this show is not picked up for the third season i will commit suicide!

 

[Spider-Man '92]

To be honest, I thought this episode was great, right up until the very end. The reveal was well-played, and I thought it was great. However, I was thoroughly disappointed with Norman's death. It happens so quick, and the funeral scene is so sped through, it wasn't long enough to really enjoy.

Plus, the cause of death sucked, imo, crashing into a whole batch of bombs? Yeah, real original. I know this is also targeted at kids, but with that brief use of the impaler in the episode, it was clear to me that the Goblin would have died as he did in the comics, but no, they had to take the childish way out.

Now don't get me wrong, this was a great episode, but the ending, being a very important part, was utterly disappointing. Even with the cliffhanger, I was disappointed.