Foul Ball!

In this episode, Peter Parker is trying out as pitcher for the school baseball team.

Let’s clear something up. Peter Parker is not a jock, and shouldn’t care about sports. He’s an academic. A “science nerd”, if you will. The writers seemed to get this in the “Origin” episode, and touched upon in others, like “Home”. At this point in the series, it’s clear Bakshi’s staff still didn’t have a handle on how the character of Peter Parker should act.

“A bonafide, true to life bookwor--, er, I mean, athlete.”

Another peculiarity about these earlier episodes is the order in which they originally aired versus the order they were intended to air. Henry over at the Spidey Jazz Yahoo forums theorizes that these first few episodes were meant to air in a different order, and that the threat level of each villain that Spidey faces was meant to ramp up with each episode. Makes sense to me.

Tell us about your “hard one”, Petey.

Pete only has eyes for your “tight spot”, buddy boy!

They scrubbed so hard their nipples fell off!

Master criminal, Shakespeare, briefs his men, dressed in gorilla suits, on their latest caper. Their plan: Steal the Optimo Gem, a diamond, coincidentally the size of a baseball, from the Cosmopolitan Museum. From there, I guess they plan on hiding out in the gorilla cages in the nearby zoo. I guess nobody would suspect an ape wearing a bowler and smoking a cigar.

Must be some high tech ape costumes, even the mouths move when the crooks talk.

A shadowy figure enters the city zoo ( Re-using the Master Technician's sillouette from “Swing City”. What? They couldn't draw a couple of new frames of a SHADOW? ), and sets loose a large gorilla. All hell breaks loose, the same crowd of six people runs by a few times, and Peter Parker now wearing a brown jacket, instead of the blue one he was changing into in the locker room earlier, arrives on the scene.

Of course, some re-used animation of Peter from “Origin Of Spiderman”

Pete changes into Spidey and swings all over the city, then back to the zoo where he just came from.

Seriously? He was already at the zoo! WTF!

After engaging the gorilla in battle ( No kidding! Really! ), the Web Slinger strikes a blow for animal cruelty when he punches the big ape ( In the nuts? ), and trips it with his web, taking Tall, Grey and Hairy out of commission.

Does PETA know about this?

We started with somewhat realistic sounding ape noises, probably from a sound effects record. This transitions into gorillas that sound like a constipated old man. And these are the real apes, mind you, not Shakespeare’s goon squad.

The zoo must have had some jumbo apes flown from Wakanda )

The next sequence was intended to be humorous, but ends up being funny for a completely different reason. As Shakespeare and his men are watching Spider-Man take on the ape, live on TV, the news reporter asks “Can he save himself?“. Shakespeare replies, “Yes, that IS the question!” and then the reporter says, “Well, let’s see!” as if he is responding to Shakespeare. Now, this was meant to be a clever bit, but it falls flat because the animators mistakenly animated Shakespeare’s mouth moving, along to the reporter’s dialog that’s supposed to be coming from the TV. Not that anyone besides me ever notices these types of things.

There wasn’t any picture on the screen anyway.

Another odd voice-over error is when a museum employee is leaving and asks the guard where all of his pals are. The guard replies “I’m the only guard left!” The employee responds with “Let’s hope there’s no monkey business” in a completely different voice. Weird.

Shakespeare’s gorilla suit wearing henchmen slip into the museum and take out the lone guard, and smash the glass case containing the Optimo.

I’ve always preferred the Intellivision Baseball to the Atari version.

We cut back to the ball park, and I assume that Pete made it back, because now he’s sitting in the bullpen whining. Pete gets sent after a fly ball that practically lands on the Museum steps. He goes to retrieve it & runs into the museum employee who now sounds like he’s 96 years old. The man tells him that the apes have invaded the Museum, and are rousing in the gem collection.

I’m surprised Pete didn’t call the man a “kook”!

Peter changes to Spider-Man to investigate, and here’s where things get kinda sketchy. Pete chases the ball that rolls to the museum. So the museum must be close by, right? So why does he need to swing all over Manhattan, and then back to the museum? Why not just change into costume in the bushes, scale the wall to an open window and climb in? At least in “Kingpinned”, all of the extraneous swinging made sense, it was a chase scene. Kind of.

The extended padding of this episode is ridiculous!

Shakespeare’s goons ditch their monkey suits and attempt to get out of dodge. Wait, I thought the point of the disguises was that nobody would suspect a gorilla of stealing a diamond! At this point, as far as Shakes and pals know, nobody’s spotted them. Now they’ve blown their cover and they plan on waltzing out the front door with the stolen jewel? Even for a kids cartoon, this plot is just plain ignorant.

This image almost saves the episode. Almost.

Spidey drops in on the crooks making their getaway and hilarity ensues. Shakespeare tries “gumming up” Spidey with liquid latex, which somehow creates a fog, under cover of which Spidey slips into a suit of armor. How he manages to do this without Shakespeare or his men knowing he hid there is beyond me.

Hint: Any time the protagonist disappears, and there just happens to be a suit of armor, 9 times out of 10 that protagonist is hiding in that armor.

Next, Shakespeare throws a smoke bomb, creating… Hey! Wait a minute! Was the line of dialog about the haze lifting meant to happen after the smoke bomb was thrown? Anyway, Shakes heads for the roof where he tries to make his escape, with Spider-Man in hot pursuit. He tosses the Optimo at Spidey who moves to catch it, but the distraction allows Shakes to knock the Webbed One off of the roof. Um, he’s SPIDER-Man, he sticks to walls. Duh. Spidey yanks Shakespeare over the side, and the “Prince Of Theives” is cuffed and stuffed by the authorities waiting below.

Spider-Man’s back looks quite bare. Certainly devoid of spiders…

Spidey swings across town, I mean, across the street to the ball park, changes into Peter Parker just in time to throw the winning pitch, only instead of the ball he supposedly went across the street for, he throws the ball-sized Optimo gem. Wouldn’t the catcher wonder why this guy is throwing a frickin’ diamond instead of a baseball?

The home team wins, and now Peter Parker is Midtown High’s star pitcher! What happens next? Nothing. Y’know why? Because this episode was stupid, made no sense, and was probably written for some other show. It’s obvious that this series has no respect for its own continuity. It’s like they had a five minute meeting to come up with plots for episodes and someone suggested sports themed stories. So they came up with one for baseball, basketball, and football. What? No tennis? Horseshoes? Shuffleboard?

Horrible.

NEXT: Rocket Robin Redux