Episode Review - Where Evil Nests
Review and Media by Stu

Episode #3 - Where Evil Nests
Original Airdate - October 16th, 1999
Settling in on Counter-Earth, Peter gets to know his new landlady, Naoko Yamada-Jones, and her son, Shayne. When Shayne is captured by the Bio-Mass, an amoeba-like creature under the control of Venom and Carnage, Spidey and a mysterious vigilante called the Goblin must rescue him. Afterwards, Peter gets a job as a news photographer at the Daily Byte.

Credits
Story By: Will Meugniot
Written By: Steve Perry, Brynne Chandler Reaves
Directed By: Patrick Archibald
Starring: Rino Romano as Spider-Man/Peter Parker/The Green Goblin, Michael Donovan as Carnage, Tasha Simms as Lady Ursula, Jennifer Hale as Lady Vermin/Mary Jane Watson, Ron Halder as Sir Ram, Richard Newman as The High Evolutionary, Brian Drummond as Venom/Eddie Brock, Kim Hawthorne as Karen O'Malley, Christopher Gaze as Bromley, David Sobolov as Lord Tyge, Rhys Huber as Shane Yamada-Jones, Akiko Morison as Naoko , John Payne as John Jameson and Mark Gibbon as Nick Fury.

Review:
Spider-Man's arch nemesis The Green Goblin makes his debut here, but it's not the Green Goblin we're all used to. No, this show wasn't allowed to use the comic version, so we're stuck with this novel take on the character. In a truly odd twist, this Green Goblin is a good guy, the neighbourhood's superhero. A neat idea for sure, but the presentation could be better.

Another odd thing about The Goblin is his casting. Rino Ramano plays both Spider-Man and The Green Goblin here and doesn't especially do a great job with either of them. His Spidey often feels like he's trying too hard to make the character cool, especially when delivering his embarrassing "Your friendly interplanetary Spider-Man!" line. The design for The Goblin is actually quite cool. There's no glider and his face is a little odd, but I thoughts the wings were pretty cool, and allowed for a pretty good fight with Spidey when they clashes the beginning of the episode.

Speaking of designs, I don't actually mind the "Unlimited" suit too much. I miss the webs on his head, and I think the cape is daft, but it's not too bad a suit. It's not as cool as the traditional red and blue suit, or even the red and black Spidey suit used in the opening episode, but it's not terrible by any means. I don't like it being nanotech though; as it's another reminder how far away this series is from the Spider-Man we know. There's some things that one can never get used to, and Spidey's nanotech is one of them.

There's not too many utterly stupid moments in this episode, which is probably due to a lack of The Beastials appearing, but there is one which simply had me rolling my eyes. When Spidey and The Goblin are fighting some robots, The Goblin blinds them with a flash pumpkin bomb. He blinded robots. Which have no eyes, and no nerves...

Ok.

Not a truly terrible episode, but if you compare it to Spider-Man: The Animated Series' "Enter The Green Goblin," you're bound to be utterly disappointed with it. It's better than the opening two-part episode, however. Let's hope things continue to improve ...

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