Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man

This Wednesday, the final episodes of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man released on Disney+. Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man is an animated TV show that tells of Peter Parker's beginning year as Spider-Man. The show was originally supposed to be the origin of Tom Holland's Spider-Man in the MCU but somewhere along the line, it got changed to being in a separate universe.

I had a pretty fun time with this show. I thought that the show did a great job of capturing the high school aspect of Spider-Man's story. You see him struggling to balance his hero life with his school life as well as his lack of maturity when dealing with characters like Norman Osborn. I liked how the origins of Spider-Man are a bit more unconventional as it has Norman Osborn being the mentor figure to Peter instead of Tony Stark or Uncle Ben. While the show isn't technically a part of the MCU, it still feels lived in and references events from the MCU such as the Sokovia Accords and the battle of New York essentially implying that this is a universe very similar to the MCU just without Spider-Man's involvement with Tony Stark. I like how we get to see some variations of familiar characters such as Tombstone, Dr. Conners, and Norman Osborn. It brings fresh ideas to a hero and world that could easily become tired. Finally, I liked the animation style of the show. It feels its comic book roots as all of the action sequences and events are animated to feel like a comic book. It has a similar style to the Spider-Verse films.

Unfortunately, there were some issues I had with the show. I felt that the show didn't commit to how it wanted to be structured. The episodes weren't strong enough to feel like stand-alone adventures, nor was there a strong enough overarching story to tie everything together. The show needed to pick one or the other and instead did neither. I also wasn't really satisfied with the final episode. The finale doesn't bring anything together as the big conflict overarching the story is resolved an episode earlier. I also didn't like that Spider-Man didn't get to fight the final battle on his own. As part of his growth as a hero, he should have been the only person fighting the villain. Finally, I felt that the final episode spent too much time setting up stuff for upcoming episodes. Instead of resolving the story and satisfyingly ending things with a little tease about what is coming, the show spends the final 10 minutes setting up all of these different plot points for the rest of the series.

Overall, while there were quite a few aspects that I did like, I don't think the show had the cohesion to get things going in the direction it wanted. However, a lot of shows have some growing pains in the first season, so I am hoping the show will learn from its mistakes and make an even better second season.

Score: 7/10 Grade: B Recommendation: Check it out