Peter Parker gets slammed in the slammer.
The further I get into the second season of the '70s Amazing Spider-Man show, the more I understand why there wasn't a third season. CBS clearly had very little interest in the title character. They had decided from the beginning that they weren't going to pit Spider-Man against any of his supervillain enemies from the comic book, but at least they had him foiling large scale schemes, dealing with clones, and taking on a telekinetic in the first season. The second season scaled way back, to the point that Spider-Man has had little to do in the stories. CBS was just fine with having a show about a photojournalist named Peter Parker (played by Nicholas Hammond) who keeps getting himself into trouble, but they seemed embarrassed by the fact that Peter sometimes puts on a costume and calls himself Spider-Man.
Great character actor (and father of Juliette) Geoffrey Lewis guest stars in the Photo Finish episode as Weldon Gray, a rare coin dealer who has just paid $800,000 for five of the rarest coins in the world. He wants the Daily Bugle newspaper to do a story on his coins, so editor J. Jonah Jameson (Robert F. Simon) sends Peter to do the job. While Peter is talking to Gray and taking pictures of the coins, something activates his "spider sense": he knows a person is about to walk into Gray's office with a gun. The spider sense doesn't Peter much good, because when the person enters the office he obeys their order to turn his back to them - and then gets konked on the head, knocked out. Yep, CBS and writer Howard Dimsdale got Spider-Man just right, didn't they?
When Peter wakes up the coins have been stolen and there's a picture on his camera that he didn't take. One that seems to show the robber, and it looks like it could be Gray's ex-wife Bonita (Jennifer Billingsley). Realizing that Gray had requested the Daily Bugle coverage as a way to use their photojournalist to frame his ex for a crime, Peter refuses to hand over his pictures... and gets put in jail for being in contempt of court. The nice aspect of this part of the story is that Jameson - usually a grumpy, unpleasant fellow - admires Peter's journalistic integrity and backs him 100%.
The crazy thing about Peter getting "slammed in the slammer", as Jameson puts it, is when it's revealed that he managed to smuggle the Spider-Man costume into his cell so he can put it on before bending the bars in his window, allowing him to escape. How Peter could possibly have the Spider-Man costume hidden under his prison blues isn't explained, but he sneaks in and out of his cell a couple times over the course of the episode.
Spider-Man has multiple encounters with Gray and the lackeys he hired to pull off the coin robbery, and these three middle-aged men are so effective at fighting him off that it really makes him seem pathetic. The first fight goes so poorly that Gray is left fairly certain that Spider-Man is Peter Parker and Spidey slinks back to jail in defeat. The second time they run into each other Spidey only accomplishes getting himself shot.
Photo Finish was directed by Tony Ganz and was a frustrating episode for me to sit through, as it really drove home how little the makers of this show cared about Spider-Man. Spidey has the least amount of screen time they could possibly give him, and for most of that screen time the portrayal of him comes off as a bad joke. He's weak, he doesn't properly use his abilities, he gets bested by a coin dealer played by Geoffrey Lewis.
It's unfortunate that The Amazing Spider-Man aired on a network that would have rather have just been making another straightforward crime show.
Love that you're going through this series. I used to watch it as a kid and recently rewatched/reviewed the three "movies" that it produced. CBS really had no idea what to do with Spidey. In fairness, no one "wanted" to be doing superhero shows back then. They were kinda looked down upon and certainly weren't afforded a network's top resources because they just weren't taken seriously. My, how times have changed.
ReplyDeleteYeah, CBS clearly wasn't into the Spider-Man property, but they wanted some of that Spidey cash.
Delete- Cody
I have to agree that Spidey isn't a very formidable opponent here, whereas in previous episodes, he was shown to be pretty effective.
ReplyDeleteHowever, what made this episode for me is basically the character work. Not only does Geoffrey Lewis make for an enjoyable villain, but the handling of Peter's sense of justice really made it for me. The whole scene of him and Rita in the dark room really hammers home what a lonely person Peter is due to his sense of responsibility he feels. Like the eighth juror in 12 Angry Men, he has reasonable doubt about the guilt of Bonita Grey, and basically goes out of his way to investigate the matter instead of letting her take the fall. And I feel that's something this show did quite well, imbuing Peter's character with that underdog quality that really makes you hope he comes out of it alright despite of the odds.