Well, I promised you were gonna get my 2024 West YEAR Ever post by today, and that didn’t happen. So, just consider that my first broken campaign promise. There will be more, but nowhere near as bad as those that will be broken by others…
So, like a good little Marvel Zombie, I checked out the debut of Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man on Disney+. Originally announced as Spider-Man: Freshman Year, I didn’t have a ton of interest in the show. You see, it felt like it was set during a time before he would have gotten his powers in the MCU, so it didn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. Also, and as I’ve said several times recently, it didn’t really stand out to me, as there’s ALWAYS a Spider-Man cartoon in production. This was just the latest one in a long line, and there will surely be more in the future. So, I was just sort of gonna pass on it.
Then, earlier this week, Spidey/Peter Parker voice actor Hudson Thames sort of went viral, as he gave an interview where he said he was initially nervous about taking the part, as he was afraid it would be “annoying and woke”. This guy said that:
Yeah, this doesn’t sit right with me. This feels like someone trying to hide something. Like, he’s around all the guys in the locker room, as they talk about women. And he says something weird, like, “Yeah, I just LOVE breasts! Ya know, when they’re…round? And…hard?” The Spidey doth protest too much, methinks! Anyway, I had to go see what Woke Spider-Man was gonna look like!
So, it was…fine. It’s not really doing anything you haven’t seen before from a Spider-Man show. Over the course of the two episodes that have been released, I constantly had one question in my head: WHY? Like, what was the point of this show? Warner Bros never would have greenlit a show like this because they have this sometimes-irrational/sometimes-justified fear of “brand confusion”. They don’t want a Batman TV show out that might conflict with a planned Batman film, as they assume the audience is dumb, and wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between the two projects. “Why is Twilight playing Batman? I thought it was Ben Affleck!” Ya know, that kind of thing. So, they try to avoid that. Marvel, however, has no such concerns, and this is one of the few times when they should have considered that.
They say that it was originally set in the MCU, and would have taken place prior to the events of Captain America: Civil War. However, the producers felt constrained by the characters and plotlines that would eventually play out from that, so they scrapped that idea. As a result, this show is basically set “one timeline over” from the MCU. So, it mixes concepts from MCU, as well as standard Spider-Man pillars and tentpoles.
There’s still a Peter Parker, an Aunt May, a dead Uncle Ben, and he gets his powers from a spider. New concepts, however, are Peter’s best friend is now Nico Minoru, from the Marvel Runaways comic series. I’m sort of OK with that, as I hated how they took Miles Morales’s best friend Ganke, applied the “Ned Leeds” name to him (a completely different character, mind you), and made him Peter’s best friend in the MCU. Does that dude look like his name would be “Ned”?! There is a love interest who’s clearly based on Zendaya’s “MJ”, but here she’s called Pearl? The spider that gives him his powers comes from a space portal? Most of the Tony Stark story beats from Spider-Man: Homecoming are now fulfilled by Norman Osborn. Oh, and to finally acknowledge why the Osborns had the baddest finger waves in fiction, they just went ahead and made Harry and Norman black. I guess that’s what Thames was referring to as “woke”, in that the formerly white Osborns are now black, and Nico is one of Marvel’s most prominent lesbian characters.
My biggest problem with the show, however, is that it commits a crime that’s almost unforgivable: You have to read Marvel’s Your Friendly Neighborhood Spider-Man “prequel” comic in order to get the full story. You see, Peter getting bitten by the spider takes place in what’s basically the “cold open” of the show. After the opening credits (which pay homage to the 60s theme song, by the way), he’s already Spider-Man, he’s already got a suit, and he’s already fighting crime. And, ya know, I didn’t really notice. At first. It wasn’t until episode 2, where they’re talking about how they’re going to Rockford T. Bales High School, and I’m like “Hold up – The pilot was all about how it was Peter’s first day at Midtown High School.” I started Googling, wondering if I had missed something, only to find out that many of the Midtown students were transferred to Bales following the attack on Midtown that took place in the pilot. Sure, it had sustained some damage, but nothing that felt like it necessitated shutting down the school. Even worse, however, is this is only mentioned in that comic miniseries. Oh, so is all the stuff involving him choosing his name AND creating his suit! So, in the show, he just shows up in a slapdash costume, where he’s using some kind of gas canister to power his web shooters, but do we actually see where any of that comes from? NO! YOU CAN’T DO THAT!
One of the biggest issues folks had with the idea of Disney+ series for franchises like Star Wars and Marvel was that they didn’t want to have to watch these shows in order to understand the films. Captain America: Brave New World might provide a richer experience if you’ve watched Falcon and the Winter Soldier, but all of the important story beats need to at least be recapped if they’re going to factor into the movie. The shows should provide worldbuilding, but should not be required. Historically, a companion comic series is either a somewhat straight adaptation or it provides “filler” adventures that take place in the same world, but don’t ultimately affect anything. It does not, however, provide important information necessary to understanding the main property. You might say “We already know all the major Spider-Man beats”, but that doesn’t mean we know them from this particular timeline. Hell, Tom Holland’s Spider-Man debuted in Captain America: Civil War, NINE YEARS AGO, and we still don’t have confirmation that there even was an “Uncle Ben” in the MCU. That Peter doesn’t have what could even be considered his “Uncle Ben Moment” until the third movie in his trilogy, so such a character wasn’t necessary as a catalyst in that universe. So, Lord only knows what’s different HERE!
Another thing, though, is I’m not sure who this show is for, taking me back to my initial question of WHY? Up to this point, all of the Spider-Man cartoons have been for kids, even down to the crappy, post-movie, CGI MTV series, where Neil Patrick Harris voiced Peter/Spidey. At the beginning, you’re like “Yeah, this skews towards the youth”, but the characters also say “Damn” and “Hell”. Now, I’m not trying to sound like a Puritan, and I know times have changed, but those are two words that network standards & practices still don’t allow on children’s programming. Those words are what separate a Cartoon Network show from an Adult Swim show. Seeing as how most Spidey shows end up on Disney XD/Disney Junior, I guess this is a show that those kids graduate to watching, but it does indicate that it’s not primarily for kids. Which makes me wonder what the toy situation is gonna be.
I didn’t love it, but I also didn’t hate it. I’ll probably finish out the season, just to see what else they change. And it’s already been greenlit through Season 3, so it’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Ya know, not until they start preproduction on the next Spider-Man cartoon…
Now, for cartoons I do love, Cartoon Network’s Craig of the Creek ended over the weekend, and its absence will be felt. It’s funny because I had actually planned to write about the end of this show almost a year ago, but I had things confused. You see, Warner Bros had big plans for the Craig franchise, including a young viewers spinoff, starring Craig’s little sister, Jessica. And then David Zaslav came to town. After the merger of Discovery and WarnerMedia, he became CEO of Warner Bros Discovery, and pretty much every bad decision over the past 3 years can be traced back to him. A lot of previously announced projects were officially canceled, while others were simply no longer discussed. Everyone knows that Zaslav canceled the completed Batgirl movie, but there are smaller projects, like the Teen Titans GO! The Night Begins To Shine spinoff series, where their current status is unknown. Jessica’s Big Little World managed to release 20 episodes before it was canceled, while Craig of the Creek saw its episode order reduced. I thought this meant that it was ending after its fifth season, which ended last spring. It turns out, however, there were a handful of episodes to air, so there was an abbreviated sixth season, which just ended.
If you’ve never seen it, Craig of the Creek follows Craig Williams, a 10-year old black boy, who lives in suburban Maryland, and loves exploring the creek near his house. He’s accompanied by his best friends Kelsey and JP, and they spend all of their free time at “The Stump”, which is their headquarters at the creek. The show follows as they interact with the other kids at the creek, and there’s something of a social caste system. If you ever watched the Disney series Recess, it’s very reminiscent of that. There’s the rule-abiding Junior Forest Scouts, who are basically the police of the creek. There’s Kit, who’s the creek’s snack shack proprietor. There’s the 10-Speeds, who are the creek’s “biker gang”. Most importantly, however, there’s The King of the Creek. He “rules” the portion on the other side of the bridge (which is guarded by The Green Poncho), but he’s determined to expand his reign to Craig’s portion. Over the course of the show, we find out that this title has pretty much been passed down through the same family of siblings, as they’re one of the richest families in the area. They managed to convince kids to follow them by buying their friendship, through gifts and candy. When the current King encounters Craig, who has acquired the same friendships and connections without bribing folks, he decides Craig is his nemesis.
So, the show trades off, thematically, where some episodes are “The gang orders Chinese food for the first time”, while others are “Kelsey battles The King’s bodyguard in ritualistic combat”. It can really turn on a dime, but it’s always great. One of the most important aspects of the show was how it tackled issues that other kids shows just wouldn’t touch. For example, Craig, Jessica and older brother Bernard, are the children of PROUD HBCU grads. Yet, these parents didn’t blink an eye when Bernard came home with his white girlfriend. They made her feel just as welcome and at home, when that’s not how that would necessarily play out. More importantly, though, is how the show deals with Kelsey’s identity exploration. Raised by a single father, and only friends with boys, it’s no surprise that Kelsey wasn’t into princesses and frilly things. Over time, however, she begins to realize she has unfamiliar feelings toward her bookworm friend, Stacks. It was after speaking with JP’s older sister, who happens to be a lesbian, that Kelsey begins to make sense of these new feelings. They never come out and put a label on it, but it’s “Sayin’ it without sayin’ it”, and Kelsey and Stacks do grow closer.
The show does so much worldbuilding that, by season 5, it’s hard to say it’s a show just about Craig, Kelsey, and JP. They even splinter off into side groups. Craig has the Ice Pop Trio, where he hangs out with two other black kids, Cannonball and Sparkle Cadet. Kelsey has Stacks. And JP forges a friendship with former Green Poncho, Omar. It’s these newfound connections that aid them in what’s a season-long quest for “The Heart of the Forest”. It seems the old King created a map to a secret part of the creek, but he broke it apart, and scattered the pieces around to different people. So, over the course of the season, Craig and his crew are racing against the recently dethroned King, who’s trying to regain his former power and glory. Alliances are formed, conversations are had, and everyone ends that season in new places. When I watched that, I was under the impression that it was the series finale. It left me wanting more, but also excited about the potential futures those characters might have. It was a fitting ending. And then they made more…
I didn’t watch season 6, as I didn’t think it really had anything to offer me. The same way I don’t acknowledge season 2 of Wayward Pines (It told the story it needed to tell in one season), I was fine where I had left things. Still, when I heard the true finale was airing, I had to check in. It was a cute goodbye to characters we had come to know and love since 2017. Basically, Bernard is finally going off to college, and Craig is distracting himself by drawing yet another map of the creek (this is a common thing in this show). Bernard, who’s always been an anxious and driven character, is now reflecting on how he got to this place. The entire show, he was worried about college, as he and his girlfriend had a 10-year plan. Now, however, he tells Craig that he was so worried about where he was going that he thinks he missed out on appreciating where he was. Craig takes that valuable lesson from him, and goes to the creek to hang out with JP and Kelsey. Completing his best map yet, he decides to post it, for the benefit of all the creek kids. Then, familiar characters all drop by The Stump, to thank Craig for the map, and to tell him how it had taught them about so many parts of the creek that they’d never experienced. It’s almost like a wake, but not somber. When the dinnertime alert goes out, Kelsey and JP get up to leave, but Craig doesn’t. He tells them he wants to stay just a little bit longer. He’s finally appreciating where he is. I’m really gonna miss this show. Black kids are gonna miss this show, as representation does matter. I didn’t always understand that, but this show did a lot in helping me to come around. If you want to check it out, you’d better hurry to Max, as I could see it being snatched down any minute, due to the current Anti-DEI crusade going on.
Trailer Park
The Baldwins (TLC, February 23)
I don’t know if I could think up a more tone deaf concept right now. Reality TV has its fans and its detractors. This just might be the project that unites them both. Like, The Baldwins might come off more insufferable than the Kardashians and the Chrisleys combined, and that would be quite the feat! I mean, I get the pitch here: Let’s see this famous family as they weather the storm of the patriarch killing a woman, and then fighting to prove his innocence. The problem here is that Alec Baldwin just isn’t a likable guy. Never really has been. That’s part of what made him Alec Baldwin. He’s the guy who cusses out his teenage daughter on answering machines and punches out paparazzi. This would be a much different show if it centered around a beloved celebrity, like Rick Moranis or Weird Al. I mean, Baldwin’s whole defense was “I didn’t pull the trigger”, but he aimed the gun, and he was holding the gun. In a lot of cases, that would have been the end of it. But he kept fighting, and they kept suing him. And he never really seemed particularly sorry about it all. I mean, it was the blanket “This was an unfortunate event”, but we never really saw him sorry. So, maybe that’s what this show is meant to do, but it feels too little, too late.
Plus, the family is clearly profiting off this. Had he lost some civil suit to the family of Halyna Hutchins, and the proceeds from this were going to them, it would be a different story. Instead, this just feels disgusting. And that doesn’t even factor in how Hilaria Baldwin is a horrible person, having -since their marriage – pretended to be from Spain, while affecting a fake accent until her former classmates and friends were like “Um, ‘Hilaria’? You mean HILARY? Yeah, she’s white.” She had to backpedal with “Well, my family regularly vacationed in Spain, so I feel I became one of the people.” *In Beavis voice* This family sucks.
Links I Loved
- This week, Variety published an article that highlights just how antiquated the Nielsen ratings system is. You see, Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision are fighting over ONE Nielsen household located in the rural SE US. The household is comprised of 5 Spanish-speaking residents, who have no access to Univision’s stations, so it’s greatly skewing the national ratings in Telemundo’s favor.
Things You Might Have Missed This Week
- The Morris Chestnut-starring CBS procedural Watson premiered this week, but the most interesting part is that Randall Park (Fresh Off The Boat) is the show’s choice for villain Moriarty. I might have to watch this thing after all!
- In the documentary Pee-Wee as Himself, which premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, Paul Reubens posthumously came out as gay
- Lady Gaga announced that her next studio album, Mayhem, would be released on March 7th. The third single (after “Die With A Smile” and “Disease”) will debut on February 2nd during a commercial break at the 2025 Grammy Awards.
- BET+ has ordered Lil Kev, which is an animated series about Kevin Hart’s childhood. Wanda Sykes and Deon Cole have already been cast, with additional cast to be announced later.
- Squid Game season 3 will debut on Netflix on June 27th, which means they must have shot seasons 2 and 3 back-to-back. This is probably for the best, given it took so long for season 2 that the merch for season 1 had long since gone to clearance.
- Speaking of Netflix, they must have gotten a windfall that they were required to spend this week, as they greenlit a Little House on the Prairie reboot, as well as signed a development deal with Lena Dunham – two things that NO ONE in 2025 wants!
When I saw the first trailer for Hulu’s Paradise, I was sold on it based on the cast alone. You’ve got Sterling K. Brown, as a Secret Service agent assigned to a President played by James Marsden? Randall Pearson guarding President Cyclops?! Yeah, I’m there – even if the trailer was sort of vague. Sure, it was a mystery thriller, but what was the mystery? The first 3 episodes were slated to drop Tuesday night, but when the first episode was dropped early on Sunday night, I had to watch it before being spoiled by the web articles that were being rushed up. After the first episode, I AM HOOKED. This is the part where I warn you that there are spoilers, so turn back if you want to go in fresh.
When Paradise starts, a clearly struggling Brown, as Special Agent Xavier Collins, gets out of bed and goes for his morning run through his idyllic town. Then, we see flashbacks to when Collins first met President Cal Bradford, during an interview to join his protection detail. Over the course of flashbacks, we learn that President Bradford is sort of self destructive. He’s a Southern Progressive, with a tiny bit of racism (He tells Collins that he chose him because he was good, but that it didn’t hurt that he was black), and a bit of a drinking problem. One night, President Bradford shares a bit too much, when probing Collins as to why he and his wife aren’t going to try to have a third kid. When Collins explains that his wife had decided to focus on her career, Bradford says something like “That’s probably for the best, given what’s coming.” Well, the show jumps back to the present, where Collins shows up for work one morning, only to find Bradford dead on the floor of his bedroom. The security cameras show that Collins was actually the last person to see Bradford alive. Oh, and did I mention that we see Collins’s kids, but never the wife? For whatever reason, she ain’t there. There’s another flashback, from the night before, where a drunken Bradford asks Collins “Are you ever going to forgive me?” Collins responds, “I’ll forgive you when I can sleep again, and I’ll be able to do that when you’re dead.” So, the head of the President’s security detail hates him – seemingly because he had something to do with the missing wife – and was the last person to see him alive, meaning he’s now the prime suspect in the murder. But that’s not even the biggest twist.
Remember how I mentioned that the town was “idyllic”? It was almost a little too perfect. Picket fences, town square, pond with ducks in it. Everyone is paying for goods via wristbands that they all wear. I was starting to get WandaVision vibes, where that town was just a creation of Wanda’s magic, and not a perfect, naturally-occurring setting. Well, as Collins is running home, we notice that people are also using those wristbands to open cars. A man is walking on the lake, resetting the ducks to ensure they’re “floating” properly. And a vidscreen behind Collins shows a message that “Sunset will be delayed 2 hours”. You see, this entire town – this Paradise, if you will – is actually a domed city built under Colorado. Something has happened to the world, and 25,000 survivors all live in this dome. So, not only is Bradford’s murder the first murder they’ve had in the three years they’ve been down there, but there’s also the mystery of what forced them to have to resort to these measures in the first place.
The second and third episodes flesh things out after that reveal. The whole thing seemed to be funded by dot com billionaire Samantha Redmond, so the second episode basically tells her origin story, to sort of explain how she seemingly holds more power than the president down here. In fact, they were seen arguing the day of his murder. This is one of those shows where everyone has a potential motive, but it’s also has every trope in the book. In fact, it gets to a point where it’s almost embarrassing. I was watching it with my friend Brock, and I was actually calling events just before they happened. “They’re sleeping together.” or “That dude is either the mole or he’s loyal, but doesn’t make it to season 2.” Nine seasons of 24 trained me in the ways of espionage thrillers. No one is who or what they seem. There’s always a mole. There’s always at least one couple having an affair. And those concepts tend to cross paths in violent, yet exciting, ways. When it was over, I said “I totally could have written this show.” But I say that not to dissuade you, as the character work is so good. Everyone here understands the assignment. Plus, I like that the creator, Dan Fogelman (also from This Is Us), has said that every question will be answered by Episode 8 (and it’s an 8-episode season). So, while he has a three-season plan, we’re not gonna be left hanging should Hulu decide to “pull a Netflix” and cancel the thing. I think they have a lot of faith in it, though, as the pilot even aired on ABC this week, following The Bachelor. I haven’t been this excited for a show in quite some time, and we’re already almost halfway through the season. I look forward to seeing how things unfold between Collins and Dr. Gabriela Torabi – the president’s former therapist AND the woman who personally chose all 25,000 people selected to join the town. She’s played by Sarah Shahi, who’s always cast when the breakdown of a character is basically “She’s sexy…and SMART?!” Anyway, it could have a terrible ending, and not stick the landing, but it had an excellent start, so that’s why Hulu’s Paradise had the West Week Ever.
