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Ultimate Spider-Man
#6 - Why I Hate Gym
Original Airdate - April 29th, 2012
When the villainous Taskmaster goes undercover as Midtown High’s gym teacher to find Spider–Man, gym class becomes a battleground. Spidey and White Tiger must put aside their differences to save their friends from the Taskmaster.

Ultimate Spider-Man stars Drake Bell (Drake & Josh) as Peter Parker/Spider-Man, Chi McBride (Boston Public) as Nick Fury, Clark Gregg (Iron Man, Thor, The Avengers) as Agent Coulson, JK Simmons (Spider-Man) as J. Jonah Jameson, Steven Weber (Wings) as Norman Osborn, Greg Cipes (Teen Titans, Ben 10) as Danny Rand/Iron Fist, Ogie Banks as Luke Cage/Power Man, Caitlyn Taylor Love (I'm In The Band) as Ava Ayala/White Tiger, Logan Miller (I'm In The Band) as Sam Alexander/Nova, Tom Kenny (SpongeBob SquarePants) as Doctor Octopus, Matt Lanter (Star Wars: The Clone Wars) as Harry Osborn/Flash Thompson, Tara Strong (The Fairly Odd Parents) as Mary-Jane Watson, Misty Lee (Batman: Arkham City) as Aunt May, and recurring guest star Stan Lee (Spider-Man) as Stan the Janitor.

Guest starring are Rob Paulsen (Animaniacs) as Batroc and Clancy Brown (The SpongeBob SquarePants Movie) as Taskmaster.

"Why I Hate Gym" was written by Man of Action and Joe Fallon.

Ultimate Spider-Man is produced by Marvel Animation and carries a TV-Y7-FV parental guideline.

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Let’s start with the bad, as per usual. The visual gags are still a pain, and the humor seems to have set the bar of Dumb on a new low. Also, some of the animation/models were less than satisfactory to gaze at.

But surprisingly, there were good points to this episode, and quite a few of them. A trend initiated by the Iron Spider, which I hope will continue.

To start off, Spidey and Tiger working together made for a good, decent team-up, despite Ava being a wench and Peter being as irritating as ever. More on that later.

Taskmaster is next. And oh man, this Taskmaster rocks! Not so much in the beginning [Seriously? A spring-trap under the stadium?], but when he pulls a punch and holds the two by their nigh-ended tethers, he’s as commandeering as ever. And segnor Brown made sure his voice was badass enough to pull this episode out of the pool of rottenness which the first four swim in. His calculating mind, accompanied with his manipulative banter directed either at the heroes or at Octopus, all of this made him the Taskmaster the fans might not fully want, but that they would like back for at least one more appearance.

That said, the fight sequences were the best the series had thus far. The only setback? Why, oh why did Heroes for Hire get used as dunces here? Power Man stuck in a tire? Danny Rand beaten within six seconds of battle? Come on! Learn from Earth’s Mightiest Heroes, why don’t you?

Erm, the battles, yeah. The best one among them, the pinnacle of the episode, was the one in the gym, with the lights out and Tasky’s eyes shining menacingly as his limbs clash with the limbs of the hot Latina and the annoying Nerd. Him beaten was one of those defeats I could stomach. I was even glad he lost, for it only made his interest in the Team grow [and gave us a cool frontal face shot of the villain as he plots further].

This is where the review ends. The overall mark? 7 out of 10. The missing three points are my generous way of saying this show still has major flaws. The big seven are for Taskmaster. He deserved them.