I thought
Friendly Neighborhood was pretty good, though it's surprisingly slow-paced, more like subdivisions of a movie than episodes of a TV show. Weird choice to have Peter get his powers as a result of what I guess was a multiversal breach or something. (Was that a Venomized Sabretooth that Strange was fighting?) Quite a different set of characters than we usually see in Spidey stories. There were some names I didn't recognize at all, like Pearl.
The action sequences are pretty clever and dynamic. I got used to the animation style pretty quickly, aside from one distracting detail -- the "shadows" supposedly cast on the characters' necks by their chins are just black trapezoids painted on the necks, not moving when the characters turn their heads. Once I saw it, I couldn't unsee it.
The voice actor of Peter apparently said some really dumb shit before the launch, which made me consider not watching it. But whatever his deal is, f him.
The way I see it, actors are just employees hired to do what the writers, producers, and directors tell them to do, so their own personal issues or opinions have no bearing on the worth of the production. There are hundreds of people involved in making a TV show, and there's no reason we should give any more weight to the opinions of a lead actor than we would to the opinions of some key grip or sound effects editor whose name is buried in the credits. All that's relevant to us is the end product they collectively create for us.
But it was pretty bizarre what Thames said, that he was worried the show would be "too woke," implying he believes it isn't woke. I mean, it's got the most ethnically diverse cast of any Spidey cartoon ever, it's race-swapped the Osborns and gender- and race-swapped Doc Connors, and Nico is apparently lesbian given how she acted toward Pearl. It could hardly be more woke. I can only surmise that Thames doesn't actually know what the word means, which is all the more reason not to worry about it.
www.gamespot.com
