Open Air - Spider-Man Noir S1E4

Hey everybody and welcome to the Cinema Slime Essay Series, my name is Harrison and today we are going to be going over Season 1 Episode 4 of Spider-Man Noir entitled - A Mistake I’ll Never Make Again. In this episode Silvermane begins to reestablish control, Ben mourns the loss of his wife, and the walls of Cat’s world quickly close in around her.

We start off on stage with Cat singing her own solo - No place to hide when his devilish eyes start smiling. While people in the crowd are feeling the sensation of love and intrigue, we know that Cat is under the eyes of the devil, and right now she can’t escape.

Ben can’t either as he sits next to Silvermane in a booth with a paralyzing look on his face. We get the flashback to Silvermane killing his right hand man, and the reveal of him killing another one of his goons. While it may come off as anti climatic, I think this just shows us that Silvermane is done being perceived as weak and is ready to take action even if it is killing those close to him.

It’s painful to see Silvermane ordering Cat around to sing for the crowd, get him drinks, and even casually mentioning that he will gladly kill her if need be. When Cat finally gets back to her apartment, that shot of her sitting between her two suit cases just gutted me. She was so close to escaping Silvermane, but now she is just his little songbird, and the cage is getting smaller and smaller.

Silvermane doesn’t let up on Cat when he arrives the next day to talk about her little trip to the train station. While she unpacks and slithers her way around his questions, Silvermane puffs away on that cigar, filling the room with the smell. Cat goes to open a window, but Silvermane quickly shuts it. No freedom, no choices, and no escape from the smell of that cigar that is stocking or her clothes, her furniture and even her skin. She’s even hit the point where she has the gun on front of her, giving her a chance to kill him, and yet she shuts the drawer and lets him leave.

With those close to him back under his eye, Silvermane turns to the people in the city under his payroll, who have seem to grow lax during the brief wane of Silvermane’s power. He waits in his penthouse for the chief of police to show up and the anger and the tension is palpable. He knows in this moment that he needs to reestablish control and grabs what’s in front him, smashing the tea set and telling his goon to clean up.

Mean while, Ben is really just taking a step back for most of this episode. He seems to be indulging Silvermane by drinking with him until he can barely walk and he’s spending his time watching the same movie at the theatre that he has seen multiple times. He seems to be trying to disconnect again but Cat seems to be attached to him. Once she has confessed to being ‘the rat’ in Silvermane’s organization she doesn’t feel safe in her own home. Going back to ben’s apartment we then see Ben’s vulnerability. This is probably the first women who has stepped foot in his apartment since Ruby died and he is completely flummoxed by this.

After telling Cat the story of Ruby, we get a brief interruption from another super powered being, this time our Electro counterpart. While this fight isn’t the most exciting we do get more of that grounded fist a cuffs type of brawl which feels appropriate for the setting. When we return to Ben’s apartment, Car arrives and she pretty quickly tells Ben that she knows who he really is. She then goes and opens the window, contrasting so well against the act of Silvermane closing them, and she falls back. She knew that Ben was going to catch, but in that moment I feel that her life feels so caged and controlled that that moment of open air felt like a sweet release.

This episode felt so strong for some characters and weak for others. While Cat and Silvermane take center stage and we go on the emotional journey of him tightening his grip on the city and the feeling of entrapment from her, the rest of the cast seems to fall flat. Ben gets a fight scene with no real stakes or of any consequence, Robbie is chasing a story that we are being drip fed to a point where my curiosity has stagnated, and overall the progression of this mystery just seems to have faltered. For me though, Kat and Silvermane make up for that, so I’m giving this episode a 7/10 and hope we see a big push in the next episode.