Mlp Princess Spike Review

I.. I... I.. am lost for words.... did we really need another Spike episode? Right after the last episode? Spike episodes are never that good and this episode feels like a contrived, judgmental mess...

In some ways the story is fairly rudimentary. Spike fills in for Twilight, things go wrong and everyone just picks up the pieces at the end. Where things start to get a bit muddled, is where this situation of overtaxing bureaucracy is used it to try to judge a BABY dragon on a personal level.

The way I look at this was that Spike was thrown into a very difficult situation. Cadence just leaves Spike to look after Twilight (and to deal with all the duties that she is now missing). Spike for the most part tries to loyally fulfil his duties and whilst his results are hardly exceptional, I can hardly blame the guy given the enormity of the problems in front of him.

Where this episode really fails in my eyes is how it tries to judge Spike during this. He was handed a sinking ship and he desperately tried to bail out water the best he could. Beyond the spontaneous luxury montage (which doesn’t really play into anything in the episode), Spike does nothing wrong and acts with the best of intentions, however Cadence and the episode seem all too quick to judge him as selfish.

Let us take the biggest ‘problems’ that happened in this episode, the trees, the pipes and the double booking. Spike acted in Twilight’s best interests and according to his orders (make sure she had a good rest). That was in no means selfish, in fact it was quite the opposite. He might’ve acted with Twilight’s authority, but that was because it was clearly established that no one would listen to him otherwise!

The fact things failed so badly are also barely Spike’s doing. Proper maintenance of Canterlot should’ve happened before; or be made as unintrusive as possible; ‘during’ the conference. His advice to “share” the booking wasn’t a bad idea, the problem was that the two delegates were terrible at “sharing”.

Ironically this episode shows a stronger case of Spike being incredibly selfless... He acts for Twilight with little thought of repatriation and when things went wrong he was always happy to take the bullet (when he “confessed” at the end) and try to correct his own mistakes (when people came to complain to Twilight).

Now the story might’ve been quite a bit of a mess.. but even the execution felt rather.. eh.. as well. Everything was just so darn convenient, predictable, contrived. Got to keep things quiet? Welp here’s some loud things. Each of which will take their turn. And when the guy says ‘but I need to do this otherwise [bad stuff] will happen’, you just know it’ll come back in some rube goldberg sequence at the end (and it did). I just wished there were some surprises, some twists and turns to this story.. but no.

Oh also. I found Cadence to be really mean this episode. So to start with, she landed Spike in all this mess (without providing any assistance of any kind). When she meets him again later, she acts like an inquisitor, questioning Spike’s motives, rather than worrying about a baby dragon taking on such responsibility. Even at the end she is pretty horrible to Spike, ordering him to futilely try to deal with the water and for taking no responsibility alongside Spike for the mess that happened.

Well excuse me, princess but who are you to judge? This baby dragon was a way better leader than you were. Do I even need to remind you that your people call him the “Great and Honorable Spike the Brave and Glorious” for his selfless acts saving your own darn kingdom? You seem hardly like the ‘princess of love’, if you are so unsympathetic to the poor patsy you just exploited.

In fact most of this story has it out for Spike. Cadence was a big doo doo head of course but no one ever gives him any respect (without being a princess’s orders). All the work was piled on Twilight, no one really helped her or Spike. Even the bird has it out for Spike! After he asks nicely, it just spitefully flies away to land on Twilight’s head.