Quick thoughts on "Spike at your Service" · 5:53pm Dec 29th, 2012
(No super detailed review, just some quick reflexion here)
Augh.
This episode was really frustrating. Once again, Merriweather Williams sacrifices consistency for the sake of funny. This isn't Spongebob dangit! Once again she writes an enjoyable episode but it's filled with inconcistencies (even withing its own narrative!) that leaves a bad taste in your mouth afterward.
TIMBERWOLVES ARE MADE OF WOOD SPIKE! WOOD! JUST USE YOUR FREAKIN' DRAGON BREATH AND BURN THEM!
You set fire to a bunch of logs LAST EPISODE! GAH!
Seriously that just made me cringe at every single Timberworlves scene, and I normally love these things!
The Mane6 and their interactions were the highlight of the episode, but I was really annoyed that Spike, who is basically the one who takes cares of the library, somehow can't even clean a room without making more of a mess? Really? I know he can be clumsy at times but that was just beyond anything reasonable. It wasn't even particularly funny. Sure, him messing up farmhands duty can make sense, but house keeping? REALLY? And the idea that the Noble Dragon Code was somethng Spike came up with would have been great and make sense, but then it's not expounded on and it's just apparently a generic dragon thing? Really?
And AGAIN with the running away! Williams, THOSE ARE OUR HEROINES! Stop getting them to run away at the drop of a hat for pete sake! Rarity bucked a manticore in the face in the second episode and you have her act like a prissy wuss! All of them were in the middle of the action during the Changeling invasion, they took on the Diamond Dogs among other things and again you make them run away like scared school girls! Twilight alone could have gone all magical machine gun on those things.
So this episode had some great moments but it also had horrible ones all at once.
It made me go "REALLY?" way too often.
Though I gotta say Rainbow Dash and Rarity talking about the merits of her self-insert fanfic was probably the funniest bit of the season! And the Pinkie moustache joke was hilarious! Loved that part. And did Spike scratch AJ's butt?! 
He was a lighter in the last episode.
Looking at this review I probably need to skip this one.
I can actually almost give this one a pass on the grounds that they are clearly magical spirits that possess wood rather than a plant based life form, so the enchainment might render the wood resilient to fire, but we should have at least seen Spike try I think. Then again solid wood doesn't usually burn all at once, so it might have just resulted in a pack of angry Timberwolves that are now also ON FIRE, though as Spike himself is fire proof that shouldn't be much more of a problem for him than it already was.
This, above all else this. For Twilight's #1 assistant, the guy who's been repeatedly shown at being pretty good at this servant stuff, to suddenly become a bumbling klutz was just overkill. There are ways this could have worked, by focusing on the idea that all the experience he has anticipating what Twilight will need only causes him to needlessly do things for AJ that aren't actually so helpful on a farm, but no, all we get is generic clumsiness that stopped being funny after the first scene.
For that matter, half the trouble was just that Spike refused to stop helping and seemed to have an insistent need to busy himself with the most trivial of AJ's needs. I suppose that could be part of his whole dragon code thing, but it's still nothing at all like the kind of assistant he's been to Twilight for the preceding 60 episodes.
It only gets worse when they go over to Rarity's place as numerous previous episodes have shown that when he's not being Twilight's #1 he's likely to be found helping out his not so secret pony crush, so seriously, Spike should know his way around the boutique and not make such a ridiculous mess just because he's left unsupervised for a few minutes. (Also missed bet of comedy, when asked what she thought of the pie Rarity should have said something like, "it's just like mother use to make," which could have made a nice subversive compliment given what we can infer about her mother's cooking skill)
Agreed; the obviously hand drawn code card (BTW, Spike can use his dragon breath as a hammerspace storage pocket, that's pretty awesome) was very nice little detail and really sold the fact that this has nothing to do with really being a dragon and is just something Spike himself made up because he has no clue what being a dragon is actually about, but then as you say, it's never treated as such again. Seems to me that this might be a case where the animators (at least one of them) realized how silly the plot was, and they did their best to work around it, but with all the voice work prerecorded there was only so much that could be salvaged.
Double agreed, the only thing that would have made it better is if she was saving Daring Do on top of becoming captain of the Wonderbolts.
I'd also like to draw special attention to Rarity fawning over the idea of getting somepony indebted to her so that they would wait on her every need. Seems the favor trading L!Rarirty we came up with isn't so far off the nose after all.
I read the Noble Dragon Code thing as, Spike didn't like the actual dragon code, so he decided to make his own.
Yeah, this episode was bad. A few good points, but overall... ugh! Good review!
I might be alone in this room, but I really liked this episode. It was silly as all get-out, but I think I'm at peace with the premise that a "character episode" involves someone donning the giant, invisible clown-shoes and going to town, while their friends try and figure out how to help them. Consistency tends to be screaming from the back-seat, but I'm prepared to give them a pass in service of the story they were telling any given week.
(My beloved FanFic writers are were I get my RDI of iron-clad consistency and Fantasy RPG nods, and as such can expect no quarter on this score .
)
Spike's enthusiasm to redeem his honour causing him to turn into Frank Spencer (warning 70's BritCom) was pretty weird, but AJ's exasperated patience with his antics and the increasingly elaborate plans to mollify him was classic SitCom. The fake rescue preparations were petty much as heart-stoppingly cute and funny as anything I've seem in the show.
The other little moments; like AJ triggering Twi's OCD alarm, RD's literary aspirations being identical to all her other dreams, Rarity being all "RAH-rity DAH-lings!"
, and the Pinky-tasche were all pitch perfect. Even Fluttershy being perfectly prepared to fib to avoid hurting someones feelings was spot on.
I found the Timberwolves cell-shaded (?) CGI a little jarring, but I immediately thought "Huh, why does that remind me of Transfomers?" (I know, I'm probably wrong. I've not watched any for over a decade. At least that I remember.) so the pay off and it's immediate subversion tickled me immensely.
So I'm probably a bad person for being prepared to sacrifice character consistency on the altar of yucks, but there you go. And I'm not even trying to play Discord's Advocate here.
660372
I don't entirely disagree with you, in fact, most of the things you mentioned liking about the episode were things I liked as well. The problem is that pretty much all of those things relate only to the M6, they are the characters that get to shine in this episode, while Spike is stripped down and left as little more than a running gag to facilitate all the rest. Considering that this is ostensibly a Spike episode, that's a pretty miserable missus of his character (it's one thing to flanderize a character while they are in mere a supporting role, but you can't do that with the supposed central focus character or else the whole story just falls apart)
I agree with everything you said especially about the M!6 running away like frightened children, that just ticks me off.
Overall I pretty much knew what was going to happen in this episode the moment Spike said "you saved my life" I've seen episode from T.V shows like this before, generally they're never that good and this wasn't really an exception.
Having consistency thourally screwed was also incredibly annoying which was pretty much what this story did for everyone I agree it's not Sponge-bob or Loony Tunes!
I did like the giant Timberwolf creature though.
660934
I wouldn't quite go that far. Sure the episode pretty much ignored Spike's established character as Twilight's #1 assistant (though not entirely, but the token nods only make the subsequent OOC all the more jarring) in order to make him a destructive nuisance to AJ. Still though, everypony else was pretty much spot on, running away from the timberwolves in a blind panic aside... then agian, it's not like this is the first time the characters have fled rather than fight.
Sure Rarity kicked a manticore in the face, but in another episode everypony was fleeing from the hydra. Given that we've seen the M6 battle a pack of Diamond Dogs and a seemingly endless swarm of changelings, they probably could have defeated the timberwolves, but the difference here is they had no reason to fight. The timberwolves weren't blocking them form rescuing a friend or saving the country; they were just wild beasts that presumably wouldn't give chase much past the borders of the forest, so retreat was probably the better part of valor. That said they still shouldn't have been quite so panicked.
Though on a different consistency front, It might have been nice if instead of choking the giant timberwolf with a rock, we'd maybe called back to the episode that premiered the beasts and scared them off with loud noises... or has been posited elsewhere by having spike remember that he is a FIRE breathing dragon.
661764
Fair points. Though I do worry more this season for character consistency than I have in the previous two and it seems to be using more toon physic and sponge bob wackiness.
I do agree they had no reason to fight the Timerwolves and they did at least surprise Twilight so she had a reason to be freaked out at least initially, her forgetting her and the other forgetting their friends, and Twilight also forgetting she can teloport is another matter, though it's hardly the first time that's happened. I still don't like them running away so much, it has undertones that worry me a little.
and yeah choking the wolf was really lame as far as I'm concerned, as was forgetting he could breathe fire or scaring it with loud noises.
661799
Well, to be fair, the first thing Twilight says when Spike and AJ get back to the farm was, "What happened to you guys back there? I thought you were right behind us!" So presumably they had only just realized those two were missing and were likely about to go back before the timely arrival made it unnecessary. After all, note just how surprised Rarity was that AJ actually got stuck, and doubly so since twice over in this episode AJ proved herself capable of handling a few timberwolves all by herself and it was only bad luck that her rocky perch gave way and that in the fall she really did get stuck.
...though on that mater given the obvious power AJ has displayed with her bucking hooves in the past, it does seem a tad suspect that she could actually get stuck like that with, at least not without getting injured in the process.
661843
Good point about the quote, but they seemed to have been waiting awhile, at least long enough to group up and stop panting. and Dash and Shy can fly so it's not as though they couldn't have checked.
Good point on Rarities surprise and yeah AJ being a real damsel, I mean yeah I saw it coming but really I agree she should have at least been injured some how, otherwise it just seems contrived and we're back to those unfortunate implications
661857
Well of course they'd regrouped, if they hadn't regrouped they wouldn't have been able to figure out AJ was missing, more importantly it wouldn't do them any good to go running back without some semblance of a plan. Besides, for all we know Rainbow Dash was like two seconds from jetting off. Though it's equally possible that she was being talked down.
...which of course is why she'd feel all the more as though she had egg on her face when AJ reveals what happened.
661963
Certainly possible, likely even, there's to many unknowns I guess.
661764 The more I think about it the more I feel like Spike's role could have been fulfilled by Caramel, or Gustave the Griffin or... I dunno, by introducing Carl the Clumsly Carbuncle who just happened to pass by and AJ saved from Timberwolves. If it had been someone from a new specie, the idea of a 'noble code' they take very seriously would have made sense, and the clumsiness wouldn't have mattered. Aside from the connection to Twilight and that one scene with Rarity there was NOTHING, absolutely NOTHING, that felt like it was quintessially Spike. Honestly the role of the clumsy oaf was written by the numbers. Did Williams write a similar episode on Spongebob Squarepants?
662025
Not to mention the Cutie Mark Crusaders, who are already likely to wander into the Everfree forest, have been proven bad at cooking and doing all sorts of chores, and are quite likely to have written their own "Crusader Code".
It would have been a rehash of themes from the earlier crusader episodes if they'd gone that route, but at least everypony'd be in character.
662403 That too!
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Now, for an exemple of a GOOD use of this cliché plot line, with an interesting twist, where everyone stays in character and the overall tone of the show fits MUCH better. In under 15 minutes too:
662403
that was hilarious, I'll give you that! 
I could see the crusaders working for such a plot.
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