MLP episode review: Owl's Well that ends Well · 10:54pm Jun 18th, 2014
Okay, ready for some lame 'who' jokes? Good! Because...
Owl's Well that Ends Well
Hmm, Shakespeare, maybe? Nah!
We open on Golden Oaks, and it's late in the afternoon. There's a meteor shower tonight, hopefully no colony drops though. Fun fact, the only Gundam series I've ever seen in its entirety was G Gundam. I own a lot of toys from it. Spike is getting ready for the shower, showing off a bit. No Boasting, though. ;) It happens every one hundred years. Spike put the punch into a container with a tight lid, dude. Also, he's pretty good here. Remember that for 'Spike at your Service'. it's gonna hurt. Twilight asks for stuff, and it's all check. He's even got stuff she didn't ask for. She praises him and now he wants some more praise. Ohhai Great and Powerful Spike! :p But she forgot an astronomy book with alliteration of A in the title. It's a book on stars, moons and universe. 42 pages, perhaps? Spike goes to get it. He brushes off some dust, and we know what comes next. He fights off the sneeze, opens it... and green flame torches the thing. Wait, green flame? Did Celestia get some pages in her mail? He puts the book back and climbs down. Ooh, Spike. Not cool dude. Understandable, but still not cool.
After the credits it's night and ponies are gathering to see the shower. And Spike lied about the book. He then butters Twilight up saying she doesn't need it. Spike, you got a little brown on your nose there, bub. :p He sets up the spread, and Dash says Twilight's lucky to have such a great assistant. She wishes she had someone like that, and Scootaloo, standing there, says she'll do whatever Dash wants. Yeah, that's creepy. Dash tosses her an apple core and Scootaloo goes to add it to her shrine. Dash, you really are a jerkass in season one. Just saying. Rarity praises him and even for me, a Spike fan, it gets a little much. Rarity has a bow tie for him that looks like it's decorated with M&M's. Then thankfully the show starts. Sweetie Belle's on rarity's back, Apple Bloom on Applejack's and Spike on Twilight's. Scootaloo is not on Dash's. And the meteor shower's quite lovely. :) Spike Yawns, too. Epic foreshadowing! Later on, Twilight asks for some punch, and we see Spike curled up in the punch bowl. It's actually something of a callback to him and the lampshade in the premiere. And Pinkie says the punch has been... Spiked!
Back at Golden Oaks, Spike is tucked in. Twilight writes a bit in what appears to be a journal about some forgotten lore. Suddenly, there's some rattling. Is it the Lost Lenore? A shadow swoops by, who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of ponies! The door, not latched, opens and the scrolls fly out! Twilight says it's a job for Spike, but he's not awake. What, you can't go out and get some scrolls yourself, Twilight? She looks back to the table and sees an owl, scroll in beak. She thanks him and asks if he wants to stay inside, since it's so cold tonight. He hoots and hops inside.
The morning comes and Spike bolts out of bed. He overslept! He rushes down, full of apologies and promises to work. And now I'm a little skeevy about Spike's relationship to Twilight. But more on that later. Twilight says it's okay, because... okay, I'm just gonna call him 'Owly'. That's it. Anyway, Owly did them for Spike. He's the new junior assistant, so Spike won't be so tired all the time. That's really skeevy. Spike asks why they need him and there's a number of warning bells going off here. He goes down to the library part and Owly's head pulls an Exorcist, or a natural owl's head movement. Spike introduces himself and we get the 'hoot/who' joke. We all know it. It got annoying really fast and made whoever participated in it look dumber than a sack of hammers. So instead...
Who's on first? What's on second and I don't Know's on third!
Spike says Owly's number 'two'. Okay, nice little slip under the radar. :D He leaves and says he won't let Owly have his job, if it's the last thing he does! And we pan over to see Owly's eyes light up in the window. We come back from commercial and Spike is reading a book on owls. Owly, you magnificent bastard SPIKE'S READ YOUR BOOK! Down below Owly is getting all sorts of praise. Pinkie is 'whooked'! Nice. :D And Rarity made a tie for him. Spike goes nuclear! They wonder what his problem is and Fluttershy thinks he thinks he'll be replaced. Twilight says that's crazy, and we Gilligan-cut to Spike thinking he'll be replaced. He's gonna step it up! Twilight asks for a book, and Spike goes to get it. But Owly flew up to get it already. When? We never saw him over there, and Spike would've saw it, too. She needs another book, and Owly pulls it from the stack Spike's standing on. Not cool, Owly! Later on, her last quill broke. Hasbroverse Twilight loves ball-point pens, btw. :p Spike turns Golden Oaks upside down, even finding Owly in the shower. He goes to Quills and Sofa's, but Davenport's out of quills! He goes to Pinkie Pie, but nope. She has a quince, which IIRC is poisonous to RL horses! Then again these ponies can puke and eat chocolate, so never mind. We get some other Q-related stuff, but no quills. Spike chases down chickens for their feathers, and I don't think they'd make good quills. Back at Golden Oaks, he gives her the feather... but it turns out Owly gave her a feather.
Twilight, just accept his hard work and take the quill, you ninny!
Spike gets so mad his hand overheats and the feather bursts into flames. He sarcastically wonders if Owly did all the chores. nope, but he falls fast asleep. Twilight says he'll come around. Twilight, you're not really helping all that much, to be honest.
We do a jump scare to him... still on the stairs. twilight, why the hell didn't you take him to his bed?! But it's the burnt book! She confronts him about it and says she's very disappointed in him. Aww. :( He confronts Owly. "Two can play at this game!" And Owly hoots and...
Hey, did you know the Doctor was credited as 'Dr Who' until 1970 and then 'Doctor Who' until 1981, and there's 'Doctor Who and the Silurians'? So don't make fun of the Peter Cushing movies where that's his name. Back then when they were made, the 'canon' of the show would've had trouble filling up a loose-leaf binder!
Spike storms off to stop him and spots a mouse. He becomes Spikely Whiplash, complete with cape, top hat and mustache. Dick Dastardly would be proud. He sneaks into Carousel Boutique and steals one of Opal's toy mice. "So lifelike." Yes, if you've never seen a real mouse before. He's going to frame Owly with it. Spike, how many screws are loose again?! He messes it up and then puts ketchup onto it. It's... actually pretty damned funny, i have to admit. WAY over-the-top, though. He rips open a pillow for a trail of feathers, but backs into Twilight. He runs offscreen, then onscreen sans costume. He tries blaming Owly, but Twilight obviously doesn't buy it. She says this isn't the Spike she knows and loves. She storms off, and Spike thinks she doesn't love him anymore. :(
We come back to Spike run away from home and into the Everfree, saying Twilight hates him. He runs off a litany of problems and asks if it can get any worse. And the sky opens up. He finds a cave, goes inside and it's covered in gems! He dives in and pigs out. We come back to him with his belly stuffed, but the rest of him is still empty. Dang, that's deep. He misses everyone else. It's getting warmer, all of a sudden. And we pan out to see a green dragon, staring at him and kinda pissed. Spike tries to reason with him, but no go. Then he tries to buff himself up, but nope. Then the dragon, to quote YouTube reviewer TJ Omega, reveals himself to be a dragon made of knives. Spike tries to get away, but is quickly cornered.
But Owly for the win! He flies around, distracting the dragon and even confusing him enough to clobber himself in the head with his spiked tail! Spike and Owly run for it and Spike hops onto Twilight, running for it. It's dark, but Owly guides them, leaving a really pissed-off dragon behind and caught up in some underbrush. Outside the Everfree Twilight asks Spike why he left. Spike spills what he thought, and Twilight says he's her friend. She can't ask him to stay up late, since he's a baby dragon. Owls are nocturnal, and Spike can't be replaced. They both apologize, and Spike apologizes to Owly. And one more 'Who' thing.
Who, what, when, where, why and how!
Back at Golden Oaks, Twilight suggests Spike write the letter this time. It's a big responsibility, but one Spike can handle. It's a good lesson, here. But he falls asleep before finishing. And Owly breaks the fourth wall to wink at us.
Thoughts
Not the best episode, IMHO. Not the worst, by far, mind. Spike's attitude and behavior make sense when you remember he's a younging. The 'who' thing got old, fast. I like Owly. Spike to Twilight, though...
Best friends? Brother and sister? Mother and child? Employer and employee? All of the above? Some mixture? It's really odd and undefined throughout the show so far. It's just odd to me and like I said, pretty skeevy.
Good lesson, well-applied to the episode. So, yeah. It's not stand-out, but it's recommended.
Headcanon
the green dragon is an outcast from the Dragon Clans, however, this episode serves as sort of a prequel to the first chapter of my biggest ponyfic, The Elements of Harmony and the Savior of Worlds. It's a G1/G4 crossover, and... if I may let my ego show a bit...
I'm actually pretty damned proud of it. I know I'm not the best writer by far, and I've got a metric ton of improvement I can make and will make, but this one? I look at this and say, "I've done well." And to let it show some more... I think it might be one of the best damned inter-generational MLP crossovers written. :D Yeah, I said it. And I mean it, too. ;)
No review tomorrow, got some RL stuff and writing to do. The next chapter needs to get written. Tirac must be defeated!
So, Spike called Owlicious a piece of Shiz? Also, funny enough, my head canon about SPIKE's past was kinda based off of your fic. The city the Ursa's kinda crushed was Drakerys Vass, one of the prime and oldest draconian cities. Spike's mother, heir to the throne, and her husband, her former bodyguard, were in that city, before going on a Roaring Rampage of Fiery Death and genocide of the Ursa species, Spykoran, fearing for his only (all the others had been killed in the Ursa attack), grandson's safety, he entrusted his egg to Celestia.
Spike has some serious validation issues. It's like he needs to be praised and recognized regularly or he'll think he's about to wither away. And not just back this early; it was basically the plot of Equestria Games. (As opposed to, you know, anything directly related to the Equestria Games. Really dropped the ball there, writing team.)
And speaking of a completely different character, the Doctor was even named in-story by a character as "Doctor Who" back during First's run. Really testing the waters, back then.
I don;t know, three new senshi helped to really get me into the EU of Star Wars and you made an SM and SW crossover work...so that is saying a lot. That and yes, savior of worlds is spetacular.
This is one of the two episodes of the show that I completely despise. I honestly thought Twilight confronting Spike about the burnt book and everything thereafter was a paranoid dream sequence, since it didn't fit how I saw Twilight or Spike's characters. Finding out that that all actually happened? I wasn't happy.
On the off-chance you care, I see Twilight and Spike's relationship as a truly unique combination of sibling-sibling, parent-child, teacher-student, and even wizard-familiar. All of these relationship aspects go both ways, to varying degrees. Both just think of the other as "family."
Also, I spell it Owloysius.
And I agree. Its a great story.
I always had issues with the way Celestia just *gave* a baby dragon away.
Also the way Twilight treats him as an on-call unpaid servant. Or seems to anyway. I mean for hells' sake! She cant/wont cook, clean or even write her own damn letters.
The Elements of Harmony and the Savior of Worlds. Is a good story, I can't wait for the next update.
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(Not trying to be a dick by-the-by
A Edgar Allen Poe reference and a The Shadow reference in a row. You really outdid yourself.