Doctor Perseus Reviews: "Princess Spike" *SPOILERS* · 3:31am Jun 21st, 2015
In this week's episode of MLP, Spike is put in charge of letting Twilight get some rest after helping prepare the Grand Equestria Pony Summit. However, the power of his influence starts to go to his head when he begins making decisions in Twilight's name...
I can't help but feel bad for Spike. His first episode of Season 5 has to follow immediately in the footsteps of, what I personally found to be, one of the best and most thoroughly satisfying episodes of the entire series. So what did I think of this episode? I liked it.
It was nice getting another episode set entirely in Canterlot and the Grand Equestria Pony Summit was an interesting event to see...or at least learn about since this all takes place before the summit officially starts. One of the big highlights of this episode was seeing all of the different pony designs of new episodic characters. It was nice to see the animators put work into developing unique and interesting designs for each delegate. We even got to see a few griffons!
Sadly, there's not much for me to say about Spike's development in this episode. The lesson he learns feels like mash-up of previous lessons. Though, to be fair, I'm surprised they waited this long for an episode like this to come about. Granted, I guess we saw affiliation with Twilight being abused before in Season 4's Twilight Time. I guess I'm just surprised to see an episode like this involving Spike happen so long after Twilight became a princess. But whatever. We got the story now. I'm not saying Spike was particularly bad in the episode. He's one of my favorite characters, thus why I tend to have more positive reactions to his episodes. I'm just saying that we didn't really tread new ground in relation to his character. He had some fun moments but nothing really new or noticeable of standing out.
It was nice to see Cadance again and I liked how quickly she picked up on Spike's actions. Heck, I think she got more screen time in this episode than Twilight. Speaking of Twilight, she didn't really do anything of note in this episode. Her sleep-deprived mumbles were entertaining but that was her most notable contribution aside from sleeping all day and leading us into our main conflict.
I must say how surprising it is to see the noticing of Twilight's status as a princess here. I suppose this stems from seeing practically most of the previous season barely acknowledging this. Season 5 has done a lot better at pushing Twilight's princess status forward. But, as I said once before, Season 4 could be seen as Equestria's slow acceptance of Princess Twilight. But, with that said, is Twilight suddenly the only princess who's able to help ponies? What about Cadance? She didn't seem that busy. What about Celestia and Luna who only showed up for the pre-opening sequence? Then again, I guess it's fitting since Twilight was the one who organized the summit and I suppose it could be argued that the other princesses had other tasks to take care of.
I was a little bothered at first about why everypony was so easily convinced that Spike's orders were coming from Twilight; but I guess the delegates actually paid attention to the bit of information involving Spike being Twilight's assistant. Though, I'm surprised they cared to listen to that. That one stallion who broke a friendship up over a seat (whose name is apparently Fluffy Clouds) was a complete asshat.
No offense, but I don't need some random dragon's opinion. I-I want to hear what Princess Twilight thinks.
Spike should have just told him to f*ck off. I would've. Anypony who ends a friendship over a seat is not worthy to get advice from the Princess of Friendship! Am I being too harsh? Probably. 
It was nice to see Fancy Pants again. But, even though he's one of the nicer and more down-to-earth of Canterlot's elite, it looks like not even he is above starting an angry mob. The cameo appearances of Matilda and Gustave le Grand were also welcome additions. The dragon sneeze trees were also a pretty interesting addition to this world and they did help lead to a pretty funny ending with the scene cutting to black just before Spike sneezed the gemstone statue down...again.
Overall, I liked Princess Spike. It probably won't be one of my Season 5 favorites but it's a decent Spike episode with some fun moments and interesting world building.
Next week's episode is Party Pooped!
It's up to Pinkie Pie's party to save the day when an important friendship summit with some visiting yaks turns into an utter disaster, but it takes an epic voyage of discovery across Equestria to reignite her party inspiration.
What did the rest of you think of Princess Spike?
We seemed to be on the same mind on many aspects of this episode, but I didn't myself enjoying it as much.
This being a retread of stuff Spike has dealed with already weighed heavily on me. I go into it in my review blog.