MLP Episode Review: Spike at Your Service · 1:02am Apr 28th, 2016
Okay, one more for tonight. And... it's another Spike one. Oh, joy. If you can't have Alfred or Jarvis, then maybe you can have...
Spike at Your Service
We open at Golden Oaks. Spike is channeling a bit of Sesame Street as he counts books. Twilight is gonna read twelve books over the weekend. Okay, I'm a bibliophile, but that's a bit much for me. Turns out Celestia assigned these to her. Pony what?! Twilight gives him the day off, and luckily, he's got a list of things to do! It's a list of... really dumb stuff. Playing his stomach like bongos, for example. It';s also only three things on a long scroll. Hah, hah?
After the commercials, he's wandering a bit. Suddenly, he spots the town's balloon and decides on a balloon ride! I've never been on a balloon ride, myself. :) He runs over, but knocks into a post and a tether gets undone. He chases after it, ending up in Big Mac's cart. It rolls along, but Granny's in the way! He pulls an Indiana Jones from the mine cart chase in Temple of Doom, except using his hands. Fortunately, his scales are tough. The harness goes down and the cart turns into a catapult. He grabs the rope and manages to pull it down! Yay!
Deep in the Everfree Forest. Yikes...
He quickly realizes where he is. There's creepy yellow eyes all around. He smells something, and then we see them... timberwolves. They're wolves made of wood. Interesting and clever... except the CGI used isn't too good. It stands out quite a bit. They corner him, but a rock outta nowhere hits one... and knocks bits of it loose.
Yeah, another bad thing about these things? Fragile as all hell.
It's Applejack to the rescue! There's a very nice chase scene, with Applejack being all kinds of badass. Spike's impressed. So am I. Spike suddenly... goes gaga. He also asks why she was out there. Turns out she was chasing the balloonm and with a sly look, figured Spike was doing the same. Nice. Applejack lassos the balloon's rope around her barrel and they walk off, but not before an Ominous Shot of Reassembling Wood.
Still not scary. :p
Applejack thanks Spike for walking her home, but says she's got chores to do. Spike suddenly offers to do them for her. It's the least he can do. And he picks up a bucket of apples... and spills half of them in about five seconds. Here we go... Applejack says no, because that's what friends do. Spike is very insistent, so she sends him over to help Apple Bloom give Piggington a bath. Piglet, too?
Over with Apple Bloom, Spike picks up a brush... and knocks the soap bucket over. Yes, we're going this route. We cut to them presenting a really clean Piggington to Applejack. Okay, nice. Apple Bloom needs to get going, though. She and the other Crusaders are getting fitted for... water skis.
Man, the crazy shit the Crusaders got up to...
Applejack rightly feels they're even-steven, but no. Spike is... really insistent. spike grabs her leg... and Applejack has also grown a bit, since Spike's now shorter than one of her legs. Oh, wait. Hasbro property. Scale's a non-facotr most of the time. :p Oh, and Piggington is rolling in the mud again. :p Applejack decides he'll help with...
"Pies, PIES! I'm helping Applejack make some PIES!" Spike drops a bolw of eggs, knocks over the bucket of soapy water to clean it up, rips open a bag of flour with the broom... and gets the broom stuck to the ceiling.
Writers, how much do you hate Spike, again?
Applejack tries to send him home, but he burps up some card with writing scrawled in crayon, his 'Spike the Dragon Code' says he must serve her. Okay... the hell did this come from?! It's obviously just something Spike made up, but why? Granny tries to deflect him back to Twilight, so he runs off to tell her the news. At Golden Oaks, he tells Twilight. Twilight... ignores her completely. Twilight, get your fucking nose out of the book. NOW. Spike's heart is broken in two.
Back at Sweet Apple Acres, Spike walks into a room... and messes it up in about two seconds. Applejack tells him it doesn't feel right. "My dragon code is a part of me." Since when?! "If you won't let me do this, then I won't be a noble dragon anymore." Did Dragon Quest not happen?!
Applejack looks around at various chores, probably scenarios of doom running through her head. Finally, she hands the horribly-baked pie he baked to him and tells Spike to give it to Rarity. There, Rarity takes a bite of the abomination. Spike goes gaga over her. Applejack gets him out of the room and Rarity asks what the hell's going on. Applejack explains, but Rarity would love it! Applejack says it doesn't feel right, and he makes some big messes. On cue, there's a crash, and we see Spike and a small mountain of bubbles coming from the kitchen.
And suddenly Dash shows up and gets the explanation. She too thinks it's awesome and wonders what Applejack has him doing. Including an unfinished novel? By Applejack's expression... I don't think that was a joke! Oh, and Dash is writing a *COUGHFANFICCOUGH* novel, too. A self-insert from what she describes. :p
"How ever did you come up with that ingeniously-woven intricate plot line?"
"Just came to me." Okay, that was good. :D
Dash suggests having him do something really hard. Applejack doesn't want him to get hurt. Spike walks up... with a pipe in his hands. What? Dash says she's gonna smash through rocks today, and Applejack was gonna help with that. "Trust me. This is gonna work like a charm."
And... we fade to Spike finishing up the tower of rocks. Okay, nice. :D Fluttershy wanders by and said she would've pretended not to have anything for him to do. Ooh. And finally, at the top of Isengard, Spike's done. Dash manages to smash it... but it takes a lot out of her. She's definitely got a concussion. Applejack says he's done... and Spike has a panic attack. He wonders if she needs help remembering stuff she needs help with... and ends it with inflating her with a bellows.
Spike's gone nuts.
At Golden Oaks, Applejack goes to see Twilight, who is still reading. Applejack does an "I know.." to her, and yeah. She didn't listen to a word he said. How nice... Applejack asks if she can talk some sense into him... but Twilight says this is 'dragon code' we're talking about. Surely she knows how important that is.
Since WHEN?!
Twilight comes up with a plan, and we cut to Spike... counting blades of grass. Inside the barn, Applejack recruits the others. Pinkie is... you know. Nope, Applejack's gonna be attacked by a timberwolf! We cut to outside the everfree and Applejack going over the plan. Basically they fake an attack and have Spike save her. And no, no mustache for Pinkie.
rarity asks Applejack to show us their best 'damsel in distress'. It's bad. Spike comes a calling. Applejack asks for help sweeping up leaves, and we learn there are 24,567,837 blades of grass at Sweet Apple Acres. Applejack winks and Dash does a damned good timberwolf impression. So convincing, it frightens Fluttershy and actually calls other timebrwolves to the area!
Rarity and Pinkie race out. Rarity is so hamtastic she makes composite "I AM THE MASTER AND YOU WILL OBEY ME!" look subtle and understated, while Pinkie can't stop grinning. And twilight TK's some bad marionettes over. Applejack sticks her hoof into some rocks and places her head into the marionette's mouth. This is... damned funny. Spike cottons on pretty quickly. As soon as he mentions the breath, though... the real stink comes up.
Everyone flees, for some reason. Folks, Applejack kicked the asses of multiple timberwolves. Seriously! And here they come. Applejack leaps up onto the rock pile remnants, pushes a rock off and... smashes all three at once. And she saves Spike's life. Again. But the rock she's on collapses and she slides down. At the bottom, a rock lands on her foreleg and Applejack's trapped for real this time. And now the timberwolves assemble themselves into a combiner. Timbertron?
Applejack tells him to go, but no. Spike tosses a rock at the gestalt, and it lodges in its throat. And it... chokes to death and falls apart.
Ladies and gentlemen, a worse villain than present-Sombra.
Spike frees Applejack, and her life was saved. She apologizes for staging the fake attack, and confesses she wants to follow her own code of, "that's what friends do." Spike comes up with a better code-trying not to get into situations like this in the first place. They bumpos hooves and hands. Back at Golden Oaks, Spike holds up a lantern for Twilight... who should've had adequate lighting in the first place. And we end.
Thoughts
There are... some good things here. Quite a bit. Great action... hell, all the way up until Apple Bloom and Spike finishing cleaning Pigginton there wasn't anything really wrong. Good ending, too. Some good stuff in the middle. Nice lesson, too. However...
Spike's characterization/skills were tossed under a bus for the sake of the episode. We have seen him be a lot more competent than this before! The whole 'dragon code' came out of thin air! If this was another character, a new one, then... it'd be better. But as it stands, with who's in it, I don't like that bit. And it's a shame, because other than that, it's not too bad.
So, tomorrow... Keep Calm and Flutter On and Magical Mystery Cure.
It's not gonna be pretty, folks. But for me? it's gonna be damned cathartic!
Dragon Quest.
Spike's participation in the Great Dragon Migration left him feeling hesitation at the thought of desolation and—
—showed him that other dragons can be real jerks. In fact, every dragon he's ever met has bullied him or outright tried to kill him. At one point, he himself even went kaiju. The "Spike the Dragon Code" is his way of creating something that says he's different, that he's a good dragon, that he holds himself to higher standards and he will not be like those other dragons, ever.
This is one of the worst MLP:FiM episodes if you ask me, and even so, it's got a lot of good in it! Shows how high-quality this series really is.
You pinpointed exactly the things that bothered me with the episode, too: Spike is portrayed as an incompetent and clueless klutz, and the whole "Dragon Code" comes out of nowhere yet is presented as a known, important thing.
Fixing the episode would have been very easy: just have Spike do his chores well enough! Applejack would be uncomfortable with the situation no matter what. And have Twilight make it clear that the "Dragon Code" is something Spike has come up with for himself (no doubt reading Shining Armor's old guard training manuals for heroic inspiration), and that it's important for him, not a dragon thing in general.