Episode Re-Review: Owl's Well That Ends Well · 6:37pm Feb 12th, 2021
Well, at long last the show decided to do a Spike episode. He had kind of gotten "A Dog and Pony Show" but nothing where he was the solo star. But who did he get to write his first focus episode? None other than Cindy Morrow, the woman who had gone from average at best with "Griffon The Brush Off" and "Winter Wrap Up" to just plain awful with "The Show Stoppers". But hey, M. A. Larson and Amy Keating Rogers could bounce back from missteps, so who's to say Cindy Morrow couldn't do the same? Well, let's find out whether that was the case.
The episode begins at night for a change, and Twilight is getting ready for a once in a generation meteor shower. Spike has been helping her prepare and seems to rather enjoy the attention he's getting from her. It seems like a nice start so far. But then Twilight asks Spike to fetch an astrology book, and when Spike goes to do so the dust from the book causes him to sneeze and burn the book. Not wanting to tell Twilight he puts the book back and pretends it was already checked out, Twilight buys it. Then she and Spike meet up with the rest of the mane six, as well as the Cutie Mark Crusaders as Rainbow Dash takes notice of Spike and comments on how nice it would be if she had someone to do her biding. She proceeds to take advantage of Scootaloo's idol worship for her, but acts surprisingly shocked when Scootaloo actually obeys without question. She does make up for it by letting Scootaloo stand next to her when the meteor shower begins, while Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle get to climb onto their sisters' backs. Sometime later, the shower seems to end and Twilight asks Spike to bring up refreshments, only to find him asleep in the punch bowl. After calling Spike Spikey Wikey, Pinkie Pie cracks a joke about the punch being "Spiked" and everyone laughs.
Twilight takes Spike home and puts him to bed, then writes a report on the meteor shower by candle light. However, a gust of wind blows the paper away and Twilight starts to fidget, claiming the retrieval of it is a job for Spike (even though Twilight has magic). However, her paper is retrieved by an owl and she invites it in to stay with her.
Spike wakes up late the next morning and worries about having to make breakfast for Twilight, but Twilight tells him not to worry because all his chores have already been taken care of. She then instructs Spike to go and meet the new junior assistant, Owlowiscious. Spike does so and we soon run into a problem, the animators seem to go out of their way to make Owlowiscious look creepy before he's even done anything. Then we get a very unfunny joke as Spike keeps mistaking Owlowiscious' "Whoos" for a question. And you can already tell where this episode is gonna go, can't you? If you don't, don't worry, the episode will make sure you know within a few minutes. Twilight shows off Owlowiscious to her friends, and they all shower him with the same praise they were previously heaping onto Spike, making their affections look petty and shallow. Spike loudly complains about the owl and storms off, and Fluttershy worries that he might be jealous. Twilight insists Spike knows he can't be replaced, but of course Spike thinks that's exactly what's going to happen. So yes, we're going down the route of "Old guy gets jealous of the new guy" that we've seen so many times before. It wasn't even a new concept when Toy Story did it.
We then spend several minutes on Spike trying to do his job only for Owlowiscious to basically upstage him. It all culminates when Spike goes on a huge endevor to get a new quill for Twilight, and Twilight tells him there was no need because Owlowiscious provided one of his feathers for her. And I should reiterate that every one of these scenes is taking place in broad daylight, even though owls are known to be nocturnal. Yes, domesticated owls can be activate during the day, but Owlowiscious was brought in from the wild and it's highly unlikely he's already adapted to daytime. I'm not sure if these scenes were supposed to be at night or not, but they're still a big error that the episode clearly isn't acknowledging.
So Spike blows up at how all his work was for nothing, and Twilight fails to take notice of this even though Spike couldn't be any more obvious if he tried. Instead, after Spike falls asleep she confronts him upon waking him up by revealing that Owlowiscious found the burnt book. She demands an answer, but when Spike begins to explain by asking "Have you ever seen a dragon sneeze before?" Twilight just scolds him for lying and then storms off after saying how disappointed she is in him. So Twilight doesn't bother to give Spike a chance to explain himself even after seeing how upset he was earlier, and despite knowing he's her number one assistant and probably wouldn't lie to her just for the sake of it. Scenes like this are what led to so many people believing that Spike was being abused by Twilight, tainting their connection for several seasons before the show started to correct the oversight. Once again, like with "Feeling Pinkie Keen" it's clear that no one bothered to think through their implications.
Thinking he was set up, Spike tries to frame Owlowiscious by stealing Opal's toy mouse and then using ketchup and pillow feathers to make it look like Owlowiscious killed a mouse. But Twilight catches him in the act and just scolds him again without bothering to ask him why he would do such a thing. She then says "This isn't the Spike I know and love" and storms off, so Spike thinks that means Twilight doesn't love him anymore. To that end he decides to pack up his things and run away from home. When he asks if things can get any worse they do because it starts raining. You might wanna remember this, because I don't think the episode did. Anyway, Spike finds a cave and decides to stay there. But he finds it to be already occupied by a pallet swap of the red dragon from "Dragonshy". And this dragon is just as anti-social.
Spike runs out of the cave and then Owlowiscious shows up to save him with some help from Twilight. Twilight tells Spike that Owlowiscious followed his ketchup foot prints (which would've washed off in the rain) and then basically tells Spike what she should've told him at the beginning. She isn't trying to replace him, she just needs a little help. She claims it's only at night but again every scene we saw Owlowiscious in until now was taking place in the middle of day.
So Twilight lets Spike write a letter to Princess Celestia on his own for a change and Twilight basically starts briefly acting like Spike did, thinking that Owlowiscious' "Whoo"'s are a question, because I guess they couldn't think of any other way to end the episode.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, on the one hand it's nice that we finally got a proper Spike focus episode. And it's nice that they were willing to finally touch on his relationship with Twilight, even if they didn't get too into the specifics (she's his guardian but other than it wasn't sure if it was a parental or a sibling kind of bond). On the other hand though, Owlowiscious is a blatant Gary Stu who can do everything and anything in broad daylight. And by focusing the spotlight on Spike the episode becomes all the worse because we get to see why he's so upset and unhappy, so willing to go to extremes. Yet Twilight never bothers to explain anything to Spike, just assuming he knows he can't be replaced and never bothering to ask him why he's doing what he's doing or giving him any chance to explain. Then there's also things like the episode forgetting that Spike was walking alone in the rain, so he couldn't have left ketchup footprints. Or making the mane six's affections look petty and shallow when they praise Owlowiscious the exact same way they praised Spike earlier. So this episode gets a D, it made so many painfully obvious mistakes.
Well, next up is an episode that could be said to be a sleeper hit and one that had no business being as good as it was. I'm of course talking about "Party of One" the episode where Pinkie Pie went crazy in a way that felt almost like a nod to a certain infamous grimdark fanfic.
The only good things in this boring mess of an episode are the references to Harry Potter.
Thank goodness the next episode is a million times better.
This one is definitely one of the worst of the season
I know I said this in yesterday's re-review, but I feel it bares repeating here. Similar to how you think Rainbow Rocks is overrated, I think this episode is overhated.
Now don't get me wrong, I understand why a lot of people dislike this episode and it's nowhere near my personal favorites. However, I kinda get what it was trying to do. You see, while Green Isn't Your Color was a realistic take on jealously between friends, I feel like this episode was going for a metaphoric take on jealousy between family members, with Twilight representing the mother, Spike representing the firstborn child, and Owlowiscious representing the newborn baby. A couple years ago, I asked Spike's VA Cathy Weseluck on Twitter if this episode was meant to parallel how kids react to getting a new sibling, to which she responded by saying "Very much a parallel, I believe! :)".
On at least one occasion, I've heard someone compare this episode to A Pal for Gary from SpongeBob SquarePants, but I think we can all agree the former is nowhere as bad as that atrocity. At least this episode tried to have a genuinely heartwarming story. Not to mention that unlike SpongeBob, there was an attempt to redeem Twilight near the end.
So while I agree this episode is objectively bad, I do feel that its heart is in the right place.