Episode Re-Review: Sparkle's Seven · 3:53pm Jul 8th, 2021
With "The Best Gift Ever" counted as an official episode of the show (despite being double the length of one), it was at this point that the show crossed the 200 episode marker, a milestone few other shows could claim and one that officially cemented it as the longest running of all shows Hasbro ever made. The story for this episode is actually pretty unique and interesting. In late 2017, Josh Haber and Nicole Dubac got the voice actors for all of the mane six and for Spike to sit down and spitball ideas they had always wanted to do for their characters. Those ideas were subsequently blended together here as Haber and Dubac worked to try to combine them all into a twenty two minute episode. This is in stark contrast to the 100th episode "Slice of Life" which was more of a love letter to the fandom, and focused primarily on background ponies popular within the fandom. It makes for an interesting compare and contrast, and depending on who you ask you may get a different result on which is better. So, has this episode withstood the test of time? And on its own merits is it a good episode? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with Spike bringing in a scroll from Shining Armor announcing that he's issuing a challenge to Twilight, and the reward is a well worn paper crown. It's no ordinary paper crown though, it's something called the Crown of the Sibling Supreme. Apparently, Twilight and Shining used to be super competitive in their youth, so their parents used the whole Sibling Supreme thing as a way to keep it friendly. Twilight and Shining would get stars for doing various good deeds or even just doing good in school, and whoever got the most stars after a certain period would get to wear the paper crown. Some complain that this is an abrupt retcon of Twilight's claim from "Big Brother, Best Friend Forever" that "We never had a single fight." But as I said in my re-review of "A Canterlot Wedding", anyone who claims they never fought with their siblings growing up is lying. Siblings will fight, it's in their very nature. I do kind of have to complain about "rewarding" good behavior. We should ideally want our kids to do good deeds because they're the right thing to do. But at the same time I understand that positive reinforcement goes a long way, and it doesn't seem like it adversely affected either Twilight or Shining. Besides, there's nothing wrong with a little friendly competition.
So Shining Armor is preparing a contest to determine who gets to have the crown for all time (and all the bragging rights that come with it). Spike even comments on how he longed for a chance to take part in the contest when he was growing up, as we see via flashbacks that it was Twilight's parents who raised him. I always kind of held out the headcanon of Twilight raising Spike and being his mother, but I can see why that headcanon would be problematic. It would be seen to some as glorifying teenage pregnancy. Plus, you wouldn't exactly entrust a little kid with looking after an even younger kid for an extended period of time, child prodigy or not. Twilight might have cared for Spike a little, but she would've needed others to look after Spike whenever she had to go to school. That aside, Twilight and Spike head off to Canterlot and leave Starlight to more or less watch over the school. Hey, Batman does it to Nightwing sometimes.
Shining Armor is seen in Canterlot showing off the crown, which apparently still fits him. And apparently, he won the last Sibling Supreme contest before he and Twilight moved out and went on their separate life journeys. Princess Celestia then mentions that she asked Shining to "come out of retirement" as the old captain of the guard in order to oversee upgrades to Canterlot's security system. I've always kind of had the belief that Shining was still captain, but that someone was officially in charge whenever Shining was in the Crystal Empire. No word on who his successor was though. And it is kind of weird that it took until King Sombra effortlessly conquered Canterlot because the royal sisters abandoned it for them to decide that security should be increased. You'd think that after the first changeling invasion, security protocols would've been tightened. After all, the Storm King's army was able to invade Canterlot easy peasy.
So the contest is simple. Shining is tasking Twilight with finding a way to get past all the security measures and retrieve the crown without getting caught. But it won't be easy, because Shining has developed a multi-layer security system that makes use of multiple things. Shards from Chrysalis' throne to block magic, giant fans to prevent flight, bricking up all the underground tunnels, doubling the guards on patrol (not that they're particularly effective at their job), installing a trap door in the throne room and even employing some geese to serve as a natural alarm (on top of their tendency to bite). So it's all setting up for a heist. But Twilight is convinced she'll find a way to get past it all, and goes to her friends for help (there's no rule saying she can't do that).
Except somehow Shining Armor got wind of her plan and everything she intended to do. So Twilight is convinced to let Rarity plan the heist instead, and let each of her friends do their own thing. The competition with Shining Armor was Tara Strong's idea, and Rarity planning a heist was Tabitha St. Germain's idea. The plan includes Rarity and Rainbow Dash teaming up ala Shadow Spade style like they did in "Rarity Investigates!", except this time Rainbow Dash is in on the whole thing and is working as Rarity's assistant.
Then Pinkie Pie opts for the idea of going into space, which is what Andrea Libman proposed.
Andrea Libman also proposed Fluttershy being a spy and sneaking around ala Mission Impossible, even down to working with Spike to avoid a laser floor.
Lastly, Ashliegh Ball's idea for Applejack (we'll get to the one for Rainbow Dash a little later) involves Applejack being a country singer named Apple Cord. Applejack apparently used to be Apple Cord and used to play all over, but gave it up when it meant being away from her family for long periods of time. Kind of a shame they don't try to tie this back to her friendship with Rara.
So what does Twilight need to do in Rarity's grand plan? Nothing. It's not even a "Win by doing nothing" kind of thing, Rarity claims that Twilight doing anything would be predictable to Shining Armor and so the best way to throw him off is to have Twilight do nothing while her friends do all the work. Twilight reluctantly agrees. However, things soon go wrong when Pinkie Pie's hopes to go "into space" with Gummy via the hot air balloon are dashed, due to the balloon springing a leak right after Fluttershy and Spike are dropped off. Applejack, meanwhile, is performing for the guards as Apple Cord and even Shining Armor is surprised by this. They're easily distracted though, enough to not notice Applejack swiping one of the guard's badges. It's here that we get to Ashliegh Ball's idea for Rainbow Dash, having her dress up. But this is specifically because one of the guards on duty is Zephyr Breeze. And Rainbow Dash is to dress up in order to take advantage of his feelings for her. Her design does bare a lot of similarities to Meg from Hercules, so at least there's that going for it.
However, I have to ask if this was really necessary. It kind of feels degrading of Rainbow Dash's character and cheapens her contributions. She doesn't get to show off her best. It would be different if Zephyr at least showed some signs of maturity, but he's still as annoying as ever and arguably comes across kind of creepy here.
All of this is just so Rarity can sneak past and get inside one of the tunnels, and Rainbow Dash soon follows as she's all too happy to leave Zephyr behind. As for Spike and Fluttershy, they manage to get inside through a window but forget about the trap door and fall through it.
Princess Luna complains about "another false alarm" as Princess Celestia is called away to investigate, and Twilight speculates that the whole plan is starting to fall apart. It then turns out that Fluttershy is indeed still afraid of small spaces due to having been separated from Angel Bunny back in "Castle Mane-ia". And it's here we get to Cathy Wesluck's suggestion, Spike confessing how he always wanted to be a little brother to Twilight and Shining Armor, and be part of their Sibling Supreme contests. Fortunately, he and Fluttershy are soon rescued by Rarity and Rainbow Dash who have gotten lost in the catacombs. They all regroup and decide that the plan was too ad-hoc to work. But there's a saying that no plan survives first contact. No matter how hard you plan for something, something will inevitably go wrong. Plus, I don't entirely understand the point of going back to Twilight's original plan when Shining Armor is supposedly expecting it. Unless that's the point, it's so expected that he won't expect it now that they've done the unexpected.
However, it seems that even Twilight's plan never accounted for what you'd think would be obvious: Distract the head of security. At no point is there any kind of distraction for Princess Celestia or Shining Armor. And that's important, because in any plan to topple a security system, the most important thing is to get rid of whoever is in charge of security or oversight. Otherwise, it doesn't matter how many systems or parts of a system you can take down, if the security head is still around they can undo the sabotage and catch you.
Yet just when it looks like Shining Armor has won, it turns out that Spike was a spanner in the works all along. And he had an accomplice in the form of Princess Luna, who felt that the security systems didn't account for threats on the inside. She even has the whole "stroking an animal menacingly" part down pat.
Celestia agrees to listen to her sister's criticisms while Twilight and Shining Armor decide that since they both "failed", Spike gets the crown. And they officially recognize him as "the little brother we've always had."
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Well, it's easy to see just how ad-hoc it is. They did the best they could to make all the ideas fit, but some felt like they were just tacked on and then forgotten about it, such as Pinkie Pie going to space, Rainbow Dash dressing up or Fluttershy being a secret agent. I also have to ask if they really couldn't think of any other way to make Rainbow Dash dress up other than to have her be bait for Zephyr Breeze (who gets fired even though we learn that Princess Luna put him in charge specifically to be a distraction). It's honestly kind of cringey, especially with the way Zephyr acts throughout it all. Plus, I feel like they're too quick to give up on Rarity's plan just because it hit a snag. And it's never quite revealed how Shining Armor was tipped off about Twilight's original plan (it was probably Spike but they don't say for sure). Still, everyone feels in character. Spike in particular really gets to shine here, which was going to open up doors for him for the rest of the season (why couldn't we have gotten this kind of love for him earlier in the show's run? But I guess better late than never). This 200th episode was more of a celebration of the voice actors compared to the 100th episode celebrating the fandom. I think this episode had a stronger story structure to it and less fanservice, but the 100th episode carried arguably more of an emotional impact and really felt experimental. This, by comparison, feels like a first draft that needed some fine tuning to give everyone a chance to shine. Still, I'm willing to give this episode an A+, making it an early high point for Season 9.
The next two episodes I have nothing new to say on, so instead we're going to jump ahead to "She's All Yak" which may be best remembered for launching a ship.
To me, this is one of the best episode in season 9. And from what I can remember, the voice actors work on this episode with different ideas on how their character would do
Another unique detail about this episode is that it's the only one in the entire series where Shining Armor appears without Cadance. Well after his wife got to appear in six episodes (Three's a Crowd, Twilight's Kingdom - Part 1, Princess Spike, Party Pooped, Road to Friendship, and School Raze - Part 1) and two movies (Equestria Girls and the 2017 film) without him, it only seems fair that he get at least one episode on his own before the series officially ended.
Also, since this is Shining Armor's final speaking appearance, I'd like to share his first and last speaking lines.
This is an episode that, for me, is pretty fun overall, but it's dragged down majorly by the Rainbow Dash/Zephyr stuff.
All of the cringe that's spread throughout Flutter Brutter gets compacted down into two minutes, making it all hit harder.
And Dash can't even react how she normally would, which only makes it feel worse.
Your summary at the end honestly makes it sound like the episode isn't an A+, since you discussed more negatives than positives. Personally I'd give the episode an A- or A. It's really fun and well written, and I personally enjoyed the Zephyr Breeze section, but it's not quite good enough for me to give it the highest grade.
5551822
I guess you could say it's like what Mr. Enter said in his Top 25 Modern SpongeBob Episodes video:
What I liked about this episode the most is that they finally addressed the lack of proper security measures(an issue that should have been addressed far earlier than this point in the series) and even though it failed later on, because of Chrysalis, I still got to give them credit for doing something about it.
5551901
tbh I have more fun analyzing why something is good, but to each their own.