My Review of MLP: FIM season 8 episode 24 Father Knows Beast · 10:29pm Dec 16th, 2023
Grading Scale:
A (fantastic episode)
A- (an excellent episode with at least one flaw)
B+ (a great episode with a couple of flaws)
B (a good episode which still could have been better)
B- (a good episode with numerous flaws but still rewatchable)
C+ (a decent episode)
C (eh... it’s not terrible but not good either)
C- (it’s not worth rewatching although it does have good elements)
D+ (a bad episode with a few good things in it)
D (a really bad episode with wasted potential)
D- (a terrible episode with badly written characters and butchered moral)
F (horrible and unwatchable)
Greetings, folks. This is Mr. J back with another MLP episode review for today. This evening, I will be reviewing the twenty-fourth episode of season 8 entitled “Father Knows Beast”. Wow, I didn’t know they got Mr. Beast in this episode! I wonder if Spike’s father won ten million dollars in one giveaway…
Jokes aside, I found this episode to be overall decent yet sad to watch. I honestly think it was a missed opportunity to actually show Spike’s true origins and perhaps show a close relative of his family meeting him. It would’ve been a much more interesting storyline that could’ve expanded on his character. Just like with the “Molt Down” episode, it needed to take some risks just to have Spike mature and grow.
Now, some people may think, “Well, we don’t need to know Spike’s origins. It’s better we don’t know,”. Think of him what you will, but I personally don’t believe Spike’s backstory should be left unexplored; he’s just too good of a character to ignore. Unfortunately, we live in a reality where people like Josh Haber think it’s okay to do him dirty like this.
I hated how they used a new character for this episode only for him to manipulate and gaslight Spike into doing whatever he told him to while pretending to be his dad. That’s absolutely fucked up and sadistic to do to a child—an orphan child no less; Sludge is one of the most manipulative characters in this show, and the fact that he got away with it is just infuriating to me. And even worse, we never see him again.
And I don’t think it should’ve been easy for Spike to briefly be this upset and then quickly get over the fact that the dragon whom he thought was his long-lost dad turned out to be a freeloading, lying schmuck. I mean, he doesn’t get depressed over this? He doesn’t fall on his knees and weep over the knowledge that he may never know what happened to his real parents?? I know, that all sounds too angsty for a children’s program, but realistically, this is what should have happened.
Also, I had a strong feeling Sludge was lying from the start; it was so painfully obvious he was making up crap as he went along just to keep living in Twilight’s castle. What an absolute disgusting scumbag. He’s not even a supervillain, yet he proved himself to be just as contemptible and pathetic as all the others.
This is a solemn warning and a life lesson we should all learn; if somebody approaches you and sees all the good things you have, they will most likely try to weasel their way into your life and exploit you in the process. Plus, this is something even common criminals would do. That’s why it’s important to always be on guard and use common sense to protect you from making potentially dangerous mistakes in trusting people you don’t know.
Kids, if a stranger approaches you and says they’re a family friend to take you home or wherever, do NOT go anywhere with them. Always stick with the folks you know and love. It will save your life.
Here’s another life lesson: always appreciate the people who are in your life. They may be different from you, and their culture may be different from yours, but nothing can and should separate the love between family. I may not like the approach they took with this episode, but I still appreciate the lessons we can learn from it…especially in knowing what not to do when encountering narcissistic liars like Sludge.
Overall, this is an okay but disappointing episode. I give it a C-. This is the first time I’m reviewing this episode in a normal format instead of narrating my summary of the episode with pieces of commentary like I usually do. The reason is that…it kinda broke me after the way they treated Spike. He didn’t deserve that.
No peace.
Damn, that Sludge is a real scumbag. Should of been imprisoned or suffered a truly grim punishment for that, should he not have gotten away with it if the episode was done better in that aspect.
Normally, Josh Haber’s work in the show is something I wouldn’t have much of a problem with, but in the case of this episode…it’s the complete opposite.
“Father Knows Beast”, in my opinion, was one of the worst episodes of the entire series! Or, at the very least, the 8th season. I hated how they basically cheated the world of an opportunity to delve into Spike’s origins, and Sludge pretty much became one of my least favorite characters of FiM thanks to his irritating personality. And in terms of relevance in the show’s canon and continuity…”Father Knows Beast” had zilch in all those regards, which only made its overall existence questionable in the long run.
The few good parts I ever noted were the brother-sister dynamic shared between Spike and Smolder, along with the moment featuring Starlight Glimmer in a bath tub.
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I was really hoping they would redeem themselves by making an episode in season 9 to do exactly that: showing Spike’s origins.
But NOPE! We can’t have nice things apparently
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Tell me about it. FiM provided an entire plethora of characters that each held amazing potential for helming their own stories, and it saddens me that Hasbro hardly took advantage of that. Instead, they gave the majority of them the short end of the stick.
Sludge is the worst MLP character
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I like to think that Twilight told Ember about him and, because of how fond she is towards Spike, sent out her best dragons to find and imprison Sludge.
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I agree.