Spike in the Spotlight · 12:13pm Jun 21st, 2015
Maybe it’s just due to perception bias, but I can’t help feeling that Spike hasn’t had a very good track record when it comes to episodes that focus on him specifically. And unfortunately, this week’s episode, Princess Spike only reinforced that perception for me.
So far, I think I’ve identified two issues that really interfered with my enjoyment of the episode.
The first is a grossly incorrect attribution of moral consequences to Spike’s actions. Here, let’s bring up Spike’s apology at the end:
“I guess I owe you a pretty big apology... Here we are in a summit that brings together ponies from all across Equestria, and all I could think about was myself. You all came here to celebrate the things that make each of our cities so unique and special, but instead of getting into the spirit of things like all of you, I used my friend’s position to make myself look good.”
Funny thing, though. The disaster was not caused by Spike’s abuse of authority in the first place. 
The four things that led to obvious problems were:
- Moving the polo match
- Overgrown Dragonsneeze trees
- A damaged water main
- The two delegates fighting over the same hall
The decisions on these conflicts were all made before Spike had let power go to his head. In fact, you could argue that it’s the other way around: these ponies’ over-reliance on or excessive trust of authority only encouraged Spike to abuse his newfound role as Twilight’s mouthpiece. To use an extreme analogy, it’s like offering drugs to an addict and then putting all of the blame on him when he finally surrenders to his instincts.
Sure, one could argue that his post-abuse decisions could’ve caused problems, too, but since they weren’t depicted, we can probably assume that they weren’t worse than the aforementioned four conflicts.
Spike’s apology really should’ve been the following:
“I’m sorry for making hasty decisions that were out of my league. I really should’ve asked for help and turned to somepony with more experience on these important things. I… I just wish there was somepony I could’ve turned to when I was under pressure like that…”
I’m looking at you, Princess Cadance. Weren’t you the one who said, “Can I count on you to see to it that she isn’t disturbed?”
She put that idea into Spike’s head without giving him the support he would’ve needed. Even a couple of royal guards to back him up could’ve sufficed, as they could hold the fort whilst he ran for help. Alternatively, they could’ve relayed messages while Spike kept the peace. Instead, she left a kid way in over his head, and I’m pretty sure that a royal like her would be no stranger to the pushy, entitled and downright petty attitudes of Equestria’s politicians and upper-crust nobility. In other words, she should have seen this coming, and she should be the one apologising.
I can somewhat give a pass to Luna and Celestia because it’s possible that they weren’t aware of Twilight’s impromptu power nap. Cadance, however, has absolutely no excuse. And if the former is true, then she has even less to stand on for not informing them that they had lost a whopping 25% of marepower in dealing with only-the-princess-can-solve-this! conflicts.
The second major issue is the sheer amount of contrivance in this episode. So many of the problems that led to the disaster could’ve been solved with some pretty simple solutions. On top of that, they also relied heavily on plot convenience to have a domino effect leading to the disaster.
Let’s go in sequence.
Firstly, Cadance could’ve avoided throwing Spike to the wolves as mentioned previously.
Earmuffs/earplugs. I don’t think there’s much else to be said there.
Dragonsneeze trees just happened to be overgrown and unstable during the summit. If they were so top-heavy that a stray ball could knock one over, you’d think that they would’ve trimmed them sooner than on the day of the summit itself, which sounds like something usually planned way in advance.
The broken main pipe just happened to be within falling distance of the trees. Also, if it was such a hazard, they really should’ve shut off the water. In fact, isn’t that what you’re supposed to do before drilling around the damaged section?
As mentioned before, none of Spike’s post-abuse decisions are shown to have major consequences, so I’ll just skip straight to the part where things reach critical mass.
The relocated polo match, which looks like a reasonable decision if you ignore the fact that earmuffs would have rendered it irrelevant, just happened to knock a ball straight into one of the overgrown Dragonsneeze trees, which just conveniently fell onto the damaged pipe running at full pressure against common sense, which conveniently blasted water straight into the window of the main hall, and conveniently carried some flowers which, hey, so conveniently make Spike sneeze firebombs and nopony else. And the flowers did so despite being wet, which won’t make sense if pollen is the irritant – they would be unable to reach his eyes/sinuses or otherwise be too dilute to have any effect. Also, if a violent sneeze is enough to take down the statue, they really should’ve put it in a protective casing.
So, overall, it looks like the episode was written with an extremely specific and improbable sequence of events designed to make Spike’s otherwise reasonable decisions blow up in his face. Solutions or sensibilities that would’ve severed this chain reaction were conveniently ignored. And even after everything had gone wrong, the episode still pinned it on Spike’s motivations, which, although not morally right, weren’t the cause of the disaster in the first place.
Lastly, Fluffy ‘my friend took my seat’ Clouds. Oh my gosh, I have never wanted to slap a pony in the face so hard before. 
Phew… Sorry. Had to get that out of my system. It was killing me.
Look, I don’t enjoy being so negative about this episode; I usually have fun the vast majority of the time with other episodes. It’s not like this episode was totally bad – it did have some nice parts. Twilight’s book bed can join pancake pillow as one of the cutest things ever. 
But the good parts just got outweighed by the sheer amount of what looks like weak writing everywhere else. Sure, it’s a kids’ show and it’s better to just sit back and enjoy the good stuff, but I honestly couldn’t ignore the problems here, especially when they the moral isn’t properly aligned with what actually happened. Pretending the bad parts don’t exist won’t do anyone any favours.
Now, I’m sure that we’ll most likely find similar problems in many other ‘good’ episodes if we use the same level of scrutiny as I’ve done here. However, I can often happily tolerate flaws when the show is sufficiently funny, heart-warming or cute.
This, though… In this episode, most of what I saw was a kid getting bullied into making hasty decisions way outside his area of expertise, without the support of more experienced adults who really should’ve known better, having everything blow up in his face mostly through plot convenience, and then have everypony gang up on him for things that weren’t totally his fault. And he was then forced to apologise for abusing power that they practically handed on a silver platter to him, a kid who’s probably hasn’t yet mastered integrity and self-control.
I… I simply could not enjoy that. It wasn’t particularly funny, cute or heart-warming.
Please understand that I’m not trying to ruin everyone’s enjoyment of the episode. More power to those who liked it and all that.
Rather, I’m trying to highlight why some of us may feel and say that it’s not the best thing ever. In fact, some might even say that it’s the worst episode of Season 5, and only a bit better than Spike at Your Service. Point I’m trying to make is this: sometimes, dissenters may have reasons for their dislike other than ‘trolling’ or ‘hating’. 
…
Well, they can’t all be winning episodes, I guess. It’s just that Spike-centered episodes seem to focus more on him getting some form of comeuppance for his flaws, usually with a very generous helping of contrivance thrown in to make it happen.
Here’s to hoping that Spike gets another chance to truly shine in his own episode. More Inspiration Manifestation and less Dragon at Your Service, please.
Nice analysis, Raugos. I think it pretty much sums up my problem with this episode. Besides, not everything he did was wrong, not all his motivations were wrong and once again his low self-esteem was completely ignored...
I agree, very nice analysis. It gave me several things to think about that I hadn't noticed myself before. Very well done.
One thing I'd like to add though, to the heap of Cadance blame, is that she gave the power hungry reptile power. Dragons are inherently greedy, usually in regards to material things, and Spike is certainly not immune to such behavior nor mature enough to reliably control it, at least not without Twilight backing him up. He's shown as far back as season 2's Secret of My Excess that he has a proclivity for abusing ponies' blind trust in matters to his own egotistical ends. Now that has been a little while and he might have changed, but we've not seen any real evidence of that and Cadance certainly hasn't. I mean, the last time she saw him was during the Equestria games, where he was busy reveling in the adoration of her subjects.
As you said, Cadance should have stepped in for Twilight, taking over all responsibilities from her and just had Spike direct traffic away from Twilight and to her. It would have been the sensible thing to do instead of leaving the position totally vacant during a high profile summit like this one.
You Know what? You're Right, A Princess Should Take Her Place while the other is Sleeping and is Resting while Someone Takes Care of Someone while their Asleep or in the hospital...
even while Luna and Celestia has a 'cuse'...
Princess Cadence, you know Spike gets Greedy when it comes to Dragons.... You Smug Girl.... Jeez... Cadence, i hope you get a friendship lesson for this...
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Actually, That's a Great Idea!!! Tell Anypony or Any Pony Fan that we need an Alternate Version of This Episode....
Perhaps but Spike kinda brought it on to himself. Remember during Equestria Girls when Twilight feared that she would be leading a kingdom of her own one day the first words out of his mouth
never mind the fact that he wouldn't be doing the majority of the work. I believe Spike thinks that being a princess or any ruling royal means one can do what they want whenever they want; while Twilight (and by extension her fellow princesses and friends) either know or have some inkling that being a leader of an entire nation is incredibly hard work. But then I doubt Spike listened whenever Twilight tried to teach him these things: most likely finding any excuse to get out of it whether a party, daydreaming, or using such lectures as a means to take a nap which Twilight probably rarely did.
Agree 99%.
That missing 1% is for the last part. Less Spike at your service? How about nothing like it ever again, please.
Oh yes, the ending didn't do basically anything to conclude the episode to my satisfaction, either in what the episode said it was about, and what it really was about.
The words of the episode say: Spike gets carried away and takes Twilight's position and abuses it both to make himself feel important and later to get kickbacks.
But the events say: Spike's problem is that he was over his head and didn't know how to handle the responsibility given him.
Thanks for the defense of dissatisfaction on this episode, too.
3168914 It's true that Spike needed to learn a lesson , but I think it's also important to ensure that the lessons we teach children lines up with what they've experienced. In this case, Spike was being punished for things that weren't exactly his fault and being forced to attribute it to completely separate actions on his part.
It's like catching a kid lying, punishing him, and then saying, "Now, apologise to everyone for stealing their stuff!"
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Still considering Twilight was probably teaching these things and yet he falls alseep at impromptu times or tries to get out of a lecture or lesson just because he saw it as boring and had nothing to do with him. Then again when there's anything having to do with gems or Rarity he doesn't listen to anything else.
I'm not Condoning what Cadance did but at the same token she probably had her own duties to attend to that and the magic of Friendship is Twilight's forte and domain, not hers.
Never truer words. Right here, you put into a sentence exactly the mixed feelings I had about this episode and previous Spike-centered episodes that I couldn't seem to vocalize. Great review; I'm the same way about not focusing on the negative and just enjoying the show for what it is, but once in a while you just have to shine on a spotlight and say, "See this? This is bad. Don't do this."