Sweet and Smokey S9E9 Review · 8:40pm May 25th, 2019
I want so, so badly to love this episode. I can only like it. One thing drags it down and you know exactly who it is.
Like, seriously, the individual components of this episode are all great. Ember having to care for the dragon eggs, questioning her abilities as dragon lord because they aren't hatching? Fantastic. Spike returning to the dragon lands with a story that lets him show his maturity, patience, and intelligence? Fantastic. Fluttershy being awesome and adorable in equal measure, more please. Smolder trying to get Spike and her brother to get along without obviously taking a side and standing up for both to the other, great!
But... Garble.
I wanna care about this redemption, I really do. But, I don't. And the reason is it isn't earned. We've had total asshole characters in MLP that got redeemed before. Diamond Tiara's redemption took place over the course of an episode that saw her have a crisis of identity, lose her only friend, learn more about the CMC, and ultimately decide to be a better pony. Pharynx's redemption took the path of seeing he really does care about the changelings in his own way, and he ultimately came through and showed his good nature. Neighsay saw his racism thrown in his face and all he thought he knew about the true nature of all creatures flipped on its head when Cozy Glow turned out to be evil and the Student Six saved him, and he worked to make amends with both them and Twilight.
Garble, though, is just an asshole who keeps being an asshole. He's an asshole to Spike every time Spike tries to be friendly, and when Spike resolves to be the bigger dragon and keep trying, Garble is an asshole some more. I recognize the episode was trying to do a thing about peer pressure, but it doesn't work very well when Garble is always the instigator of aggression and rejects any effort by Spike to be nice to him even when they're alone with his sister. It was so satisfying to see Smolder and Fluttershy put him in his place at last, and I'm also glad it wasn't Spike who had to do it, because Spike is a nice guy who wouldn't make somecreature feel bad about themselves in this way.
The "reveal" that Garble is a beat poet is shoehorned in, and it's particularly blatant in how the episode suddenly establishes that dragonfire is hotter when they laugh, so Garble uses his awful poetry to make all the dragons laugh flames hot enough to hatch the eggs. Yeah, fine, he gets to be the hero... you'll notice he never actually apologizes to Spike for being so awful to him, or admits he's been wrong, or expresses some change of viewpoint or lesson he's learned. The whole "don't make fun of differences" aesop is delivered by Smolder while Garble sits there silent as a rock. Yay, Garble gets to be the hero of the dragons because he worked up the courage to perform his poetry in front of his friends. That really makes up for the multiple seasons of verbal and physical abuse he's subjected Spike to. I guess we'll all sweep that under the rug of "peer pressure" and that makes it okay.
I overall did like this episode, all the individual characters except for Garble were great. But Garble himself was a half-assed attempt at a redemption arc he didn't earn and still hasn't - as far as I'm concerned, this was not a redemption episode for Garble, and I don't mean in the sense of "let us pretend this never happened", I mean that we have no reason to think he's not the same jackass he was before, but now we know he writes lousy poetry in his spare time.
Hear hear. Can’t really care about a character’s redemption is that redemption is totally unearned.
His poetry was terrible.
You hit the nail on the head of why his reformation didn't really work, but I still thought this was a real treat. :D
Same here.
It would've been interesting if the episode had made Garble the father of one of the eggs (as I just assume he was as why else would he be hanging out so close to them?) and befitting his new role, he starts trying to baby Spike and does a 180 from how he used to act as hormones from going from an adolescent to an adult are driving him nuts.