Episode Re-Review: Princess Spike · 4:06pm Apr 26th, 2021
So after the 100th episode came and went it was back to business as usual for Season 5, in more ways than one. And by a stroke of misfortune, the episode now having to follow up on the fandom love letter was a Spike episode. Considering even "Equestria Games" had been met with criticism over its abrupt shift to Spike, it seemed like a lot was working against this episode already. Not helped by the fact that a brand new writer in the form of Neal Dusedau debuting here, though the story was being credited to Jayson Thiesen (the storyboard director) and Jim Miller (the executive editor who occasionally doubled as a voice actor). Jayson at least had helped Amy Keating Rogers write "Pinkie Pride" but Jim Miller had never written an episode before. But maybe this episode could work despite Neal's writing credits including Johnny Test and Fish Hooks (the latter of which Meghan McCarthy had also written for)? Well, let's find out.
The episode begins with all four alicorn princesses hosting a royal summit in Canterlot involving delegates from all over Equestria. And it's Twilight who basically planned the whole thing, exhausting herself in the process. Spike then speaks up, offering to help but is completely ignored. And do any of the princesses do anything about this? Nope. Even Princess Cadence, the ruler of the Crystal Empire where Spike is hailed as a hero does nothing at all when Spike is belittled and ignored by the delegates who just wanna kiss up to the princesses.
Sometime later, Spike is in a castle suite when Cadence comes in with Twilight. Twilight is so exhausted that she can barely stay awake and Cadence tasks Spike with ensuring that she's not disturbed. And that's the extent to which Cadence does anything about this. She doesn't pass word along to the delegates, she doesn't have guards stationed outside Twilight's room. She just entrusts Spike to hold down the fort and leaves. We then waste a whole lot of time on Spike taking his orders to the extreme, chasing away a bird and even making a polo match move somewhere else. Heck, he even tells a group of construction ponies doing work on a water main to stop working (you'd think they would carry out such repairs before a royal summit and it's never stated that they're emergency repairs either). It's during this time that we are introduced to one of the worst plot devices ever to exist: Dragon sneeze trees. It's something that only affects Spike because he's a dragon, and their only purpose is to make Spike sneeze.
Then of course some delegates show up to ask Twilight to help him, because apparently they can't solve any kind of disputes between themselves despite being delegates. Spike tries to ask Twilight for advice, but although she does wake up briefly she's unable to help. So Spike decides to more or less give obvious solutions to the delegates, and then gets the idea to do some other things for Twilight while she naps. One of them involves meeting with a special designer. However, Cadence happens to find out about this and despite having no reason to think such a thing, she scolds Spike for taking advantage of his connection to Twilight. In fact, by scolding him over it she gives him the idea to start doing exactly that.
Eventually, a chain reaction from what Spike tried to take care of earlier ends up flooding the hall where the delegates are supposed to be meeting. We see that Cadence can conjure up crystals with her magic that can apparently function for pipes or other heavy objects, but this never comes into play again at any point in either the episode or the show.
But all the advice Spike gave the delegates backfires because they're so stupid that they can't figure out that they're not supposed to take the advice literally. And they're still mad at Twilight because they think it was her decision. Fancy Pants then decides that he's fed up with Twilight supposedly tarnishing Canterlot's reputation and an angry mob goes to storm her tower as Cadence just disappears from the episode and Spike is left to try and get ahead of them.
Spike finally snaps and tells the delegates that Twilight is sleeping, but it ends up being Twilight who puts everything right. Spike can't even put a huge statue back together that got broken by accident due to the dragon sneeze trees. So the episode basically says that Spike is just meant to be useless, a complete insult to his character. Heck, the episode ends with him being given a bouquet of dragon sneeze trees as he stands in front of the rebuilt statue and the episode cuts to black before we can see what happened.
And that's the story, so what do I think of the episode? Quite honestly, I don't know what they were thinking with this episode because it's not funny at all. It's an insult to Spike's entire character! The episode punishes Spike for the good deeds he was trying to do in Twilight's name, while the selfish things he did because of Cadence giving him the idea are completely ignored. It's like the whole episode is built around doing the opposite of what you'd expect: Bad is good and good is bad. But Cadence could easily have passed word along for Twilight not to be disturbed, she really feels like she's just there to get on Spike's case when she herself is doing almost nothing. The delegates are all one dimensional and you could easily swap Fancy Pants out for an OC or Prince Blueblood and it would have the same effect. Heck, it's never explained why Princess Celestia and Princess Luna aren't available to solve some of these problems or why no one goes to them first. Even if Twilight is the most popular princess she's not the only one at the summit. And what gets Spike into trouble is something that wasn't actually his fault, it was a freak accident that happened just because the plot said so. Even the existence of the dragon sneeze trees makes it seem like the episode just wants to make Spike's existence miserable and constantly knock him down, and for what? Wanting to actually be helpful and acknowledged? How is that selfish? Maybe something got lost in the shuffle here, but as it is this episode gets an F+. Spike deserved better!
Well, the map wasn't the only way Season 5 was going to try to expand the world, because up next we had "Party Pooped" with the introductions of the yaks that ultimately would give us Yona.
While this episode definitely is one of the season's weakest, I actually kinda find it more pleasant to watch than Lost Treasure of Griffonstone or Appleoosa's Most Wanted.
So far, you have reviewed only two legitimately good episodes where Spike is the main character:
Secret of My Excess & Inspiration Manifestation
I think it's safe to say Neal Dusedau is to the Discovery Family era what Merriwether Williams was to the Hub Network era. Speaking of which, I remember Jonah Smith once asked in The Writers' Group who was a worse writer between the aforementioned two, and you and I both said Dusedau. Just to reiterate, Williams at least produced one or two good episodes during her time on the show. Not to mention that as bad as a lot of her episodes turned out, they all had some semblance of effort put into them. To quote MisAnthro Pony from his Trump Guy review: "Even the tiniest, smallest, flimsiest, microscopic bit of effort can still be found in those episodes." Dusedau, on the other hand, never felt like he put any effort into the episodes he worked on. It always felt like he just wanted to get them over with as quickly as possible so he could collect his paycheck.
stares at title
Princess Spike?
Oh no my silly SuperPinkBrony12...
That episode never happened.
Tsk tsk, this detailed blog post gone to waste for something that never happened.
But in all seriousness, I try to tell myself that this episode was nothing more than a fever dream