My Little Pony - Friendship Is Magic: Episode 510 - Princess Spike

Rating:

Surprisingly, Princess Spike ends up at the same moral from Slice Of Life, but this happenstance only indicates a larger problem.  After celebrating Ponyville’s diversity, Celestia attempts doing the same thing with her Grand Galloping Equestria Pony Summit.  Planning this event has kept Twilight up for three days straight, so Cadance orders Spike to make sure she isn’t disturbed while just resting before the opening reception.  Although she’s obviously dead tired, Spike seeks to eliminate any sounds from Twilight’s general area, which pushes him into a deeper adventure once he starts giving orders in her name.  While Slice Of Life celebrated its multitude of references, Princess Spike just feels like a rehash.  Here’s Spike doing stupid things like every episode starring him.  Then he’s getting greedy and lusting for power, which more or less happened in Secret Of My Excess.  Directors Jayson Thiessen and Jim Miller came up with this flimsy story, but newcomer Neal Dusedau couldn’t improve their premise.  His dialogue is solid and doesn’t feel too horrible, but I can find nothing positive in Princess Spike’s script.  Every new character is a stereotype that Dusedau couldn’t be bothered to name (our friend Marge Gunderson up there gets no pony pun), and the various princesses fare little better since they don’t stand out or delineate themselves.  Even Cadance’s rare meaty supporting role finds her refusing to chastise Spike for usurping Twilight’s power and ruining everything.  That leaves Princess Spike as another slapstick episode where we’re supposed to laugh from a character doing stupid things that snowball out of control, which then again somehow results in a lesson it never shows.  Between weak plotting, long stretches of painful scenes, and bland or stereotypical characterization, Princess Spike is a nothing of an episode which fails to add any positive contributions.  Despite not being overtly awful on the surface, it just can’t be recommended.

For some reason, Spike is allowed to speak at the opening of this great summit that has totally happened before.  He can only get a few words out before everyone starts shouting for the princesses again.  Clearly Dusedau means to criticize celebrity-obsessed culture…well, no not really, since it isn’t brought up again.  This only embarrasses Spike, who soon starts wishing he could also have those great princess perks.  Remember the last time Spike wanted to be something he wasn’t?  Mining Merriwether Williams for ideas is not a great beginning for any new writer.

Not that Twilight currently enjoys any benefits.  Although her fellow princesses are well-rested, Cadance informs us (having recently been appointed princess of exposition) she stayed awake three days preparing for the event.  Twilight pulled all-nighters before (such as in It’s About Time), but here she looks drunk and borderline insane after spouting rambling inanities.  Does Cadance step up as a leader, or tell Twilight “you’ve worked hard, take a few days off, we got this”?  Nope, she passes the problem onto Spike and continues doing nothing.

While almost plausible as plot so far, Princess Spike now enters a repetitive “comic” area which completely sinks it.  Spike must ensure Twilight is given quiet for resting, but he takes this literally and tries quashing any sound made in Canterlot despite his master being dead tired and therefore able to sleep through anything.  As an example, a cardinal perches himself on top of Twilight’s horn and starts tweeting, but she barely notices.  He only arrived there because Spike apparently borrowed someone’s power and traversed multiple buildings instantaneously.  “Not on my watch!”  After breaking up a croquet game, Spike stops one worker currently cutting down “dragon sneeze” trees (creativity is hard) and another from repairing a broken water main.  What, you didn’t know these two things existed in Equestria?  Guess why they’re being shown now.

With these problems “fixed”, Spike must now face an enormous amount of delegates that have questions for Twilight.  Since she would require consciousness for any answers, Spike starts making them up.  Without ever seeing or hearing her, they all accept Spike is delivering Twilight’s divine word and blindly follow “her” suggestions.  He totally doesn’t begin abusing this power immediately.  Of course, we don’t know what happens over a 40-second montage, but it was probably boring anyway.

Not content with only giving advice, Spike also attends meetings “speaking” for the princess.  These aren’t montaged through, which can only mean more Chekov’s guns.  In case you missed the one about that water main from earlier, Spike again tells him he can’t work on it.  Apparently also watching the episode, Cadance shows up and voices her concern over Spike’s actions.  She could put an end to his massages and flattering portraits, but because that would require work, she too accepts his assurances that abuses won’t happen.  “But it’s also hard work,” Cadance says, likely meaning her walk over to Spike’s table.  “But it’s not like anything bad happened,” he responds, which is foreshadowing so obvious that the music cue doesn’t even bother with “duh-duh-DUHHH”!

So that polo match knocks the trees down which break the water main and spews liquid directly where Spike and Cadance are talking.  “This is unexpected,” Spike observes, although no one watching has that same thought.  Huge water damage occurs in the main hall (and elsewhere, as an idiotic Fancy Pants soon becomes drenched), while their gem sculpture plus every decoration is destroyed.  We also learn Cadance could have fixed the main with a quiet magic spell, but see above for why that didn’t happen.

Naturally every delegate is pissed, so they demand vengeance from…Twilight, who “made” each poor decision (Spike remains ignored since he’s still a nobody).  After what can’t be more than a couple of hours, Twilight awakens “well-rested” and ready to deal with the ruly mob situated outside her door.  Spike apologizes for getting carried away (even though his poor decisions came earlier), and everyone quickly reassembles the hundreds of gemstones which make up their friendship “sculpture” or whatever.  That was easy (goddammit!).  This apparently demonstrates how great diversity is and small parts are equally important as larger ones.  Haven’t heard that one before.  Then some idiot hands Spike a bouquet of those dragon sneeze flowers, which promptly destroys the sculpture again.

Any problems with Princess Spike start right at characterization, which is practically non-existent.  Who does something memorable in this episode?  What do we learn about anyone?  Spike is an idiot?  Cadance is lazy?  Twilight will be doing 24-hour gaming streams once she’s in college?  Considering the multitude of Spike episodes that involve him acting stupid and then pretending to learn a lesson, nothing here is even remotely interesting or revelatory.  Spike behaves like an inexperienced middle manager who thinks the tiny sliver of power they have gives them worth.  Watching him attend meetings and settle civil disputes doesn’t make for enjoyable television.

Dusedau also fails with his “new” characters, which is especially glaring after the previous week’s episode.  Of course the Manehattan pony is confrontational and freely says “youse”.  He’s even got a slice of New York style pizza as his cutie mark.  Why the hell is he involved in politics if his cutie mark is pizza?  Because fuck my “special talent”, I want to be rich?  Maybe this would have made a better lesson for the kids after all.  And everyone from Minnesota talks like those fun characters in Fargo, dontcha know.  Marge might have been interesting if she wasn’t stolen.  Apparently Slice Of Life’s point was that Hasbro can’t be bothered naming anyone, so the fanbase better get on this episode too.  Unless you really want to be searching for “whinnyapolis delegate” rule 34.

But Princess Spike’s unfortunate airing order just reinforces how much it wants to be Slice Of Life but fails miserably.  Coming up with the same moral is ridiculous, especially when Princess Spike doesn’t even try showing it.  Every pony playing “their part” apparently means Twilight does all the work while the other princesses stand around looking good.  And the episode only incidentally demonstrates how hard it is keeping these different factions from fighting rather than them ever doing “something great”.  Dusedau’s main focus deals with power corrupting, which isn’t very original either, but only Spike’s first decisions end up hurting.  That main was always going to break whether Spike was eating gem cupcakes or sitting on his ass in Twilight’s room.  This elicits much confusion which never resolves satisfactorily.

Whether Dusedau is uncertain what he wants to say or hurriedly trying for too much can’t be ascertained, but Princess Spike’s lack of success comes down to poor writing.  With stock characterization, unsurprising situations, and an inability to create even the most mildly interesting scene, Princess Spike falls short of a minimum threshold to be considered an actual My Little Pony episode.  Dusedau’s attempt at embracing diversity leads to Spike becoming a bargain grand vizier, and his bad decisions result from following Cadance’s orders.  While pleasant and non-offensive enough on the initial viewing, Princess Spike is a mess that doesn’t accurately reflect any of its various opinions.  Considering Dusedau displays a surprising lack of creativity (plot rehashes, stereotypical characters) from a job which requires it, I can justify no higher rating. My Little Pony is better than to hire hack writers for churning out filler scripts whose sole purpose appears proving that the directors are a driving creative force.  If Thiessen and Miller think another boring Spike-doing-dumb-things story is worthwhile, they’d be wise to refrain from making more contributions.  Or at least shell out some money for a writer who doesn’t suck.