Re: S05E10: Princess Spike

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Applepie
Mr. the Dragon - Joined: Jun 18, 2012
- Location: Yakyakistan
- Gender: Male
Moderators: Perrydotto, Dexanth, Venusy, Wayoshi
SlateSlabrock wrote:Since the chat was grousing about this being a "Spike screws up again" episode, I'll say preemptively that it seemed like a much more natural "you're in over your head" scenario.
Corpy wrote:Not a great episode. Marge pony was great; did she get voice credited? I missed the credits.
SlateSlabrock wrote:I'll say preemptively that it seemed like a much more natural "you're in over your head" scenario. If anything, I'm a little confused about the "don't abuse your power" moral, since none of the gem-eating or massages caused any trouble; it was just the first few decisions Spike made on Twilight's behalf that spiraled out of control, and those were the ones he made out of desperation when Cadance asked him to keep things quiet!
SlateSlabrock wrote:Trevor Devall as Fancy Pants, Sad Delegate, Delegate 2
Jason Schombing as Manehattan Delegate
Tabitha St. Germain as Whinnyapolis Delegate, Nerdy Delegate, Princess Luna
Terry Klassen as Annoyed Delegate
Peter New as Public Works Pony, Horticultural Pegasus, Delegate 1
Good luck sorting out who's who!
Headless Horse wrote:In that vein, I get the feeling that this script really needed a bit more thought put into what events were to have a negative effect later, or were to feed into the message of the story. The fact that the things that went wrong were all the result of reasonable decisions by Spike and/or accidents that couldn't have been foreseen (the water main, the pruning), and that the decisions that Spike undertook purely out of self-interest or self-aggrandizement didn't have any consequences at all or were good things (the gem nerd, Fancy Pants' shakedown), feels like the result of a half-baked story idea that wasn't really properly thought through all the way.
The statue was the obvious Chekhov's Gun, and sure enough it got destroyed... but it wasn't the result of anything that was even Spike's fault except through a series of unrelated accidents that didn't necessarily even have to have happened as a setup. He could have sneezed on it for any reason (without being instigated by the flowers which just happened to end up in the ballroom through coincidence); and similarly, when he did sneeze on it, he could easily have turned his freaking head and not destroyed anything. Ultimately it all feels like "just a bunch of stuff that happened" more than a tragic tale of hubris and the insidious nature of good intentions, and it sends really mixed signals to the audience about what you should do when a friend or loved one needs your help.
I hesitate to make a pronouncement like this right off the bat, but it feels kinda like Jayson and Jim had a solid concept, and they gave it to a new writer who didn't really realize how difficult writing a script with callbacks and mini-callbacks and foreshadowing and internal consistency and a coherent conclusion from them all is, and simply got in over his head.
Wayoshi wrote:I would have liked some synonym name for Dragonsneeze instead of a literal thing. Spike being allergic gives you all you need to know without the name, so... even some Latin-esque species name would have been cool.
https://en.glosbe.com/en/la/sneeze
Draco sternumentum
MrPeaches wrote:- Equestria Games: Recognized for saving the empire, Spike instantly becomes megalomaniacal and humiliates himself. Has to learn that being selfish and greedy is bad. Again.
No matter how many times others tell you you're great, all the praise in the world means nothing if you don't feel it inside. Sometimes to feel good about yourself, you gotta let go of the past. That way, when the time comes to let your greatness fly, you'll be able to light up the whole sky.
Marimo wrote:What? He enjoyed the praise he got, but he didn't become megalomaniacal, and that was not the cause of his humiliation. His nerves got to him when it came to lighting the torch, he's just excited about thinking that he unlocked a new ability when he tried to set things on fire with his mind, and him volunteering to sing the anthem song was him trying to make it up to Equestria. Even after he got a cool moment and saved the games by breathing a giant flame at an oncoming giant cloud of ice, he still felt bad because his problem was that he hadn't been able to forgive himself the whole time, and did the fireworks to help get over it. The message wasn't about selfishness and greediness being bad, it was a message about being able to forgive yourself of the disappointments in your past.
Wildfire wrote:For the first time this season I missed the new episode.I went to bed at 7 and completely forgot about it.
So I watched it now. An ok episode, I give it a 6. Not the first time a cartoon has used a storyline where someone does some bad choices that leads up to a major problem.
I felt my blood sugar spike a bit when Twilight made a bed out of the books.![]()
And so we have another new city name. Keep on world building.
Aramek wrote:Marge wasn't from Minneapolis, but Brainerd, and there's no way to make a pony pun about Brainerd.
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