My computer may have bit the dust, but that doesn't mean this blog will!

Whenever "Equestria Games" comes up, usually the first thing most people will think of is the hype backlash. We spent a year building up to what amounts to a regular Spike episode.

However, I'm going to look past that. How did "Equestria Games" do as a Spike episode? How did it do as a standalone episode on its own? Most importantly, what was the moral and how did it work?

Whose episode is it anyway?

From the cold open, we're set up to think this is an episode about the Equestria Games, and Spike only plays a bit part. Rainbow Dash and the Ponyville team are riled up and ready to go, we get callbacks to the previous episodes in the arc, and Spike is, as usual, saddled with more baggage than his tiny body can use.

It sucks being a slave to the Pony Master Race.

Post-intro, Spike's conflict eases into focus as if it were a minor subplot, only to take center stage a short time later. For most of the rest of the episode, it jumps back and forth between Spike's subplot and the actual Games themselves.

Haphazard editing seems to force the episode to jump between the events going on in the stadium (replete with as much expository dialogue as you can get out of this season) and Spike's confidence issues. However, narrative tension on the subplots opened in the previous episodes of the arcs is greatly reduced here. It's not because the previous episodes could be self-contained, but because the resolutions provided in those episodes were much more fitting, as they were given ample time to play out. Here, they are glanced over and rushed quickly enough just to get back to Spike's conflict. Suffice it to say, was it really worth the time?

Spike being Spike

In the beginning, it looks like Spike is just getting a bit part in this episode...that is, if you didn't read the episode description like I did. Really, Spike needed an episode. A good one. He was long overdue.

Spike is an interesting case. Of the 10 most prominent characters in the show (he, the Mane 6, and the Crusaders), Spike arguably has the least amount of character development and has shown the least amount of maturation over time in the show. His characterization zigzags between many different portrayals: number one assistant, supportive, snarky, overly incompetent, that guy who just doesn't shut the buck up when he needs to, or just plain comic relief. He rarely ever gets to be his own character beyond being just an accessory or a plot device to the show. Though this mishandling of his character has been consistently going on since early in the show, it became even more apparent in the quality roller coaster that has been Season 4.

Spike's role was finally brought into question early this season in "Power Ponies". Despite addressing Spike's alleged comic relief role, he was unfortunately placed back into square one for the rest of the season, all the way to the point that for him to be treated like a normal character for once -- just to speak one line without looking like a doofus or being made to look like one -- would become a special occasion on par with the Fourth of July. That's what the reaction to his role in "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils" seemed to be, an episode where he only made one appearance in one scene and had no effect on the plot.

So here, we see Spike back in square one, at least relative to "Power Ponies", and for the most part, square one is where he stays for the first couple of acts.

Apparently, the praise from being a local hero in the Crystal Empire, combined with the glory from the little stunt Twilight pulled on him, inflates his ego larger than the castle itself, thinking he can set fires with his...mind?

This point really adds nothing to the plot. All it does is build him up to set him down again. Besides making Spike look like a complete idiot on par with his worst portrayals ever, all it seems to do is buy some time. Showing another Games event wouldn't have been adequate enough seeing as how only the important ones to the plot were shown, so unfortunately it looks like Polsky was written into a corner here.

Hungry for a second chance, Spike then devolves into a new low, going from complete stage fright to rushing into the spotlight, making himself look like a complete fool, and realizing all of his worst fears in less than two acts! That's a new academy record!

Now it looks as if they turned to a game of "Scenes from a Hat" to try to save this plot:

"Improvise a local anthem you don't know in front of thousands of spectators from all over Equestria."

Now, I'm not so surprised to find out that Cathy improvised that entire song.

Really, on the whole, the moral was one of self-confidence, not maturity or self-control. Some character development would have been nice, but as is par for the course of Spike episodes, since we see Spike being used as comic relief in his own episode, we don't really know which one's the real Spike. Contrast that with Pinkie Pie, who in "Pinkie Pride", had a much more serious character study done. Amidst all the frenzy of musical numbers, a celebrity guest star, and having two party ponies in town, the show actually slows down and gives her a moment to rebuild her confidence. However, the writers don't seem to want to give Spike this kind of moment, and the frenzied pace induced by the clumsy editing in "Equestria Games" would not have allowed for it anyway.

It all could be attributed to immaturity being a part of Spike's character, but I'd accept that if his character hadn't been so inconsistently written and if he had emotionally matured at the same rate as the other main characters. "Secret of My Excess" and almost every other episode with a non-Spike dragon in it may have shown that having more physically mature dragons might be a bad thing, but if the emotional maturation seemed to be a problem to Equestria too, I think they might need a new tourism slogan:

"Equestria. It's a bad place to be a dragon."

Find It Within You

The best part of the episode was the moral. The worst part of the moral is how it was presented.

Self-confidence episodes, though always a part of the series, seemed to be a bigger part of Season 4, and it seems to show an increasing trend towards dealing with the implications of self-image and uniqueness as a component of harmony.

The general formula of these episodes is this:

Character does what they normally do -> Character experiences a failure that causes her/him to question her/his own self-worth or ability -> Some kind of event that regains the character's confidence -> Moral about finding success in oneself/their uniqueness

Here is a list of Season 4 episodes and characters that follow this trend:

Princess Twilight Sparkle - Take a wild guess

Flight to the Finish - Scootaloo

Power Ponies - Spike

Pinkie Pride - Pinkie Pie

Simple Ways - Rarity (Not being noticed by Trenderhoof causes her to question her own personality)

Filli Vanilli - Fluttershy

Testing, Testing, 123 - Rainbow Dash

"Power Ponies" sticks out not only because Spike has done this before in this season, but because both "Power Ponies" and "Equestria Games" have a common thread:

The main character has to save the day in order to have their confidence restored.

Although "Power Ponies" gets a bit of a pass for having a much better setup, "Equestria Games" seems to bend over backwards to inject into itself a situation where only Spike can and must save the day. And he does by the miracle of an errant ice arrow and a conveniently well-timed disabling spell.

"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."

Blahdy blahdy blahdy blu, sappy sappy sappy wording...

It's a really good moral. Really it is. But like "Games Ponies Play" before it (same arc, even the same writer), the execution was a bit off. To the credit of "Equestria Games" at the expense of "Games Ponies Play" (one of my least favorite episodes of this entire series), at least "Equestria Games" didn't write itself into a corner where it had to pull the moral right out of a minor subplot instead of the main one, but there's still this major problem:

If the shot of self-confidence Spike needed was supposedly within himself the whole time, then why did it take a conveniently-placed disaster that only he could avert to make him find it?

Could he have found his own self-confidence to light the fireworks at the closing ceremony and deliver that moral by any other means, preferably his own or those of his friends? If that's true, then that renders this entire scene to be pointless filler and an unnecessary dilution of the moral, to the point that the moral that I would get out of it if I didn't know any better is that it requires some kind of freak occurrence to present a golden opportunity for a shot of instant self-confidence.

Really, if saving the world twice was the instant answer to any self-confidence problems, then where do I sign up?

The simple fact is, the way he acted on his own fear of embarrassment stuck him into a situation he himself created, and the only way out is for Spike to get himself out of it, with a little help from his friends. No forced disaster plot points were needed. To their credit, building it up by showing the ice archery event was a nice touch, but only from a standpoint of worldbuilding, which really isn't the task at hand here.

Conclusion

By any means, I find "Equestria Games" to be an episode that really fails to stand on its own, even disregarding the hype backlash over the arc's conclusion. There were three things here that really needed to be handled with care. One was concluding the story arc. The other was Spike as a developing character, and finally, there was the self-confidence issue.

The episode had a lot riding on it for a single-part episode, especially considering three previous episodes built up to it. Unfortunately, the expectations saddled on it were admittedly higher than a single episode could conceivably deliver on.

If all else fails, you could at least deliver something that was needed, like finally treating Spike with respect or giving a good portrayal of a great moral, but unfortunately that wasn't there, either.

This wasn't by any means another "Rainbow Falls", or even another "Games Ponies Play" (though many of its mistakes were repeated), but we really see concepts in play here that should have taken more care in writing. More than was put into "Equestria Games", and a great deal of Season 4's weaker efforts as well.