Spike's Portrayal in the Series

Well...this is a bit of a rant, so feel free to skip if you want. Either way, I feel I have to say something.

The last two episodes of the show have been...polarizing, to say the least. “Spike at Your Service” and “Keep Calm and Flutter On” both have their supporters and detractors, but the general arguments against both boil down to the same thing: characterization. Those who dislike KcaFO tend to raise the most issues with Discord's sudden change in alignment at the end, while SaYS gets marked down because of how it treats Spike. So that leaves us with a question: which episode suffers the most for this common failing? Surely it would be the one who ended up rewriting one of the most popular and dangerous villains in FiM, right?

Actually, no. This may surprise many, but I found “Spike at Your Service” to be a much worse episode than KCaFO, regardless of the ending. But, you might say, surely what happened to Discord deserves all our scorn and hatred! It'll ruin the show, I swear it! First, I doubt it'll ruin much of anything; if “Over a Barrel” and “Mysterious Mare-Do-Well” couldn't kill FiM, I highly doubt this one will.

And most importantly, “Spike at Your Service” highlights an issue I want to address: Spike's treatment in the series.

FiM has a fairly good-sized cast, and as a result rotates the spotlight to a different pony every so often. Even in episodes featuring the entire ensemble, the actual events and conflict will center on one or two ponies while the rest try to work through the situation and respond to the craziness around them. And in those spotlight episodes, we actually get to learn a lot about our heroes, from how they think and react to problems to the qualities that make them worthy of admiration.

You don't get that with Spike.

Whenever the spotlight is on Spike, for any reason at all, it's to either render him as the antagonist or to make him the butt of the joke. In “Owl's Well that Ends Well,” he tries to frame an innocent out of jealousy, and is rendered totally wrong about everything in the end. In “Secret of My Excess,” he transforms into an oversized, aggressive, thieving monster who has to be reminded of who he was before he turns back. “Dragon Quest” changed him into a whipping boy for the teenage dragons, all of whom were turned into Chaotic Evil fiends that he was only able to escape thanks to his friends spying on him.

And “Spike at Your Service” is no different. In fact, it pretty much continues the trend in the worst possible way. Spike is stripped of his competency in order to facilitate a tired plotline and make him an object of ridicule. Despite being shown as Twilight's loyal, helpful assistant in every episode before this, he is suddenly rendered unable to do something as simple as mop the floor or wash a plate. And again, it makes him into the antagonist; while he isn't a straight villain, he's still the obstacle the hero (Applejack) has to overcome.

What's really frustrating is that even when the camera's not focused on him, Spike more or less exists as a walking punchline. He is continuously forgotten by his friends, even inserting himself in a photo of Twilight's birthday party from “Sweet and Elite.” (A party, might I add, that he was apparently not invited to, despite more or less functioning as a younger sibling/ward to Twilight.) Rarity treated him like trash in the first season, despite his incredibly obvious infatuation with her, and even after comforting him in SoME has switched to babying him despite his obvious discomfort. And even in the one moment he had to shine in “The Crystal Empire,” he only saved the day because Shining Armor was skilled in the ancient art of Wife Throwing; almost all the immediate credit went to Cadance and her status as the “Crystal Princess.”

That's why SaYS infuriates me more than Discord's redemption ever could. At the end of the day, Discord's alignment might have changed, but I can still see him in there. “Spike at Your Service” has no such excuse; it just perpetuates the same lazy stereotype that all little boys are good for nothing other than grossout humor and being stupid. Is it so hard to write a Spike episode that doesn't render him completely useless or something our main characters have to deal with?

That's just how I feel about it.

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...Well...who's up for some frosty chocolate milkshakes?