MLP:FIM S4E24 - "Equestria Games" - Grading & Discussion

Episode Title: "Equestria Games"
Air Date: May 3rd, 2014

Summary: "Spike is elated when he’s given the honor of lighting the torch to open the Equestria Games. But when his nerves get the best of him, Spike goes to great lengths to prove he’s the heroic dragon others believe him to be."

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Ruminations:
Holy flurking shnit you guys, we're getting down to the wire. We've got the Equestria Games here. The EQUESTRIA GAMES is all up in this buzizzness! So Spike's going to light the Equestrian torch, eh? Sounds cool! He's nervous? Sounds like Spike! He's overconfident? Also sounds like Spike! So this is the second Spike episode, and the last episode before the *yay* hits the fan. Because we all know it will. So let's go get ourselves some Spikey goodness. To the Games!

 

Me too!

 

Loses a grade for the singing incident, and for largely skipping over the Games themselves. Still a good episode, with strong character moments. B.

 

Good Spike episode, good episode overall. And tell me you weren't getting Nolan Batman vibes from the music during Spike's big moment.

 

Wheeeeeeee! I really enjoyed it. Spike is the type of dragon who is friendly, and capable, but sometimes makes mistakes at the worst possible moment. Of course, this was going to happen anyway, being a Spike episode, but I think they played it off very nicely. I felt his nervousness when he first stepped out in front of that crowd; thousands of cheering ponies, many of them seeing Spike as a national hero. Of course that's going to make one nervous!

Spoiler: Equestria Games

Twilight helping Spike was very sweet. I can understand her distress at seeing her number one assistant unable to light the torch, and doing it to save face for him, and I also understand Spike's disappointment at finding out it wasn't him after all.

A few fun things of note:


* Twilight gets her own throne at the games, though you can see she'd rather be celebrating with her friends.
* Spike only wants the green gems (a reference to either green M&Ms from Wayne's World, or the brown M&Ms from the Van Halen story)
* Miss Harshwinny's not very good at making other ponies relax.
* Spike's singing of the Cloudsdale anthem was hilarious.
* Pinkie Pie's immediate comment of "nailed it!", from way back in the crowd, was doubly hilarious.
* Speaking of, I felt for everyone around Pinkie, including that poor stallion who became her "seat."
* Dash winning Silver and being thrilled. This was a great example of growth for her.
* We learn that there are instant magic inhibitors, which answers a question I had about cheating at the games.
* Spike learning that confidence comes from within.

If I have any complaints, it's that we didn't get to see enough of the games, and that I was hoping the Games would encompass the last three episodes.
All in all, though, a wonderful episode, and I gave it an "A."

 

Also, Spike is best Enrico Palazzo.

 

A+

I thought it was an awesome EP!

 

I'd have to say a B- or C+. I liked it, it was entertaining with some really great dialog and fun character moments, but I agree with some of the sentiment from upthread that the Spike story was a little shaky. I think an episode about the games would have been better served by being ABOUT the games; there was a ton of potentially interesting stuff going on in and around them, such as the games themselves (would have been cool to see more of the events), Dash's development, the Wonderbolts, Twilight sitting up in the Princess Skybox, etc. And the above mentioned fun character moments came mostly from everyone else; I would have loved to see more of the CMC, Snowflake, the 'bolts, etc. in the context of the games, after getting to see all of them preparing for their parts in the games earlier in the season. Instead it focused on this Spike storyline, which felt like it just sort of bounced from one part to the next between Games scenes (which is odd since, ostensibly, the Spike story was supposed to be the "A" plot, not the other way around.) And I agree with Count Zero that it might have been more interesting to see Spike resolve this without the opportunity for heroics.

So while I did enjoy watching it, I feel a little disappointed by it, particularly in terms of what we could have gotten with an episode focused more squarely on the games themselves and not on a personal dev story for Spike.

 

I was honestly pretty disappointed, mostly for reasons that Saito states. The truth of the matter is that, as far as I'm concerned, Spike is not good at carrying episodes and never has been. This is made worse by the fact that Twilight and Dashie, who both have very solid stories you could explore (Twilight coping with being part of "the royalty" now in a big way and Dashie's many instances of prepping for this), were support for Spike and reduced to sidepony respectively.

The games themselves seemed really cool from what little outside the flying we got to see, and it's such a huge waste to spend all this on Spike. I also feel that the moral got botched by giving Spike this big heroic second chance. I dunno. The episode feels like it both trips over itself in what it wants to do on its own merits AND utterly wastes a season-long buildup.

It's not to say I hated it; I did enjoy it minute to minute, but I was at least expecting the episode called "Equestria Games" to maybe be about the Equestria Games a little bit more. I give it a C; it has a lot of good moments and it's not bad, but it was impossible for all the missed opportunity not to flood my mind once it was done.

 

I understand that point of view. I would have loved seeing more of the actual games. I mean, the title of the episode is "Equestria Games," and they've been building on it since the beginning of the season. It was supposed to be huge! As it turns out, it's still a fun story, but I thought the games would last over 3 episodes, but I guess not.

 

Nnnooo...? I actually thought the ice arrow archery was a cool way to integrate magic into an otherwise "normal" event.

 

I loved the idea of ice archery. It was nice to see something a little different than what I expected.

 

I LIKE CURLING AND FEEL SORRY FOR THOSE WHO DON'T.

Good episode overall. I appreciate the producers making the games a character episode rather than actually about the games; that works for me because otherwise we'd be re-treading the stuff we've already don in the episode running up to the games themselves. Spike's stage mojo was a little unfocused, but at least it wasn't a direct repeat of Fluttershy's stagefright earlier this season. Plus there is plenty of world building payoff here, between the Griffon nation (GOTTA go there someday!), the return of the "horses" from Saddle Arabia, some other delegates we've never seen before, etc.

And I also liked the ice archery. Seems awful dangerous to have ONE errant arrow potentially cause disaster in the stands... Shouldn't some pegasi have been minding the clouds above?

Mark