Top 25 Episodes of MLP: FiM Season 1 – #24 – Episode 24: Owls Well that Ends Well
I’ll get to it eventually, but frankly I feel that our main dragon Spike has gotten the shaft in terms of episodes that center around him (Spoiler: I didn’t like “Dragon Quest”, and “Secret of my Excess” was just higher than average quality Vanilla). I think Spike is just better when he’s providing commentary or one liner jokes. Which is why “Owls well that ends well” is just sort of Meh for me.
Summary
The episode opens with Spike and Twilight preparing for a Centennial Meteor Shower. Twilight compliments Spike on being one step ahead with their preparations, calling him her “Number one Assistant”. Spike, of course, ego trips on this compliment for a moment before Twilight remembers a book she wanted to bring to the Meteor Shower and asks Spike to go and get it. While in the next room getting the book, some dust from the cover causes Spike to sneeze, engulfing the contents in flames and reducing them to carbon pixie dust. In a panic, Spike replaces the book on the shelf and informs Twilight that the book wasn’t there.
As the pair head up a hill to join their friends for the shower, Spike launches several of his own compliments about twilight’s intelligence to try and distract her from the book, to which Twilight returns and again calls Spike her “Number one Assistant” as he starts setting up the snacks and the Telescope they brought. The other members of the main cast start giving their own complements about Spike before Sweetie Belle points out that the shower is starting, and all 10 members of the main cast gather up to ooh and ahh at the heavens light show.
After the meteor shower, Twilight brings a tired unconscious Spike back home and puts him to bed before starting up an essay on Comets. As she writes she’s interrupted by a noise outside on her balcony, but when she investigates she finds nothing there. The door to the balcony doesn’t close when she reenters however and when she hears the noise again out side her window, 5 seconds worth of writing blows over the balcony railing when she opens it. Twilight, not wanting to wake Spike to go out and get… 5 seconds of work that she could easily rewrite… she panics a bit before a little owl grabs the scroll and brings it back. As a gesture of thanks, Twilight invites the owl to stay and keep her company instead of flying back out into the cold.
The next morning Spike awakes later than he usually does and is at first in panic that the didn’t do any of his assistantly morning duties, before he’s instead in panic when Twilight informs him that they have a new junior assistant who already did all the morning chores. Twilight leaves on some errands and leaves Spike to introduce himself to “Owlowiscious,” who Spike, in his immense paranoia, does not take kindly too and immediately comes to the idea that Owlowiscious is trying to replace him. It doesn’t get any better when Twilight introduces Owlowiscious to the rest of her friends and they give him all sorts of complements and such and such right within earshot of Spike.
After Spike and Owlowiscious butt heads with each other a few more times over some minor requests from Twilight, Spike exhausts himself running all over town trying to find a quill, and then falls right to sleep when he returns to find that Owlowiscious already beat him to the punch. He is awakened not long after by Twilight when Owlowiscious finds the book Spike burned at the beginning of the episode. Twilight is of course not happy with Spike lying to her, and Spike decides to vent his frustration and blame Owlowiscious for making him look bad. So Spike decides the only logical thing to do is to dress up like Snively Whiplash, steal a toy mouse from Rarity’s cat, and then try to make it look like Owlowiscious violently murdered a mouse and left it’s rotting carcass on the library floor. Twilight catches him however and the ketchup and pillow feathers don’t fool her. She berates Spike for letting his jealousy get the better of him, making Spike think she doesn’t love him anymore when she says this isn’t the Spike she knows and loves.
Spike, ever the rational thinker in this episode, decides to run away into the Everfree Forest and hides inside a cave when a karma fueled rainstorm hits. The cave turns out to be filled with gems and Spike decides to gorge himself on them to try and placate his misery. The cave however is owned by a full-grown adult dragon who’s none too happy about someone eating his horde. Before Spike can get maimed by his much larger kinsman, Owlowiscious and Twilight arrive to save him and thanks to Owlowiscious’ night vision they make it out of the cave and the Everfree Forest with their skin intact.
Spike explains his reasons for running away and Twilight consoles him and elaborates on why she took Owlowiscious as a second assistant. Both apologize to each for the way they’ve been acting over the day, Spike for being a jealous numskull, and Twilight for not being more sensitive to Spikes feelings. The three of them head home and the episode ends with Spike writing his own letter to the Princess on what he learned.
Artistic Design and Animation
Other than Owlowiscious, we don’t particularly have anything new in terms of looks this episode. Even the dragon at the end is just a pallet swap of the one from “Dragonshy”, which I admit is at least a better design for a dragon then the monstrosities in “Dragon Quest” but I’m getting ahead of myself. Owlowiscious himself fits the simplisticness of the shows aesthetics, but I wish we’d seen him move around more so we could get a good sense of how he’s animated. Really the only standout bit of animation from him is his Exorcist head turn when he and Spike first meet.
Humor
There isn’t a whole lot to the comedy aspect of this episode; it mostly boils down to a few sight gags, like Pinkie’s quill alliteration (a “Quilliteration” if you will), and the Snively Whiplash bit. The only other thing I could think of was the running gag that all Owlowiscious can say is “Who” but personally I didn’t find it all that funny.
Continuity and World Building
This episode felt pretty self contained, there weren’t really any continuity hiccups and the only thing added to the world was Owlowiscious and the Centennial Meteor Shower. Some may argue that Spike’s incessant paranoia during this episode comes a little out of nowhere and is sort of irrational. But if you think about it, Spike’s always been a bit irrationally paranoid, remember Zombie Ponies? Though I have to question how someone this paranoid can end up being the voice of reason in episodes like “Lesson Zero” and “Boast Busters”
Story Structure
This episode, like “Feeling Pinkie Keen” suffers from what I shall henceforth be calling an “Everfree Third Act” where for a good chunk of the episode is spent in one mode, but during the third act we get a sudden and unexpected action piece that is only there because it was set up earlier in the episode, and really has only a tenuous effect on the overall plot of the episode. I can forgive this sort of thing in this episode however because running into a dangerous situation that has the character running back home is a staple of the “Run Away from Home” story motif.
Moral
I don’t have any sort of problem with the moral of this episode, don’t lie or be jealous of somebody, because there’s plenty of love to go around. As someone who grew up with two younger siblings, I can relate to being frustrated by a lack of attention due to another mouth to feed living in the same home, at least to some degree, I did have TV to keep me occupied after all. The TV never left me, it kept me entertained, it taught me values, it gave me the warm fuzzies and leaky eyes. The TV was my friend; the TV was the big brother I never had.
Overall Feelings
There’s not a whole lot to like about this episode, but on the flip side there’s more than enough to be annoyed about it. Owlowiscious feels like a complete Gary Stu character throughout, only there to make Spike look bad. Like I said at the beginning, Spike is better suited to just having “moments.” He’s not really the sort of character to have serious stories about, which is why I prefer “Secret of my Excess” over this episode and “Dragon Quest”; it’s just silly fun. But again, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Another thing to bring up that should be mentioned is one little moment that if you weren’t paying attention, you’d miss the significance of. During the Meteor shower scene, we get a pan shot of all 10 members of the main cast (Mane 6, Spike, and The Cutiemark Crusaders) together in a group. Nowhere else in the series do they do that, not even in “The Cutiemark Chronicles.” I realize that the CMCs aren’t really part of this group of friends and that they usually just do there own thing, but I wish we’d see more of them interacting between the two groups, like in “The Stare Master.”
All in All, not a particularly good episode, Owlowiscious is a Gary Stu and his name is annoying to type, and Snively Whiplash want’s his look back.
I’ll get to it eventually, but frankly I feel that our main dragon Spike has gotten the shaft in terms of episodes that center around him (Spoiler: I didn’t like “Dragon Quest”, and “Secret of my Excess” was just higher than average quality Vanilla). I think Spike is just better when he’s providing commentary or one liner jokes. Which is why “Owls well that ends well” is just sort of Meh for me.
Summary
The episode opens with Spike and Twilight preparing for a Centennial Meteor Shower. Twilight compliments Spike on being one step ahead with their preparations, calling him her “Number one Assistant”. Spike, of course, ego trips on this compliment for a moment before Twilight remembers a book she wanted to bring to the Meteor Shower and asks Spike to go and get it. While in the next room getting the book, some dust from the cover causes Spike to sneeze, engulfing the contents in flames and reducing them to carbon pixie dust. In a panic, Spike replaces the book on the shelf and informs Twilight that the book wasn’t there.
As the pair head up a hill to join their friends for the shower, Spike launches several of his own compliments about twilight’s intelligence to try and distract her from the book, to which Twilight returns and again calls Spike her “Number one Assistant” as he starts setting up the snacks and the Telescope they brought. The other members of the main cast start giving their own complements about Spike before Sweetie Belle points out that the shower is starting, and all 10 members of the main cast gather up to ooh and ahh at the heavens light show.
After the meteor shower, Twilight brings a tired unconscious Spike back home and puts him to bed before starting up an essay on Comets. As she writes she’s interrupted by a noise outside on her balcony, but when she investigates she finds nothing there. The door to the balcony doesn’t close when she reenters however and when she hears the noise again out side her window, 5 seconds worth of writing blows over the balcony railing when she opens it. Twilight, not wanting to wake Spike to go out and get… 5 seconds of work that she could easily rewrite… she panics a bit before a little owl grabs the scroll and brings it back. As a gesture of thanks, Twilight invites the owl to stay and keep her company instead of flying back out into the cold.
The next morning Spike awakes later than he usually does and is at first in panic that the didn’t do any of his assistantly morning duties, before he’s instead in panic when Twilight informs him that they have a new junior assistant who already did all the morning chores. Twilight leaves on some errands and leaves Spike to introduce himself to “Owlowiscious,” who Spike, in his immense paranoia, does not take kindly too and immediately comes to the idea that Owlowiscious is trying to replace him. It doesn’t get any better when Twilight introduces Owlowiscious to the rest of her friends and they give him all sorts of complements and such and such right within earshot of Spike.
After Spike and Owlowiscious butt heads with each other a few more times over some minor requests from Twilight, Spike exhausts himself running all over town trying to find a quill, and then falls right to sleep when he returns to find that Owlowiscious already beat him to the punch. He is awakened not long after by Twilight when Owlowiscious finds the book Spike burned at the beginning of the episode. Twilight is of course not happy with Spike lying to her, and Spike decides to vent his frustration and blame Owlowiscious for making him look bad. So Spike decides the only logical thing to do is to dress up like Snively Whiplash, steal a toy mouse from Rarity’s cat, and then try to make it look like Owlowiscious violently murdered a mouse and left it’s rotting carcass on the library floor. Twilight catches him however and the ketchup and pillow feathers don’t fool her. She berates Spike for letting his jealousy get the better of him, making Spike think she doesn’t love him anymore when she says this isn’t the Spike she knows and loves.
Spike, ever the rational thinker in this episode, decides to run away into the Everfree Forest and hides inside a cave when a karma fueled rainstorm hits. The cave turns out to be filled with gems and Spike decides to gorge himself on them to try and placate his misery. The cave however is owned by a full-grown adult dragon who’s none too happy about someone eating his horde. Before Spike can get maimed by his much larger kinsman, Owlowiscious and Twilight arrive to save him and thanks to Owlowiscious’ night vision they make it out of the cave and the Everfree Forest with their skin intact.
Spike explains his reasons for running away and Twilight consoles him and elaborates on why she took Owlowiscious as a second assistant. Both apologize to each for the way they’ve been acting over the day, Spike for being a jealous numskull, and Twilight for not being more sensitive to Spikes feelings. The three of them head home and the episode ends with Spike writing his own letter to the Princess on what he learned.
Artistic Design and Animation
Other than Owlowiscious, we don’t particularly have anything new in terms of looks this episode. Even the dragon at the end is just a pallet swap of the one from “Dragonshy”, which I admit is at least a better design for a dragon then the monstrosities in “Dragon Quest” but I’m getting ahead of myself. Owlowiscious himself fits the simplisticness of the shows aesthetics, but I wish we’d seen him move around more so we could get a good sense of how he’s animated. Really the only standout bit of animation from him is his Exorcist head turn when he and Spike first meet.
Humor
There isn’t a whole lot to the comedy aspect of this episode; it mostly boils down to a few sight gags, like Pinkie’s quill alliteration (a “Quilliteration” if you will), and the Snively Whiplash bit. The only other thing I could think of was the running gag that all Owlowiscious can say is “Who” but personally I didn’t find it all that funny.
Continuity and World Building
This episode felt pretty self contained, there weren’t really any continuity hiccups and the only thing added to the world was Owlowiscious and the Centennial Meteor Shower. Some may argue that Spike’s incessant paranoia during this episode comes a little out of nowhere and is sort of irrational. But if you think about it, Spike’s always been a bit irrationally paranoid, remember Zombie Ponies? Though I have to question how someone this paranoid can end up being the voice of reason in episodes like “Lesson Zero” and “Boast Busters”
Story Structure
This episode, like “Feeling Pinkie Keen” suffers from what I shall henceforth be calling an “Everfree Third Act” where for a good chunk of the episode is spent in one mode, but during the third act we get a sudden and unexpected action piece that is only there because it was set up earlier in the episode, and really has only a tenuous effect on the overall plot of the episode. I can forgive this sort of thing in this episode however because running into a dangerous situation that has the character running back home is a staple of the “Run Away from Home” story motif.
Moral
I don’t have any sort of problem with the moral of this episode, don’t lie or be jealous of somebody, because there’s plenty of love to go around. As someone who grew up with two younger siblings, I can relate to being frustrated by a lack of attention due to another mouth to feed living in the same home, at least to some degree, I did have TV to keep me occupied after all. The TV never left me, it kept me entertained, it taught me values, it gave me the warm fuzzies and leaky eyes. The TV was my friend; the TV was the big brother I never had.
Overall Feelings
There’s not a whole lot to like about this episode, but on the flip side there’s more than enough to be annoyed about it. Owlowiscious feels like a complete Gary Stu character throughout, only there to make Spike look bad. Like I said at the beginning, Spike is better suited to just having “moments.” He’s not really the sort of character to have serious stories about, which is why I prefer “Secret of my Excess” over this episode and “Dragon Quest”; it’s just silly fun. But again, I’m getting ahead of myself.
Another thing to bring up that should be mentioned is one little moment that if you weren’t paying attention, you’d miss the significance of. During the Meteor shower scene, we get a pan shot of all 10 members of the main cast (Mane 6, Spike, and The Cutiemark Crusaders) together in a group. Nowhere else in the series do they do that, not even in “The Cutiemark Chronicles.” I realize that the CMCs aren’t really part of this group of friends and that they usually just do there own thing, but I wish we’d see more of them interacting between the two groups, like in “The Stare Master.”
All in All, not a particularly good episode, Owlowiscious is a Gary Stu and his name is annoying to type, and Snively Whiplash want’s his look back.
