For a while, Just for Sidekicks was my most hated S3 episode. Two reasons: Spike Torture Porn (and a bastardization to boot) and royal disappointment.

 

Why Just for Sidekicks as opposed to Spike at Your Service? That episode bastardizes Spike far worse, painting him out to be completely useless, even in areas where he's been shown to excel at. 

Aside from that, I agree 100%. Because of all this, The Crystal Empire is my second least favorite two-parter. 

@@Cleverclover, Spike at Your Service is objectively worse. I just disliked JfS more, and part of it had to do with my own expectations.

Today, I still dislike JfS more. Just not as much.

Come to think of it, Games that Ponies Play wasn't too impressive either. It just ended up devolving into an episode about Rainbow Dash and  was overly convoluted.

Although I do admit the episode did have the notable Harshwhinny and Peachbottom.

Also on the original Season 3 opener, the 1 good thing was that Spike actually played a key role, even if the plot was wholly lacking.

I have a head canon that explains why Celestia acts so stupid in all of the two-parter episodes.

See, now that she's old, she's looking for a successor to groom. She finds Twilot Sporkle and bam, problem solved. To groom her for the role of being a princess, the sociopathic celestial monarch does things like free Discord and let Nightmare Moon escape and using the lives of innocent ponies to test Twilight.

In the end, it all works out, so I gotta hand it to Celestia. If only the public schools could groom their students with such care and foresight.

Wow, I've never thought of it this way before you brought it up... That really does ruin the episode.

Why Just for Sidekicks as opposed to Spike at Your Service? That episode bastardizes Spike far worse, painting him out to be completely useless, even in areas where he's been shown to excel at. 

The ridiculous characterization of Spike made "Spike at Your Service" absolutely hilariously enjoyable for me. Plus the Dragon Code thing was brilliant. It's one of my favorite episodes. The humor and charm make up for the bizarre characterization, at least for me.

Rather than tell the audience about how innocent lives shouldn't be treated as a means to an end, the narrative tells the audience the test is more important.

I'd argue that Twilight ultimately choosing to let Spike finish the job (albeit when she had no other choice) softened the blow of this, if only a little. But I agree with this blog for the most part.

The scene that I have the biggest problem with is the fear mirror one. It seems innocent enough when you're just watching along, but then it sinks in that Twilight's biggest, most overpowering fear is disappointing Celestia. Not losing her friends/family/brother and sister-in/law or having an insane dictator horse free to do whatever the heck he wants to innocent people, but failing a test. And you could argue reasonably well that her failing the test in the vision implies all that other stuff happened too, which would make it more understandable and heartbreaking, but way the scene was presented gave off the impression that disappointing Celestia was an uncomfortably big part of it.

Which isn't necessarily bad! I really love the idea of Twilight having this intense fear and having to overcome it, especially since we'd already seen some of this side of her back in Lesson Zero. Part of me wondered whether there'd be some kind of episode where Twilight had to confront this side of herself. Buuuuuut two years have passed and I've more or less lost hope of that happening.

But yeah, wasn't a huge fan of how Twily was handled in this one outside comedy scenes + that incredibly touching part with her reassuring Spike. 40 minutes of "This is my job!" capped with her changing her mind when she had no other choice and having everyone sing about what an awesome job she did doesn't make for a hugely satisfying episode. Spike should at very least get a song for being right all along

The ridiculous characterization of Spike made "Spike at Your Service" absolutely hilariously enjoyable for me.

Ehh, I know that for many Spike fans such as myself, it's easily one of their least favorite episodes of the show.  I mean, it's pretty messed up when you consider that Spike's one and only goal in life is to be useful to Twilight, and yet the episode goes out of its way to show that he's barely useful at all. At worst, the episode is stating that Spike does not really have much purpose as a character.

Also, the notion that Applejack saving Spike's life only once is enough to completely and instantly negate everything Twilight has done for him his entire life is just utterly ridiculous to me. 

Not losing her friends/family/brother and sister-in/law or having an insane dictator horse free to do whatever the heck he wants to innocent people, but failing a test

Yeah, I always thought that was quite unusual myself. I suppose it could be argued that the door only showed someone's greatest fear as of that particular moment, but if that's the case, you'd have to wonder why Spike would suddenly have a fear of Twilight abandoning him pretty much out of nowhere. 

Woah! Cool your jets. You don't want the Dazzlings to feed on your energy. *uses a fan to cool you down*

I do respect your opinion about the Crystal Empire though. I think Celestia chose Twilight Sparkle to save the Crystal Empire because she wanted to make sure that Twilight (along with her friends) are capable of saving an entire empire after the events that happened in Ponyville and Canterlot. But that's just my theory.  

I'm with @Cwanky on "Games Ponies Play" being a terrible episode as well, but not because it "devolved into a Rainbow Dash episode", but rather its entire plot was a cliched, half-hearted comedy romp with no moral until the ending pulled one out of a minor subplot that wasn't even the focus of the episode.

As for "The Crystal Empire", that episode could have been so much better. The episode and the new setting were visually amazing, as was the scene at the end where Twilight was showing how far she had progressed with her magic. However, I too hate that "test" as a plot device. It is the most unnecessary and forced plot device I've seen on this show, and they could have delivered a self-sacrifice moral without it. However, that's only one of the problems with this episode.

In my opinion, this is where Twilight's character began to change from a relatable everypony into someone so special that the plot bends itself over backwards to take everyone else out of the equation in the two-parters in order to emphasize how great Twilight is. Every time someone else could have helped in every two-parter since then, they've been dispensed with so that only Twilight can make the choice or deliver the death blow to the villain. Here, the ReMane 5 are reduced to the old-fashioned "comedic distraction" role, which implies that they were useless to the episode's plot. This subplot ruins the flow and tone of the episode with haphazard jumpcutting, breaking the tension of Twilight's subplot with the comedic lightheartedness of the ReMane 5's subplot.

Overall, this episode could have been better, but there were just too many mistakes made with the plot that not only broke the tension and tone, but also unnecessarily added a plot device that made the episode's plot seem more forced than it actually was.

This episode was awful for all involved. Specifically, Twilight and Celestia's character's both took a nosedive, as well as Lunas and the Mane Six's for saying anything in the slightest about either party treating this like a game.

But since we're talking about this episode, one scene really pisses me off. Yes, more than the potential death of an entire kingdom.

Specifically, it's the scene under the castle, with Twilight and Spike. After being confronted with her worst fear for seemingly minutes on end, Spike disobeys her orders and comes running down the stairs because he's genuinely worried about him. At which point, she, having a pretty good idea of what the door's powers are... holds it open for him.

What the hell? No, seriously, what the hell? Twilight... he's your assistant. Screw that, he's your first and possibly best friend, and you're using him as a bloody scientific experiment. A terrible experiment; you literally went through it seconds ago, and it had you in tears. You already know what it does, so what makes you think it's okay to do that to anyone? Especially Spike, who was scared out of his mind and only trying to help you!

The bottom line is, the guy saved your life, and you willingly tortured him. No, I don't care that you comforted him afterward, that doesn't make it okay in the slightest. There's no rationalizing this; that one scene reeks of more evil than the entirety of the rest of this episode.

I do give it points for making Owls' Well that Ends Well more heart wrenching than obnoxious for me, thought. It's hard not to sympathize with Spike when you realize his worst fear is playing out in front of him.

WHY THE FUCK SHOULD PROVING THE ABILITY TO LEAD HAVE TO REVOLVE AROUND PLAYING GAMES WITH INNOCENT LIVES?!!

... Damn, in retrospective, that's the most obvious flaw of the episodes' plot - why did it never strike me? For someone who's usually trying to do the best for her own people, Celestia seriously f*cked this one up. Then again, she did that before - but more out of simple imperfection than out of "semi-unintentional-evelish" plotting. The population of the Crystal Empire wasn't her people ... Wait, that thought is going into an even more awful direction ...

@, As a Spike fan, I sadly have to admit that these thoughts never crossed my mind.

... Damn, in retrospective, that's the most obvious flaw of the episodes' plot - why did it never strike me?

I asked myself this very question once I realized it. From the way it was written, it sounded like a noble thing to do. But when I looked back, thought critically, and discovered serious implications in their actions. Instead of noble, it was one of the most screwed up concepts in the whole show.

@Shimmer5000, As a Spike fan, I sadly have to admit that these thoughts never crossed my mind.

This episode gets worse each time I view it and think of their implications.

...And don't even get me started with the way the rest of the Mane 6 were written, acting like total goofballs who did next to nothing to advance the plot and such.