This is the second episode this season featuring Spike. His previous episode, Spike at Your Service, was reviewed rather poorly because Spike was portrayed as incompetent and completely careless in his tasks. He was extremely out of character in SaYS, and with Powell (who wrote Sleepless in Ponyville) at the helm, I expected her to write him brilliantly in character.

Powell and the rest of the team did a great job in almost every part of this episode. What she did well were as follows:

1. "Don't have your cake and it, too" was the main moral in this episode, and it was cleverly hidden in the canon. Instead of telling the moral, it was progressively demonstrated and shown in several basic steps.
   
2. The Cutie Mark Crusaders were brilliant. In her two episodes, they have been written really well, and their characterizations have been intact. Sweetie Belle's cute as usual, and both Apple Bloom and Scootaloo are eager yet still different to where they're not carbon copies of each other.
   
3. The pets were absolutely great. One of the major criticisms this fandom has delivered was not giving the pets enough screentime, particularly Owlowiscious. This was the episode where they all shone.
   1. 
      
   2. Winona: Caring and honest. He genuinely wants to help and is a very likeable and loyal dog at that. Sometimes he gets a bit frisky and will carry himself a bit too much.
      
   3. Owlowiscious: Level-headed, intelligent, and does whatever he can to keep Spike in line. Spike is still a kid, so when Twilight isn't around, Owlowiscious is there to watch out for him. Even with all those "whos," he has so much personality in the way he talks, looks, glares, and behaves. He's a character with a ton of depth.
      
   4. Gummy: Just the cute, naïve, toothless alligator he's been. He still has that stare, but those angry eyes give him some personality.
      
   5. Tank: He's extremely loyal to Rainbow Dash and just calm and affectionate. But because tortoises aren't natural fliers, his flying is rather clumsy, which brings on some nice comedy and awes for him. Tank is cutest MLP:FIM pet!
      
   6. Opalescence: She and Angel have the strongest characters: troublesome, snide, and chaotic. But she was more subdued here, even though she was still troublesome here and there.
      
   7. Angel Bunny is a lovable bastard from Hell. For a character with the name "Angel," he's spoiled and is someone who constantly misbehaves and starts trouble. He's the one who's been the biggest thorn in the pets' and Spike's side throughout. He's someone who fits the role of antagonist very well.
      

[*]There's extremely dedicated kinship between the Mane Six and their pets. From the way they talked and behaved with their pets, it's obvious that they're extremely close. The cutest was Rainbow Dash and Tank and how Dash tried to hide it in her typical tomcoltish fashion. Cute and funny.

[*]Angel's extreme suspicions with Spike. Since the beginning of the episode, he obviously didn't like the way Spike was handling himself and did whatever he could to embarrass the hell out of him and show to the Mane Six that he only took care of their pets for his own greed.

[*]The little tidbits of Spike having to release Peewee back where he belongs. Which I'll admit, I'm a bit sad. Through the pictures, Peewee was a great and troublesome little phoenix, yet still meant well. I'm glad he's back with his parents, but it's a little disappointing and unfortunate that we may likely never see him in the series again.

[*]The concept of the episode was simple, but great. It fits the scope of My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic very well.

[*]After a while, we're seeing a bit more action from the background ponies. Cheerilee makes her season debut, and she and Big Mac are together (again). In addition, we see Screw Loose again! *…yay.* And Carrot Top, Berry Punch, Amethyst Star/Sparkler, and Colgate, too! The fact that they're there, even in non-speaking roles, helps give the environment so much life, and the world of MLP:FIM needs that to make it engaging to the audience.

[*]The pace was so smooth here. It flowed from one scene to the next without any need to rush, a role reversal to Keep Calm and Flutter On.

[*]Very subtle, but a silhouette of Derpy (no eyes, though) returns for the first time since Magic Duel! She can be spotted in one (maybe two) places:

1. Take a look at the clubhouse and watch for the sky-diving poster at the right-hand side. There's a silhouette of Derpy's design for you to see.
   
2. (Just as Twilight exits the library, take a look at the train station in the background. You'll see some distinct design of a mane and tail galloping towards the station. However, given the faded background, it's possible that this pony was actually Applejack.)
   

[*]The foreshadowing throughout the episode. Just like Keep Calm and Flutter On, there were layers of clues to hint where the episode would travel and resolve. Four big clues were featured: The cake, Angel being a conniving bastard, and Spike forcing to give away the jewels one by one were three of them. The other was Zecora warning him in her usual rhyming self to not let his lust for jewels go into his head.

However, just because I listed so many good things doesn't make it a genuinely good episode. Many of these things were from secondary to tertiary roles. Spike himself was the primary character, so the episode will focus on him dominantly.

And this is where Powell and the rest of the crew did so wrong: Spike himself was completely unrecognizable. As I watched the episode, I asked myself, "Did someone kidnap Spike and replace him with an imposter?" Besides his ability to cook and grousing for not being invited to the Equestria Games, his characterization and development from the rest of series were nonexistant. Instead of being completely careless in every single thing he did like in Spike at Your Service, this drastic bastardization in his character shifted to the other side of the scale. He was greedy, selfish, manipulative, and didn't care about the pets one bit. Instead of a balance between selfishness and selflessness throughout the episode, it was segregated, with his selfishness used as a plot device for almost the entire episode until the very end. He took advantage of his friends and used their pets as pawns to make his jewel cake.

In season two, the two episodes starring him included two huge facets that helped him grow into a much more selfless character:

1. In Secret of My Excess, we saw how much greed in a dragon can consume his or her soul. Spike since learned about the dangers of greed.
   
2. In Dragon Quest, Spike wanted to find his own in the dragon world, so he joined the migration, where he bumped into some very antagonistic dragons. But here, he also learned about how precious life and caretaking were when he refused to destroy the phoenix egg. He wasn't going to do something stupid, such as peer pressure from other dragons, get the best of him. Even in his short time, it's obvious he cared so much for Peewee.
   

It's particularly the absence of his development from Dragon Quest where there was such a big problem here. He wasn't going to sacrifice anyone's lives for the sake of sticking with the clan. But he also knew that being someone's caretaker required massive responsibilities, and Spike is someone who can hold his own despite messing up occasionally. For example, in Magic Duel, he was the one who kept the team together while Twilight was exiled in the Everfree Forest. It was a small scene quantitatively, but it gave him so much depth in his character. Here, he showed no care for the pets at all, a complete contradiction of Dragon Quest's resolution/moral and his affection and love for Peewee himself. This is a task that requires so much trust, and Spike didn't give a damn about what they were thinking until the very end. He came across as antagonistic, making him an unlikeable, out-of-character shell.

Even with a jewel cake that he would so love to bake, he knows very well that petsitting is a heavy responsibility. What an in-character Spike would REALLY do is put the cake business beside him and take care of the pets while they're gone. And he (and maybe Owlowiscious) would be the ones who would discipline the pets, especially Angel, whose trust for Spike and the other pets are thinner and more fragile than the graphite of a mechanical pencil. He may still have those thoughts about the cake, which would create some sort of conflict, but he'll promise to himself that he'll take his time disciplining the pets and sacrifice his cake willingly. Once he's done, then maybe he'll get jewels as a reward, and maybe he can successfully bake his cake (attempting to taste a jewel, but warned by Owlowiscious before he does). That way, the moral of "don't have all of your cake and eat it, too" can still fit yet keep Spike in character.

Frankly, this would have been much better if it were a season one or season two episode (pre-SoME or pre-DQ), where he wasn't given a lot of development and still had that extremely selfish streak in him. But it took place late in season three, and he received so much character development since the premiere. Therefore, it stuck out and just didn't fit him. This growth of his personality was absent in Just for Sidekicks.

Spike is a character who's had several important roles this season. Despite being minute, they helped him grow as a more mature character. To see that growth reversed in the two Spike-centered episodes this season is a huge disappointment. It's an even bigger disappointment here because Powell is an excellent writer with Emmy Award nominations to her credit. I've seen her work, so she has the experience and wherewithal to do so great. Sleepless in Ponyville is one of the best episodes in the entire series and was an amazing debut for her. She showed exactly what she can do there and even here in many places. To see that potential fall flat with an out-of-character Spike in Just for Sidekicks saddens me.

This was an episode with both a great concept and moral, and it was filled with so much potential. The Cutie Mark Crusaders and the pets were filled with character that resulted in plenty of laughs and conflict. But Spike was the focus in Just for Sidekicks, and he was extremely poorly written. Spike at Your Service disappointed me because he was written as carelessly incompetent, but even there did he show plenty of care for others. Here, his extreme selfishness and lust for a jewel cake were a sudden flip of his character development, and he didn't behave like the Spike I know and love. Overall, a severely disappointing episode.

———

Source: S03:E11 - Just for Sidekicks