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Just for Sidekicks (January 26th 2013, 22 minutes)

Summary: Spike takes on the responsibility of critter-sitting.

More odd titles. Just for kicks, is a standard catchphrase. It's also the title of a rather bad series of films about kids football (soccer).

Nice little callbacks to the phoenix chick Spike had. Continuity!

Making a Jewel Cake. Treating the jewels similar to nuts or candied fruit. As such, he should coat the jewels in flour before adding them to the mix. It helps fix the 'foreign bodies' in the batter so they don't float to the top or sink to the bottom during baking.

Unconscious eating is a real thing. Usually it's paired with sleepwalking, but this is funny.

Okay, this is weird, and I'll probably bring it up tomorrow with the Games Ponies Play, but it's *so* weird I'm going to mention it now. Why does Cadence 'need' the Mane 6 to welcome the Equestria Games inspector? If the Crystal Empire is making a bid for the Equestria Games, shouldn't this be handled by the Crystal Ponies? The Mane 6 may have helped free the Crystal Empire from Sombra, but as far as Equestria seems to be concerned that was all Cadence as 'the Crystal Princess'. And even if the roles of the Mane 6 are included, *Spike* was instrumental and was central in the stained glass window in Canterlot. So what's going on here? There's background information we're missing.

The glow on the shaft of Tank's prop is indicating that it's a permanent enchantment. That's pretty rare in this series. Also, the aura is yellow which doesn't match Rarity's blue or Twilight's violet. So who enchanted this for them?

A thousand carats is about 0.2 kilograms, or a little less than half a pound. (0.44 pounds). As I've mentioned before gem carats are purely weight, and have nothing to do with quality. This often gets confused with gold carat (or karat), which is a measure of purity. It gets even more confusing when gold carats break down into grains (1 karat = 4 grains) and quarts (1 grain = 4 quarts), which has nothing to do with the volumetric measurement of 'quarts'. Same problem with ounces that can measure volume (fluid ounce), weight (avoirdupois and troy ounces, which are different), and thickness (only certain people even remember this one, but technically it's still used to measure thickness of leather).

The train station is easily visible from the library. Interesting that the library isn't visible in the opening credits establishing shot. I wonder where the library is relative to the town hall?

The ponies seem to use the term 'critter' a lot with respect to their pets. The word critter is a North American dialect of 'creature', specifically meant to refer to domesticated animals, as opposed to varmint (dialect of vermin) that refers to pests and larger predators.

Skydiving... Interesting. That means some pegasi (or gryphons) run skydiving businesses. Huh.

The value of gems is very odd. They're exceptionally common in general, but they can purchase that large piece of equipment.

Here's an instance of Zecora being both right and wrong. She's absolutely correct that dragon greed is a big problem, but that's so far back in Spike's problem cascade that it's not really relevant.

Spike doesn't count as a chaperone, but the Cutie Mark Crusaders do. That's odd, because the CMC are no more responsible than Spike in behavior, so this must be a case of not *enough* chaperones, not the simple presence of one.

Next stop, the Crystal Empire... No stops between? So this must be an Express or something. And even then, with the distances involved there should be some kind of stops between for the steam engine to refuel and rewater, unless the engine is running off of something completely different than coal? Given that airships have more lift for volume of gasbag than in our universe, and clouds can be compressed to provide a temporary cushioning surface, it's not that surprising that steam has more 'push' as well, so requiring less fuel to get the same motive force. I still wonder what they're burning though, as they seem to not use any fossil fuels anywhere else.