My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic (TV Series) Owl's Well That Ends Well (2011) User Reviews

Great attention to quality

[kutivastu · 10/10 · 3 March 2022]

This episode is really good quality. I didn't notice it the first couple times I watched it, but it's really awesome. The other times, I guess I paid more attention to the plot and less attention to details. The plot is about how Spike gets jealous of Twilight's new assistant (Aloysius? We'll go with that spelling) who he thinks is trying to steal his job as Twilight's assistant (but before that happens, Spike does a really good job at his job, and gets a lot of praise--except he burns a book, and hides the fact, and that factors into his suspicions against Aloysius, who shows the burned book to Twilight).

Spike runs away, dejected, and finds a cave full of gems. He eats his full of them, but misses Twilight. Aloysius, saves spike from the dragon who owns the hoard, and Spike repents, as he knows that Aloysius wasn't trying to steal his job, after all.

I think this is actually more about suspicion than the classic jealousy plot, actually. I know what it's like to feel suspicious (I don't particularly mean in a jealousy context). So, the show is a good reminder that just because it looks bad that doesn't mean it is.

Jealousy, thy name is Spike

[TheLittleSongbird · 4/10 · 14 October 2019]

First of all, as it now seems to be the only way for them to get the message (apologies for the temporary irrelevance as it has to be said with me not being able to deal with it any longer), can the person/and now it seems group who has been excessively serially down-voting a big number of my reviews on and off since late last year in a ridiculously short period of time after the reviews being written (sometimes), for reasons inexplicable to me as of now, please stop it right now and stay away!

As somebody who is feeling targeted, and with autism and anxiety, every time it has happened, this has been very distressing, especially when what seemed to be annoying people when it started (repetition and not for accumulative reasons, and sincere apologies for this) has been addressed, or at least enormous effort that is still continuing has been made. If it's anything to do with the useful votes, that is nothing to do with me and it's called having unaware-of-identity fans most likely. Anyway, back to reviewing "Owl's Well That Ends Well", one of the least liked 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic' episodes with many fans for good reason. Have been watching 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic' ever since it first aired nine years ago and very quickly became a big fan (if not quite die-hard "brony"). It seemed on paper to be a shallow and cutesy show, but to my surprise it became from personal opinion one of the best and more addictive animated shows in recent years. Am not going to say that every episode from Season 1 was great because that's not the case, but overall it was a solid start.

It is a shame though that with "Owl's Well that Ends Well" Season 1 of 'My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic' went from one of its top five episodes in "The Cutie Mark Chronicles", a perfect example of how to do an origins story focusing on more than one character well (brilliantly in this case), to one of its two worst episodes. Two of my least favourites of the show too. The other being the show's first majorly major disappointment "Over a Barrel", which started off well but fell apart fast and never recovered. Don't know which is worse between the two, both are not well written at all and the character writing is not on par in either episode to put it lightly, despite starting off well, but this episode had the better executed moral.

"Owl's Well that Ends Well" is not a complete abomination. The animation is as ever bright and colourful, with beautifully detailed backgrounds and expressive character designs. The music fits beautifully and the best of it is quite infectious. The episode does start off and end well (the latter being an improvement over "Over a Barrel") and who can't help love Spike in Dick Dastardly mode?

The voice acting is fine from all, though all have done better before and since when they had better material (Tara Strong deserved better).

Conversely, like "Over a Barrel", "Owl's Well that Ends Well" quickly goes downhill and doesn't recover. It was great to have an until now underused character have more prominence and have an episode centering around him, but they could have come up with something much better and more interesting than here. Spike is completely unlikeable in this episode, once the "green eyed monster" character trait comes in and quite out of nowhere he becomes out of character and mostly comes over as a jerk. Wanted to well up when he started crying but this is one of the few times in Season 1 where an intended emotional moment did nothing for me, feel really bad about saying this.

Furthermore, the story was executed poorly. The idea of jealousy is so old hat in film, television and cartoons and "Owl's Well that Ends Well" does nothing new with it. It is muddled in which character should be the centre of attention, first Spike which is introduced far too suddenly and then to the owl. The other characters are not written very well either, with the owl not being an interesting character and actually becomes rather annoying and Twilight is almost as unlikeable as Spike, coming over as uncharacteristically ignorant. The dialogue ranges from okay to awful, those who jokes just grate.

In conclusion, one of Season 1's worst and we are not talking by a margin. Sorry too for the heated way the review was started off. 4/10