YMMV / My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic S5 E10 "Princess Spike"

• Alternate Aesop Interpretation: The episode's message is more in-line with the lesson that you should recognize your limitations, and not try to make decisions and do tasks you're not experienced enough to do properly.
• Broken Aesop: The moral of the story is presented as "don't let power go to your head", but the problems that occur in the third act stem from the well-meaning but ill-informed decisions Spike made before he started misusing his power. On the other hand, his abuses of power (getting food for himself, commissioning a painting of himself, etc.) have effectively no consequence.
• Fanfic Fuel: What exactly did Matilda need to see Twilight about, especially considering she'd just gotten married? Perhaps this lends credence to the idea that the show takes place at different points in time.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: This episode got criticized for the same things that make the other Spike focused episodes polarizing, being yet another "Spike can't do anything right but learns a valuable lesson in the end" story, only this time lacking the substance the better ones had.
• Mis-blamed: A lot of viewers blamed first-time Friendship is Magic writer Neal Dusedau for the various flaws that plagued the episode, even though he only handled the teleplay, while the basic storyline of the episode was actually developed by series directors Jayson Thiessen and Jim Miller.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: Spike gets the Butt-Monkey treatment even harder than from "Just For Sidekicks", this time as "punishment" for genuinely trying to help Twilight Sparkle^note While he does do some self-serving stuff, this goes completely without consequence. Between taking all the blame for merely trying to do a job that was given to him (with none falling on those who gave him said job), as well as some blows he takes from a plant called Dragonsneeze that does exactly what you think and was inexplicably planted all over the place, most felt it went too far and saw it as a Sadist Show: it's been panned as the worst episode of Season 5, one of the worst episodes overall (and often cited as the worst), and even Jim Miller agreed that perhaps they hit Spike too hard this time. When you put together how the Disaster Dominoes happened, all it took for the disaster to not happen was for the shot ball to not hit the Dragonsneeze trees and/or have somepony to turn off the water main when as it was supposed to undergo maintenance in the first place, meaning that Spike really is the universe's punching bag in this episode.