It rock if the ones who pose as Marer Do Well were bust. And struggle to regain trust. The old Cry Wolf scenario.

@TexasUberAlles  
yes

@Background Pony #4FD5  
Well, now we know there’s a super sharp edge in between them.

Ah, the episode where both sides arguing over it are piles of shit for several reasons.

It was never that bad, though I do have a bad habit of going out of my way to mock people who have clearly misinterpreted the episode.

@Ebalosus  
Whoa there, hoss– you’re in danger of splittin’ the base here. Alllmost every single dedicated MMDW hater was already in the fandom during Seasons 1 and 2, and those are the ones most likely to be Church Of Faust cultists who will hear no criticism of S1/S2.

A shitty episode from the worst season of the show? Pray-tell!

@northern haste  
OP also has claimed that they are the last person on Earth who likes the show, and that anyone else who says they like the show are “hasdrones” or lying because they’re trying to troll him, personally.
 
OP claims a lot of things. Thus the badges.

By the way I think I should point out that op has claimed multiple times but he still likes the show

Don’t remind us about that episode

@Background Pony #01B2  
@Ihhh  
like for example they did actually talk to her first

@Background Pony #01B2  
 
Explain, plz.

@Background Pony #01B2  
No it isn’t. Did you even watch the episode? The event is played out very differently from the way the comic predicted.

Remember when OP wasn’t being a duck? yeah, neither do I.

@Ihhh  
Except it’s true.

@Background Pony #ACD6  
If you want to make a point, even if in a sarcastic manner, don’t use an image that turned out to be untrue.

@Background Pony #FF08  
I just think it would’ve been slightly better if such a scene were in the episode  
In retrospect it surely would have, but I kinda got the impression at the time that it was so very obvious that “just talk to her directly lol” wouldn’t have worked that the writers didn’t think it even needed to be said out loud aside from the gag with the autograph-seekers.

@TexasUberAlles  

The whole business of Spike releasing Cherry Berry’s balloon by bumping into where it was moored, then being embarrassed and lying to AJ when talking about it, still strikes me as odd, though upon bringing up the episode to refresh my memory on those scenes I found they didn’t stick out quite as badly as I remembered. (Actually, I meant to review just those scenes, and wound up re-watching the whole thing; as you say, it’s got terrific gags throughout, including two that are still among my favorites.)  

 
 

You knew that, I knew that, I suspect even the rest of the Mane 6 knew that. I just think it would’ve been slightly better if such a scene were in the episode. (Still a pretty good episode nonetheless, IMHO.)

@Background Pony #048D  
a victim of hasty rewrites  
I still don’t think it was really a “victim” of anything other than unreasonable expectations; I can see where those who don’t like gag-a-minute stories wouldn’t find much substance in it, but the gags were funny as buck throughout.
 
RD’s friends approaching her while she’s basking in the adulation of the crowd and warn her that her ego’s getting out of control  
Canonically unhelpful.  

@TexasUberAlles  
To make the moral really jibe with the rest of the episode, the problems that strike at the climax of the episode have to come from the actions Spike took when he was ego trippin’; I don’t really see how that could have been done without a major rewrite. Maybe that was the problem; it got too far in the pipeline before someone noticed the disconnect, and they didn’t have time to do a proper rewrite so they just scrambled to make the best of it. It’s not as obviously a victim of hasty rewrites in the same way that “Spike at Your Service” or “Games Ponies Play” were, but the episode’s structure could be hiding some of the seams, I guess.
 
@Darth Sonic  
Well, that would have addressed the problem but not fully solved it. I realize that it’s frequently hard to get everything necessary for an episode in 22 minutes and keep the pacing reasonable, but it seems like they could have shaved off a few seconds here and there in order to insert a quick scene of (some of?) RD’s friends approaching her while she’s basking in the adulation of the crowd and warn her that her ego’s getting out of control, have her say “Yeah yeah, gotcha, I’ll work on it”, and then go right back to signing Rainbow Dash hats and talking about how Rainbow Dash is the best thing to happen to ponydom since pegasi first sprouted wings.

@Jarkes  
Oh shit – I completely forgot about Princess Spike. Yeah, that was pretty… terrible.

@Background Pony #048D  
The fact that all of the episode’s major issues could have been solved by two short lines of dialogue sort’ve exacerbates the issue, though, as it makes the writers look kinda dumb.
 
RD: But why didn’t you just talk to me?
 
Mane 6: Would you have listened?

@TexasUberAlles
 
Yeah, I still kind of wonder just what the hell happened with Princess Spike. Even Jim Miller was like, “Yeah, we kind of messed up there.” And he only had a “Story by” credit.

@Background Pony #CCF1  
The contrivance is the other characters don’t try and talk to Rainbow  
It’s always hilarious when someone jerks their knee and yells about _{~didn’t read the post}~ without apparently bothering to read the post they’re yelling about. Try reading it again for the first time, the central theme of “an action can hardly be considered ‘contrived’ if it fits into a well-established pattern of similar behavior before and since” might accidentally jump out and startle you.
 
I mean, you might as well try to claim that RD’s rampaging insecurity and performance anxiety in Newbie Dash was _{~a contrivance}~, or that Pinkie’s hyperactive lack of respect for personal space in A Friend In Deed was a completely left-field development.
 
@Background Pony #048D  
The moral in ‘‘Princess Spike’’ absolutely does not flow from the rest of the episode, though  
I can kindasorta see where it might have been meant to, though? One of the things that bothered me about the episode was how choppy and uneven it felt, like some of the scenes had been cut out and pasted back in, but out of order and out of context, with some deleted and others added in ad hoc to tie them together. With all those names attached to the Opening Credits for writing and editing and story idea-ing, there were so many cooks working that pot that it never really had a chance to be a good episode.

OP doesn’t know that answer is “Friendship”
 

 
The answer is ALWAYS “Friendship”.