@Daneasaur  
Laughing fire doesn’t re-write any pre established lore. There was nothing in any previous episode that stated they can’t do that.

@Diaz  
I don’t fault the idea of Spike trying to get along with Garble and failing because of his kind heart and it helped that fluttershy/smolder mentioned that Spike is stronger than Garble because he doesn’t hide his emotions.
 
The negative aspects of this episode are:  
-Rewriting pre-establish lore for no good reason (fire laughter)  
-Attempting to make a character’s actions the result of “bad social environment” (“Garble is sensitive and shy, he just acts like a prick. Lets ignore owl’s well dragon, ember, and all other dragons who are equally as violent because that’s how dragons are.”)
 
That’s the main problem here. Spike was decently treated in this episode since it did focus on his real strengths, but the naysayers will go “You’re just mad that Spike wasn’t awesome!” and that’s not at all why this episode is said to be poorly written.

@Siarnaq (Model P)  
Season 7, 8, and 9 have actually done some good justice for Spike. Also, it’s not Spike abuse as trying to get along with Garble is a plot point in the story.

@mjangelvortex  
The main problem is that sneezing is a super viable one and a scene of fluttershy dropping a bunch of dragonsneeze flowers all over the place and having this explosive sneezing marathon would have been hilarious AND made lore sense. But Spike, the most inexperienced dragon, who has burned many things with his fire breath accidentally, NEVER ONCE incinerated ANYTHING by laughing.
 
Sneezing? Belching? Hiccups? Screaming in fear? Casually blowing a breath without being careful? All has happened to Spike.
 
But laughing and burning something down? Not once.
 
G5  
Oh good. Sorry, the way you worded it was confusing.

Will you please stop whining?

I don’t think it’s the worst episode either, I just think it could’ve been done better.
 
The idea of Garble and Smolder being brother and sister just felt almost too predictable, because fans have been speculating and theorizing that they’re actually siblings for awhile now, as if the writers were browsing through these ideas and decided use this an idea for this episode.
 
Aside from the “Fire Burps”, the “Laugh Fire” gimmick just came out of nowhere, it generally feels as if the writers made this entire thing up and is supposed to serve as an important plot point. But noticing how their fire breath change color every time they laugh while increasing the heat of their flame breath could explain away the inconsistencies of the color of their fire breath most specifically Spike’s, whose fire is usually green. But as the Dragon’s concern, it feels as if writers never did any of their research. They do a lot more effort and research for the ponies and other mythical creatures but never bother to give the same care and effort for the dragons.
 
As for Spike himself, I can’t really say Spike did much in this episode aside from the few series of Spike torture porn , Spike actually figuring out the problem and (unintentionally) giving Garble an idea how to get the eggs to hatch. He doesn’t serve much of a purpose in the episode to the point I can’t even consider this a “Spike” episode because it really doesn’t center around him that much. While I appreciate Smolder and Fluttershy sticking up for him, Spike really needs to fight his own battles, the more that happens the less he’ll learn his lessons and likely develop and you know it’s bad when Fluttershy has more development than Spike especially in this episode it establishes how her development was able to fully stick, which is admirable.
 
And Garble’s “redemption” like almost any other villain reformation arc is redundant, the fact he was a bully because he’s passionate about being a poet and hides it because other dragons will make fund of him, despite the fact he was willing to do something extreme like vandal and having no regards for life or potentially starting a genocidal war against all ponies should he had won the Gauntlet of Fire, while Diamond Tiara’s redemption arc was rushed at least there was a reason why she was a bully and it even allowed us to sympathize with her, compared to other villains. But with the show being on its last legs, I find Garble’s redemption to be slightly more justified due to Season 9 being the final season, if the show were to continue then there’s a possible chance that Garble would still be portrayed as a jerk in the show.
 
All and all, this episode wasn’t terrible still wish it could’ve been done better. As for Spike himself, it’s kind of a waste of potential and sad how the show handles him only giving him a few decent episodes. Due to him being a supporting and reactive character, the only chance of him being a great character is when he’s not the main character but unless there’s an better episode for him that ends his character arc on a good note along with the show, Spike’s going to carry that weight with him until the very end.
 
But if anything, Spike needs his own show.

Honestly I thought this was a decent Spike episode, albeit Fluttershy was the most enjoyable part. Its biggest failing was that if it intended to make us sympathize with Garble it did an awesome job and retconned him from being ruthlessly in charge of his gang to being helpless against their teasing.

This goes for every established character. The main , family, and background ponies behave incredibly erratic if not outright schizoid.

@ILoveMyoozik  
That was absolutely no near the worst episode Spike had.That title belong to Princess Spike (Finger crossed we finally learned what happened to his parents tho)

@Siarnaq (Model P)  
Never the less, don’t lose your head’s over this, the MLP Trainwreck is almost coming to a definitive end…  
No truer and sadder words were spoken in fandoms than those ones :No one hate more X than fans of X

@mjangelvortex  
It doesnt fit someone headcanon

I’m a Spike fan and I liked this episode, so I disagree with all this.

@Siarnaq (Model P)  
Oh yeah, I can agree to that. With a show that’s been going on for nearly a decade, every character is bound to have a fair share of good, average, mediocre, and bad episodes. It comes with the territory with a longer running series sometimes.
 
I feel like I’m in the minority in not minding if Scootaloo learns to fly or not. I’d be fine either way and think that she can still lead a normal and happy life without being able to fly. Lauren Faust intended her to not fly due to her being disabled so I consider it being somewhat similar to a person with a disability that is has friends and family that love them and leads a happy life. I feel that it’s a good lesson to teach kids that there are some people out there who are physically different from other people but they can and should still be loved and be happy.

@mjangelvortex  
True. Every Mane 6 had their fair share of bad to mediocre episodes, but RD and AJ suffer the most from it, even though Applejack is my favorite pony, I can’t defend most of her episodes (the flashbacks episode about her parents was pretty good, I must admit).  
Now, I have never been a big Rainbow Dash fan nor did I make an effort to tolerate her like I did with Glimmer (which actually got better as time went on), but I still wanted to believe she had some redeeming qualities on the inside, which she does, but the writers don’t seem to care about that.
 
 
But about the Scootaloo thing…I don’t really care, as long as the writers did make her fly, I’m not even remotely bothered by the fact that she has parents. What I’m shocked is the fact the she has an actual mom and dad, I thought her lesbian aunts would be enough family members for her, but oh well, whatever…

@Siarnaq (Model P)  
All that I recall that episode did was show her parents and aunts. Some people were upset about her not being an orphan but that doesn’t really bother me all too much.

@Background Pony #2FA9  
I’m on the same boat here. I lost my hope for the writers to come up with something good midway through season 5, but pushed on finished watching regardless (I regret wasting my precious time on that)
 
By Season 6, my expectations were very low as, sure Gauntlet of Fire was decent, it brought us Waifulord Ember, but I couldn’t do it anymore. The season finale leaked, I watched that, and simply gave up on keeping up with MLP entirely.
 
I’m only here for the plot, the lore and because this wild ride is finally coming to an end.
 
@Fingusa  
Huh ? What’s up with Scootaloo’s arc ?

@Fingusa  
I think Spike had a fair amount of good episodes. A lot of the episodes I really don’t like were actually Rainbow Dash episodes and Applejack episodes (and I honestly don’t even hate either of them either).
 
How was her arc ruined?

Eh, we got a couple good Spike episodes in the show. At least his entire arc was not ruined like they just did with Scootaloo.

@Siarnaq (Model P)  
S5 was the turning point for me. All those characters got great eps and Spike’s one was the worst ep in the entire series. After that, I decided to just keep my hopes low and be pleasantly surprised every once in a while. S6 was really good for him but I knew that wouldn’t hold up long term. It was that Sludge ep that made me stop watching the show altogether.

Honestly, while I’m not a big fan of him as a whole, I kinda feel bad for people who likes Spike. Even when you thought the show was finally getting somewhere with him by evolving his character from a silly comic relief, to a more supportive friend or something else entirely, Season flipping 7 through 9 happened…
 
Big OoF
 
Don’t worry Spike fans, if the show/comics won’t do justice to his character, the fanbase will, being either by fanfiction or porn fanart.  
Never the less, don’t lose your head’s over this, the MLP Trainwreck is almost coming to a definitive end…
 
Until G5 comes out, anyway

@Daneasaur  
While that’s true that no dragon was shown laughing flames before, I don’t really see of it as big of a leap to imagine it possibly happening.
 
Just like a burp, sneeze, or hiccup, a laugh is sometimes something that happens involuntarily and causes the user to let a rush of air out of their body. So it kind of makes sense to me that a dragon could accidentally let out flames with a laugh.
 
 

 
No. They don’t. Did you even read what I said earlier?  

 
They do not want to make Spike (or the other characters) exist as just a joke.

@mjangelvortex  
The main thing is that they focus on the laugh fire as a plot element but the laugh fire didn’t exist until this episode. If Spike “didn’t know about it”, it would be one thing, but he himself tells the other dragons to stop it.
 
Where was the episode prior to this one where folks were making Spike laugh and he an explosive flame bout of uncontrollable laughter that became a big problem? Well, it never happened.
 
Burping flames? That happened.  
Sneezing flames? That happened (and the plot around bringing dragon sneeze trees in and making everyone sneeze on the eggs would have made more sense).  
Even scaring Spike or Hiccups have caused bouts of flame.  
One thing that hasn’t caused it is laughter, which is why I’m rubbing my head.
 
G5:  
I… wait, what? You mean they plan on making anyone but the 6 total doorknobs who exist for pratfalls?
 

 
Wouldn’t it be better to discuss the episode in the forums as opposed to making low effort images like this?
 
@Daneasaur  
None of Spike’s concept art was leaked but he was mentioned by name in some of the concept art. He’s been in every Gen so he’ll likely be in G5.
 
Also, the G5 emails mentioned about working against making “tolken dudes” or making him (and other potential main male characters) nothing more than walking punchlines. So there’s that.
 
@Daneasaur  
He hasn’t but he has burped fire before.
 
It just seems like a cheap gag. The show has often done that before for comedy, even with the other characters. It seems like such a small thing to nitpick over to be honest.

@Daneasaur  
Eh.I get this criticism.THough they called it a “laugh fire” maybe it only happen when some conditions are met ? That just me rambling,though we disagree on the episode, i personaly dont think it was that distracting.The morale was better

@Daneasaur  
He was already.You “SJW” are unpleasable, nothing short of Spike character arc ending with him bedding the mane 6 or some shit will please you.Also cant handle slapstick because of fanboyism