Sweet and Smokey. Now I want Kielbasa.

---Season 9--Episode 9---
This episode felt like it was trying to do for dragons and Garble what “Lost Treasure of Griffinstone” did for griffins and Gilda. There are a few issues with that concept on paper. (This is credited to Kim Beyer-Johnson, the person behind Non-Compete Clause. While episodes aren't really written by only one or two people, I still felt like we'd dodged a bullet. This just being an OK episode overall is fine).

Was anyone clamoring for the return of Garble? I never had some hate boner where I never wanted him to show up again (like some people do for Flash or Mudbriar). It’s just that he never generated any questions that were left hanging. There weren’t any scenarios we had generating in our minds for this character. No questions like “Where did Torch and all the adult dragons go? Is Blueblood a prince because he’s related to Celestia? How is Gilda’s bakery? Did Zecora come from an entire country of rhyming zebras? Did Spike actually live with Twilight and Shining?”

Freaking confiiiiiiiirmed...!

At his introduction, Garble wasn’t a villain who needed an origin story to unfold, or a redemption arc. He’s just a teenager. That’s all “Dragon Quest” needed him to be. His ‘reformation’ would come when he just grew up. Not that he would automatically become a good person, but that he’d act like less of a tool.

Garble became a proper villain (and also legitimately funny) in Gauntlet of Fire, where he openly worked towards invading Equestria. That doesn’t make him irredeemable, but it’s strange to never be brought up. We’re not even clear if Smolder even KNOWS about that story. We know she respects Ember, but did she ever see or hear about how her big brother could have been Dragon Lord?

Speaking of Smolder, even with her being a high point of the Student 6, there’s nothing exciting about her here. Just concepts that COULD have been. We get a stare down between two dragons, but the show has to play violence so safe, that Smolder’s threat feel like it had less weight than Spinelli during Recess. When she finds out how Spike’s been treated, she has an appropriate reaction (and we get a funny joke), but there’s not a real pay off. The relation between Smolder and Garble never changes. She’s really here to just move things along, and bridges the story of Spike in Garble. She suggests the solution early on to Garble’s problem, and she’s validated.

Recalling last season that Smolder had a brother, that gives us context on why Garble and all the other dragon teens would be so bitter towards the rest of the world. But after his parents kicked him out when he was vulnerable to natural predators, when did he pick up on beat poetry? I can buy him making himself drums. But when did he get those clothes, feel the urge to wear clothes in the first place, or even realize that outfit was specific to stereotypical poets? The latter is probably explain by the writers wanting a lazy visual shorthand. (But I've never actually been anywhere where beat poetry is performed or met a practitioner, so their might be some nuance I'm missing).

The episode is just - okay. But I was still going to bat for it a lot the week it released because of the BS reason some people were actually being pissy over. It sounds like something from the nerd caricatures in The Simpsons or Robot Chicken: “The Laughfire was never established before!” Really? Dragons already ignite when angry, yelling, sneezing, and belching. With greed making them turn into giants, acne outbreaks turning into a stone cocoon, the Dragon Lord turning them into Lite Brites, and whatever Celestia did to enable Spike's esophagus as a mail route, this ‘leap of faith’ is a cakewalk. The dragon body is an amusement park, not a temple.

In line with how Spike has aged and entered a new visible stage of development, I think these chuckleheads are suppose to have gone from teens to young adults now. We first met Garble & Co. when they were in view of the adult dragons who were migrating. Next was them competing for the title of Dragon Lord as Torch retired, and now these same dragons are supervising the miracle of live. They’ve been growing up, hence a power boost. Sure, MLP:FiM always had an extremely loose chronology for events and character ages. But I don’t think that matters much at all with dragons. Their version of “The Talk” is probably “You have survived 17 winters. Go forth and multiply.”

The final effort to save the dragon eggs is something I really appreciate that this episode. Garble’s entire plan relies on the fact that all of his friends and neighbors will immediately turn on him. That laughfire of theirs wasn’t sarcastic, they truly did think that little of him. He takes that blow. I’m impressed when a show called “Friendship is Magic” is extremely blunt about how people will treat you for being different. This also applies to how is Spike was treated this episode. Early seasons of the show had the big recurring issue of the universe making Spike the butt of painful jokes for no fault of his own. But here, I can’t help it nod in my head thinking that Spike deserves to get humiliated for knitting a blankie in the middle of a draconic wasteland. There is a point where a lack of social awareness is just willful ignorance.

This episode functions better focusing on Fluttershy’s involvement with both the A and B plots. One, I would spend more time than is healthy watching Fluttershy hug and coo at eggs. Two, we get to hang with Ember. Three, having Fluttershy spend so much time speaking freely with dragons, and then Garble of all folks, are brilliant unspoken landmarks for Fluttershy. Her first ever episode established a (reasonable) fear of dragons. Even without that racial divide, in the beginning we never would have seen Fluttershy talking to anyone larger than her, or who raised their voice.

Something I noted in the discussion the day this came out, “S&S” gives itself more of an out concerning Fluttershy’s duties at the School. Since it’s not triggered by an emergency letter or a Map quest, there’s actually lee way to think there was a enough time skipped between the prologue and the intro for a substitute to be arranged (this time).

That second-to-last shot is actually pretty beautiful. Fluttershy lifts up the hatchlings at the start of their life, just as her life could truly begin after she left the confines of her own fear. Observing her is Garble, who it turns out also has also been something of a coward like she was. They are all the beginning, middle and end of a journey.