Okay, I guess.
We were supposed to get another Griffon episode, where the map sends a terrified Fluttershy to catbird territory to figure out why the Griffon army (with a savage Griffon named Gregor, who’s the new Griffon leader and oh, also Gilda’s dad) is invading Clousdale’s air space and about to cause an international incident. Twilight would keep Rainbow Dash from butting in and making things worse, while encouraging Fluttershy to go on with the negotiations and have faith on herself because after all, the map chose her for a reason. Eventually Fluttershy would summon all of her courage to ask Gilda about some info about her dad so she could figure out a better way to negotiate with the stubborn Griffon, and Gilda reluctantly agreeing to help her out because she has no idea about what has sent her dad on the war path, which is totally not cool.
The original premise of “Princess Spike” was about a tired and grumpy Twilight taking a day off from her tiring princess duties because she was sick of them, so she locks herself in her room to have some personal time, asking Spike to get sure nobody bothered her for a full day. At first, Spike would do a good job at sending ponies away, asking them to come back another day or just politely rejecting requests after explaining why they didn’t needed Twilight’s personal involvement, but after a while the requests become more complex and the problems really asked for Twilight’s input, so Spike decides to tackle the problems and requests all by himself to get sure Twilight remains undisturbed during her day off.
When Twilight finally leaves her room, she finds Spike turned into a nervous wreck because he had to take care of a lot of big problems and he’s terrified about Twilight getting mad at him for the choices and solutions he gave on her behalf, but after she reviews all the decisions Spike made during the day, she congratulates him because he did exactly what she would have done, and that’s because he really knows what she would do, not because he’s her number one assistant, but because he’s her best friend, and that’s why only Spike can really understand what she would do.
Instead, we got Spike being a smug dick and only getting flak for things that weren’t his fault.