Dragons Review: "Dragon Flower"

Trader Johan has come to Berk and brought with him all sorts of exotic goodies for the vikings to purchase.  Soon after his visit, Toothless begins acting very strangely.  It seems as though he's come down with a strange dragon disease and before long all the dragons seem to be feeling under the weather.  They appear to be having a strange allergic reaction to something on the island...

Oh, and Trader Johan traded something suspicious to Mildew at the beginning of the episode when no one was watching.  Hmm...

I'm going to be upfront here:  This episode really annoyed me for the most part.  I like Mildew.  I think he's a highly entertaining antagonist.  But his shtick is getting tedious.  Especially because, once again, his plot was revealed to the audience right off the bat, but then treated as a "mystery" for most of the rest of the episode.  The plot of the dragons getting sick was pretty well done, but I just simply could not enjoy it because I knew it was going to lead to yet another moment where Hiccup confronts Mildew and he denies it despite his obvious guiltiness.  And that's just what happened.  That was a fine story before.  But it's already old and irritating to see repeated again.

The episode's only real saving grace was the ending, which featuring a genuinely thrilling sea battle with a new type of dragon, thought to be able to help cure the other dragons of their disease.  Mildew finally got some long overdue comeuppance and it led to a surprisingly humorous conclusion for the story arc.

Dragon Flower's conclusion shows to me that the team behind Riders of Berk has it in them to make this show great.  But they need to lay off using the same Mildew plot over and over or the show is going to get stale.  Riders of Berk is still going strong at this point, but I'll be curious to see how long it keeps its momentum from here.