I must say, this impressed me. There's no bombastic One Scene nor the overreliance of Twilight to save the day. Other characters had the chance to shine, and it was a team effort to remove the fraud. Starlight doesn't have the mysterious past or whatnot. She's just a normal unicorn with an evil philosophy, but one she believes is right. From a technical point of view, the dialogue is fantastic with a lot of clever jokes, including nicely done meta references.

 

Pinkie's slip-up is also how you execute her obliviousness correctly: She was oblivious, but got called out for it. She realized it (being the only time this time), and they all suffered the consequences.

 

This is easily Sonneborn's best episode. Does it overtake Return of Harmony as Larson's best episode and best two-parter? That remains to be seen.

Source: S05:E01+02 - The Cutie Map

This was from a little while ago. Now I'll get a little deeper into The Cutie Map.

Even though I was a critic of various executions of Season 4, one of the bigger pluses is how much they approached maturer and grayer morals. Rarity Takes Manhattan talked about how you shouldn't quit your most positive qualities because someone took advantage of you. Pinkie Pride delved into the very mature theme of jealousy over an individual who can not only do the same talent you love and work on, but are also better at it. Everyone here knows how much I praise Testing Testing's excellently executed moral and approach to it.

Season Five commenced it with one of the most mature conflicts of not just the entire show, but family TV altogether. It's an entire episode where the conflict between how two ponies approach what friendship is about. Is friendship supposed to be about agreeing with one another? Or is friendship about where despite having serious disagreements, you can still be friends? Can friendship work under the philosophy that conformity trumps all?

Earlier today, I mentioned how The Cutie Map had a very eerie similarity of George Orwell's Animal Farm, a storybook criticizing the way the Soviet Union was governed and politicized. Starlight Glimmer's goals run through very similar propaganda. She continued to spread the idea that in order to be true friends, you must be equal. Give up what makes you you. The song, In Our Town, is revealed by Ingram himself to be heavily inspired by WWII propaganda music. This is a really bold direction that hones in the criticism of how strict communist countries had or currently run such as the USSR and especially North Korea. The fact that they explicitly describe the area it's located as "East Equestria" (an implied allegory of the old Eastern Bloc) confirms this powerful message further.

One of the cleverest directions Sonneborn, Larson, et al. induced this skewed opinion of friendship equating conformity is how the show never told the audience the name of the town. If you give this town a name, you risk breaking apart the theme of conformity and how the only way to thrive is to be like everypony else in Equestria. The lack of name retains that mystery behind the history of the town. More importantly, it reinforces Starlight Glimmer's skewed opinions of how the only way to actually be friends is to not conform to the rest of society. Keeping it nameless makes this drab village very inviting by teasing about how despite its dinky appearances, it could be one of the best places you'll ever run across. It's a very tiny thing quantitatively, but it really established credibility in Glimmer's propaganda.

Undoubtedly, Starlight Glimmer's a fraud. By not conforming to the very same messages she claims to celebrate (not sacrificing her cutie mark while forcing everyone else to do so), she becomes a major hypocrite. However, don't let that mean her beliefs lack any level of sincerity. As a character, she's incredibly sharp with a sense of how she can be one step ahead of the others. With the ReMane Five locked up, she manipulated FS into trying to out her accomplices. Even more, Starlight doesn't act like some magical being who reigned in terror æons ago. She's a unicorn with very strong magical powers, and we have no idea what her past is. There's no doubt that her lack of past is intentional; it makes her feel both relatable and real.

Unlike the other villains, she does believe in the magic of friendship, but not the MoF that the others believe. Instead, she sees the concept of individuality as a hindrance of both growth and triumph. Her idea of the cutie mark doesn't translate to being someone of equal potential, but how you must conform to Equestrian matriarchy/patriarchy. By telling everyone to give it up, force them, and hammer it in, she's making them believe that her totalitarian opinions will lead to an eventual Equestrian revolution. Not "revolution" as in warfare, but "revolution" as in how a new ideal of Equestria can be legitimately established. Even after she was revealed to be a hypocrite, she never relented that belief. Consequently, this further legitimizes her gray opinions on Equestrian society.

Starlight Glimmer is a very credible, three-dimensional villain. She has very legitimate motives that back up continuity from not just the whole series, but also Magical Mystery Cure. One big problem from that finale is how it conveniently changes the whole definition of the cutie mark from being something you innately like and look forward to for the rest of your life to how it's forced upon you. Starlight Glimmer — and the two-parter's theme itself — openly critiques the very structure and magic of the cutie mark. Surprisingly, SG's political assessments and critiques of the cutie mark system not only opens up further discussion and history of the cutie mark, but it also closes the continuity gap that Magical Mystery Cure opened. Her angst over the cutie mark isn't plucked out of thin air. It's an ongoing discussion in the fandom, including Pinkie Pride itself. There's legitimate backing to it, and she has very good reasons to tell passersby to abandon the practice. By being a very slick motivational speaker, Starlight Glimmer becomes both imposing and very threatening.

A common problem in two-parters is the lack of naturality in the dialogue. Only Return of Harmony had much conviction in the dialogue. The Cutie Map's dialogue is incredibly believable. Sure, there's some repetition in Rarity's "divine" comments, but that's me being a little picky. Pinkie Pie was incredibly on point throughout; if you're a very big brony of her, you will like her here. She retains that same zaniness that we grew to know and love, but she's not a random idiot. Her comedy has purpose, and her obliviousness isn't exaggerated. She was acutely aware of how forced the ponies were acting, and it creeped her out. When she wasn't liking how Fluttershy bobbed to the propaganda, her glare snapped her out of it.

Honestly, the disagreement the Mane Six had with their impressions over the town was awesome! Pinkie Pie was extremely apprehensive over the town, Starlight Glimmer, and the townsponies. However, Fluttershy had a completely opposite opinion of the town. Despite Glimmer's scary predisposition, FS wasn't willing to quit on the town and believe there were some good intentions behind everything here. In Bats!, FS's skewed opinions of how to handle the bats was completely wrong, yet treated as in the right despite Applejack having more justification to get rid of the vampire fruit bats. Here, both FS and PP had very solid opposing opinions of the village. This establishes not just the gray morale in this whole episode, but also Starlight Glimmer's politics. They were a driving force in the conflict, but neither side was one-hundred-percent right. Each of the Mane Six had strong, solid, differing convictions of the town. None of them were right nor wrong.

There's one bugaboo that I must talk about: "The Staff of Sameness." Not the staff itself, but the naming. It's extremely blunt and very anticlimactic. It gives off that feeling of evil before SG confronted them. While the rest of the episode had extremely clever writing, the name of the staff comes off as extremely convenient. If there was more cleverness in the name, like "equalibrium," "The Gate to Freedom," or something else (if you can give me other names in the comments, feel free to), it would make SG's morale even greyer. Fortunately, Sonneborn and Larson were able to overcome this stilt and deliver a story that was extremely solid from top to bottom.

@@LZRD WZRD mentioned this in his analysis, and I'll do it here. "In Our Town" is an accurate, yet creepy, tribute to WWII propaganda songs. There's a sick stench of utopian creepiness that will make you shiver down your spine. But one meter really hones in Glimmer's justified philosophies: "You can't have a nightmare if you never dream." What makes it scary is how there's truth into this line. The idea that dreams are describes as an inherent nightmare; in order to have a true good night's sleep, how about giving up the ability to dream? It's a scary question to ask, but how the song's written and delivered creates a mirage of how this may be one of the best ideas out there. The line offers serious implications over how you can tackle this internal conflict. (I'm thinking of breaking down the entire song in a future analysis.)

I'll do more at a later date, but for now, it's safe to say that this episode ranks as one of the best at this point. There are very good reasons why The Cutie Map has so much intrigue in this fandom. The conflict concept is bold and fantastic. But what it did was tackle this dark theme, merge the concept of the cutie mark in both MMC and the rest of the show, and approach it very naturally. It's extremely believable, and its execution is utterly fantastic. A very bold direction like this is extremely needed, and to have it done and done well in TV-Y programming is revolutionary.

Now, I want to talk about the idea of getting into video brony analysis. Like I said on here in public and PMs, one of the reasons I don't go into video analysis is how I don't have the wherewithal in the technology to get into it. I'm a huge novice into the video-making and audio-merging equipment. Plus, I'm a major perfectionist, and written reviews are much more forgiving than video analysis, especially since YouTube doesn't allow you to reupload and keep the URL. However, now with season five here, I'm starting to think of tackling this rich field, possibly during the summer break. What I want to do is create a video setting as well as create an actual screen where I can get people's attention. There are two ideas in mind:

1. Inspired by Winnie the Pooh's "Thoughtful Spot" and the storytelling from Pocahontas, I'm thinking of creating a campfire scene. The background will be a dark, rich blue. With a simplified version of my ponysona on the left-hand side (while sitting down, BTW), there would be a campfire. The logs burn as I talk. Either above or in the campfire, a screen will periodically appear to show clips of the show, comic, or imagery. They will fade in an out as I narrate the analysis. Depending on the tone and character's face, the fire will change color, from yellow out of surprise to blue out of anger (blue fire is the hottest) to red out of coldness. The fire comes on when starting, ending, or transitioning in the analysis.
    
   Another spinoff idea from this is how the background stays dark, basically a very dark brown shade of my ponysona's stroke color. However, only his head, horns, and maybe legs will peak out as they're near the campfire. When the campfire lights up, his head's visible. Once it goes dark, he vanishes.
   
2. I'm thinking of keeping my ponysoan as is. However, what I'm thinking is tinkering it to make my ponysona's head as the screen. As the screen plays, the background changes color depending on my tone and mood. This, however, feels really incomplete.
   

If anyone has more ideas, feel free to give me a comment or two below.