As the most anticipated episode of the season since “Pinkie Pride”, “For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils” like the former, has plenty more to its merit than the starring/appearance of a fan favorite (in this case the Guardian of Night and designated dream watch-princess Luna), and may in fact be one of the most immediately and universally likable this season, doing nothing that would obviously cause a fan or even casual watcher to raise an eyebrow of alarm to seriously question the quality of the episode. Though I didn’t genuinely enjoy it as much as I should and thus am more inclined to highlight its faults, it is the duty of a reviewer to at least call attention to the points that did work and praise it for those things just as much.

I depart from my usual style of reviewing here in order to facilitate reading, adopting a straightforward strength/weakness listing as opposed to a semi-organized stream of consciousness approach as exhibited in my reviews for “Pinkie Pride”, “It Ain’t Easy Being Breezies”, or (to a lesser extent) “Maud Pie”. This new approach, of course, is already a staple of several intelligent and well-regarded reviewers on this site, and their insight has not been sacrificed due to its simplicity.

Strengths:

1. If there was ever an episode to demonstrate to the Rarity neighsayers that the fabulous dressmaker does indeed have a generous heart, this is the one. Throughout the episode we see Rarity as self-sacrificing to her little sister, from her willingness to fix Sweetie Belle’s dresses for her play despite having Sapphire Shores’s order nearing deadline to saving Sweetie Belle’s fifth birthday from being a total bust by giving out party favors in the dream sequence. This demonstrates not only that she is generous but is generous because she cares for others. This caring demonstrates that generosity is really a strong friendship (or perhaps in this case, sisterhood) virtue because of the connection to others that belies it.

It is also good to note Rarity's patience with Sweetie Belle demonstrates an improvement of the relationship between them since "Sisterhooves Social", even as she is upset that Sweetie Belle tried to ruin her dresses. This patience helps to greatly reinforce the imperfect but fundamentally understanding relationship that the two have with each other.

2. When I first read the plot teaser before the episode aired, I worried that Sweetie Belle would completely vandalize Rarity’s dresses and get sadistic pleasure out of seeing Rarity cry and rage, at least until Rarity finds out her sister is responsible. Fortunately, Sweetie Belle is a lot more subtle in her havoc-wreaking and wisely removes herself from Rarity’s potential rage by foreseeing that her finding out should only be revealed when Rarity is out of town giving the headdress to Sapphire Shores. Not only does this open up a good avenue to potentially make the situation right and prevents Rarity from completely disowning her sister, it also demonstrates that Sweetie Belle is considerably smarter than many commentators tend to give her credit for. Although perhaps in my own prediction Sweetie Belle could have planted evidence to make it so, say, Opalescence had ruined the dresses and thus accomplish the same characterization, her simple undoing of the stitch is more in line with her personality (she’s not really manipulative) and the behavior is strangely less contemptible.

3. The episode not only exhibits many hallmarks of the nouveau Polsky, but is strongly appropriate for the subject matter. The “nouveau Polsky” to which I refer is characterized by a more subdued style of humor (at least in comparison with his earlier episodes) combined with a stronger emphasis on exploring character’s states of mind and motivations, such as in Polsky’s two episodes before this one, “Rarity Takes Manehattan” and “Twilight Time”. Like in “Rarity Takes Manehattan” (but unlike in “Twilight Time”, but that’s for another time), the premise here is heavy enough that humor deserves to take a background role and lose some of either its wackiness or punch and give a chance for the states of minds of the characters to carry the story and provide the entertainment and cathartic value. In other words, “For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils” is not laugh-out-loud funny, but its entertainment value derives from more fundamental aspects that work for the story itself, as it asks us to focus rather on Sweetie Belle’s jealousy of her sister with just a dash of good humor.

4. That being said, the episode has stronger humor throughout than the two previous nouveau Polsky episodes and is thus more enjoyable in that regard. Whoever figured that “Make me a dress, Rarity” would become an accidental line of alarm to an increasingly unstable Rarity (“You know I don’t do that anymore!”)? One of my personal favorites, however, is Sweetie Belle’s excuse of being ignorant of Sapphire Shores’s hits: “I prefer show tunes.” How clichéd and yet how appropriate it is for Sweetie Belle at the same time, who made such a valiant effort to get her name in the echelons of playwrights? Nothing in the previous two Polsky episodes have quite the same punch as these, and yet they are sprinkled appropriately enough for it not to drown the more serious aspects of the show.

5. The reappearance of Sapphire Shores deserves some laudation. The series has a tendency to create one-off characters that will never appear again (except maybe in the background) for the purposes of a single episode and we are almost expected to forget about them in the future. (Rarity episodes seem to be especially guilty of this, as it seems that every other week Rarity has somepony new to swoon over.) Not only does Sapphire Shores, whose only significant appearance before was in Season 1’s “A Dog and Pony Show”, play an important part in the plot, but we actually learn more about her than we expect—that she has an entourage of backup singers for her acts, her lucky animal being a dolphin, and that she is not only popular but has enough power to sway public opinion in areas outside her field (at least as predicted in the dream sequence). Though I’m personally not a fan of the Pony of Pop, I do hope that this example will continue in other episodes so we can better get a feel for pony popular culture.

6. Despite all its faults that I will state later, the dream sequence does several things remarkably right. Luna does not completely hold Sweetie Belle’s hoof in her journey by providing running commentary about the things that happen both past, present, and future, which is not only good for Sweetie Belle but also respectful of the audience’s intelligence. In addition, Luna’s shield protecting Sweetie Belle works on at least two levels—it not only establishes her control of the Dreamsphere well, but also serves to subtly set up the message that Luna wants to convey. The lightning bolt the Rarity cloud sends, of course, is a projection of the cruelty that she mistakenly believes Rarity is having. By stopping the bolt from hitting Sweetie, Luna conveys the message that Sweetie’s ideas are ill-founded and that they shouldn’t let them torture her.

7. Although it’s becoming more common now as Season 4 marches on, the Mane 6 do not show up where they are not needed, leaving us to better concentrate on Rarity and Sweetie Belle’s relationship and the latter’s mindset and its development. (When they do however, I can’t help but be reminded of “Rarity Takes Manehattan”, where the Remane 5 are forced to help Rarity make new dresses for an important fashion show. Fortunately here it is far more positive.)

8. The title itself deserves heaps of praise. Not only does it avoid the inspiration malaise that some of the episode titles this season suffer from, but it creates a strong hint of the themes that are explored in the episode. Because we are familiar with the Hemingway book enough, we are amused by the inclusion of “Sweetie Belle” for “Bell” but at the same time overlook the substitution of “Tolls” for “Toils”. To ignore this would be a grievous mistake for what we lose in understanding. In realizing this, we actually ask ourselves for whom Sweetie Belle toils. Initially, Sweetie Belle only toils for her selfish desires and thus causes the conflict between her and Rarity. Once she realizes her fault however, she sheds her selfishness and instead toils for Rarity, cementing the growth that she gets in her episode and exhibiting the further closeness that she has for her sister.

Weaknesses:

1. Unless you are actually in the target demographic or know what it feels like to be overshadowed by an older sibling, you might actually feel too detached from Sweetie Belle’s conflict, thus the impact of the plot is considerably less. Where Polsky fails in this regard is that he falls into a “tell, don’t show” trap early on in the episode. We know that Sweetie Belle worked hard on her play—writing, acting, directing, even costume designing. We don’t see her struggle in her ambitions, which can cause the audience to wonder if Sweetie Belle was really working as hard as she says she was. If we saw Sweetie Belle editing a line during the last minute in the script and going over it with Apple Bloom and Scootaloo we would get a stronger sense that Sweetie believed her efforts to be in vain when she realized that Rarity’s revised costumes stole the show from her.

Admittedly, we do begin to feel sympathetic to Sweetie Belle as we see what happened during her fifth birthday party. However this comes far too late in the program to really have hard hearts changed, and it doesn't help the fact that Sweetie Belle was late to her own party. Oh well, kids aren't the most self-aware types of people anyway...

2. Since we aren’t exactly invited into being sympathetic to Sweetie Belle’s mindset but only directly asked to be so, Rarity comes off as being much more favored and in the right than she needs to be. This is not a weakness in itself, as it can also be seen as helping us to be more contemptuous of Sweetie Belle’s actions, but if this episode is supposed to be seen as being an episode to develop the relationship between Rarity and her sister, the one-sidedness of the conflict is considerably less memorable. In relationship episodes such as “Sisterhooves Social”, “Sleepless in Ponyville”, “Somepony to Watch Over Me”, and “Maud Pie”, we might get the feeling that one party is more in the right, but neither party is totally innocent when it comes to (mis)understanding, doing questionable actions, or committing relational faux pas, thus we can be at least sympathetic to both parties’s perspectives. “For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils” seems to be maverick to this trend. “Sleepless in Ponyville”, the other Luna-dreamwatching episode, is perhaps most similar in that Rainbow Dash, like Rarity here, can’t be said to have learned anything about relationships in this episode. However, she is arguably guilty of not recognizing Scootaloo’s fears and behavior earlier, thus inadvertently exacerbating them to one of her biggest worshippers. Rarity, by contrast, does absolutely nothing questionable. Ultimately, this point is more of a peeve for me, but since it so strongly relates to the lack of sympathy given to Sweetie Belle, I include it here.

3. The dream sequences do not have quite the impact that it should. Part of this is related to the fact that we are not as inclined to be sympathetic to Sweetie Belle as we should, but also because there is some aesthetic weakness to the “feel” of the dream. The Rarity cloud is not as menacing as we might expect it to be in Sweetie’s mind, and though I can’t put my finger on what exactly went wrong, some of the scenes feel too “real” for a dream sequence. Perhaps it being too structured due to the nature of Luna’s lesson for Sweetie Belle means that it loses some of the more impressionistic aspects of a dream that aided to the effectiveness of Scootaloo’s dreams in “Sleepless in Ponyville”. Of course, I really shouldn’t complain as it the sort of dream realism is also a feature of the A Christmas Carol reference it is supposed to reflect, but still, something seems missing. Maybe we can say that some parts of it, such as Future!Rarity’s reveal of the headdress to Sapphire Shores and its subsequent breaking, lasted too long as we quickly are treated to Rarity’s confusion but is extended longer than necessary. Rarity’s actual downfall is a true dream sequence however, quick paced and with the punch to leave an impression in memory.

4. Two very minor plotholes can be noted. First and most importantly, we know that Sweetie Belle knows that Rarity’s new wardrobe for Sapphire Shores and her entourage is important to her big sister, and that she helped get materials and fabric to help make the dresses, but it isn’t clear that she was necessarily privy to the finer points of Rarity’s work, such as the stitch in the headdress. We can safely assume that Rarity showed her this without any potentially contradictory evidence otherwise, but it would have been worth making this knowledge clearer to Sweetie Belle. The other one is less important but at the same time less reconcilable. It seemed that the bodyguard to Sapphire Shores conveniently went out to lunch without a replacement as soon as Sweetie Belle needed her friends to help her play “Keep Away” from Rarity. Perhaps the two found a back door and just snuck past the bodyguard, but the security on the compound was a bit too serious for this to be plausible. Then again, we did see only one bodyguard….

5. Perhaps I lied a bit when I said there was nothing here to make even a casual viewer raise an eyebrow, although in the end it is more a matter of exaggeration than in the fundamental idea itself. We hear of a standing ovation for Sweetie’s play but we later learn it was only for the dresses. It may be understandable that the theater patrons found the dresses to be the strongest part, but for the bulk of their showering praise to go to that seems to be a little too exaggerated given that the theater patrons presumably came to judge the play, not the costumes. We might wonder, are ponies that distractable? It is fortunate, though, that the exaggeration does not exactly become problematic or overplayed unlike Applejack’s overprotection in “Somepony to Watch Over Me” as the audience is more cool-headed about explaining their praise of the dresses. Still, we can call into question the collective intelligence of the audience here.

6. Two points about the ending: What was Luna doing at Sapphire Shores’s compound anyhow? How did she know Sweetie Belle would be there? Something of this reeks of mere plot convenience, although we can say that Luna takes Sweetie’s predicament personally and thus really took to following her around. In addition, the new dolphin stitching does not really appear to be an improvement over the original “Masonic” eye in the headdress as it clashes with the rest of it. But hay, Sapphire Shores was pleased, so who’s to argue?

Mr. Polsky is sure getting good at digging himself out of the hole he has carved himself. While “For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils” is imperfect in more than just the most minor ways, it still shows that he is continuing to redeem himself from the notorious episodes of seasons past. I’m already seeing a brighter future in store for Polsky, as well as this series in general with fine episodes like this.

I am indebted to a short review by Whatevs for bringing up some very good points regarding Sweetie Belle and Rarity's relationship as it relates to previous seasons and also in bringing up points that help me better address my own concerns.