First off: If you expected to get an over-the-top-episode with this one, you were right. “Slice of Life” is, without being as casually random as “Make New Friends but Keep Discord”, one of the most entertaining episodes of the show. But this status comes with a cost. Before I skip or leave anything out, I should talk about the plot first.

So, instead of focusing on any characters of the Mane Cast, this episode starts with Cranky and Matilda, two characters we’ve seen close to nothing of since the second season. Preparing for their wedding, they find their invitations to be referring to the wrong date, so they literally only got a few hours left until they marry instead of over a day; which of course means that some actions need to be taken. What now starts is a split into several minor plotlines that all come together in the end. Cranky and Matilda trying to rearrange a few things, Derpy trying to make up for her mistake when writing the invitations, Time “Dr. Whooves” Turner running through town to get his attire done, Lyra and Bon Bon friend-shipping and the fusion of classical music with electro starring Octavia and Vinyl Scratch. All of this comes with appearances of several additional secondary and background characters. Luckily, the wedding is successful and we got a cute donkey pair in the end.

Now, after summing this up, let me get to what I found to be positive. Finally, after four and a part of the fifth season, we got an episode that didn’t have the usual suspects starring. What was done by several great TV-Shows already is now also a part of FiM’s canon. And it was done in a partially very splendid way. Some really funny scenes, with Gummy’s internal monologue being both, the icing on the cake and perhaps the most genius scene I’ve seen in a long time. Nice and overall still improving animation, several little details like the jumped shark and Letrotki’s Cutie Mark and a really nice piece of not vocally supported music. But as I said before, this all comes with a little cost, or might I say an unpleasant overtone?

See, I am glad that the staff obviously appreciates the fandom’s continuing support for the show. But fan-service and fan-pandering are very closely connected. If I have one thing to openly criticize about this episode, it’s not that they made the episode, it’s not that they focused on characters that didn’t get any or just little attention until now in the show – but it’s that they actually made many things canon that were only fanon until now.

It’s not done in a bad way if you focus on quality of execution, but in a kinda bad way when you think of it this way: So, they actually also focused on many background characters in this episode, but where did they take the ideas of their characterization from? Well, obviously not from their own creativity. And that’s the slightly sad thing about “Slice of Life”. Instead of breaking up the structure of usual fan-service, they just did what several fans wanted and expected to see in their fanon dominated expectations and view on canon elements that lacked development.

This episode is pandering. Not entirely, but a big part of it. But it’s not even entirely bad in this aspect. Why? Because this episode was obviously written for just one thing: for the lulz. And for a big thank you to the loyal fans. If else, they wouldn’t have added the shark jumping in the Rave-O-Mobil scene and especially they wouldn’t have added this:

I hope you liked my little text here and I’m sure to write some more little reviews in the future.

Till next time!