I'd almost forgotten how it feels to hate an episode of My Little Pony this much. How long has it been? Since "What About Discord?" I mean, "Fluttershy Leans In" was awful, but at least it didn't sink to this level of annoyance and odiousness. "Hard to Say Anything" has almost nothing to redeem it. Most of its jokes fall flat, its plot is tired and lazy, the characters are borderline reprehensible, and the moral is pedestrian at best. Every season has its stinkers, but I was really hoping we'd moved past My Little Pony stooping this low, and having this in an already dire season is really starting to test my patience with this show.



When the Cutie Mark Crusaders notice Big Mac making a surprising amount of long-distance deliveries to Starlight's old village, they hide in his cart to spy on him. Once there, they discover that he has a crush on Sugar Belle, and immediately work with him to win her affection. In the process, he's interrupted by a smug pretty boy named Feather Bangs, and so he and the CMC decide to compete with Feather Bangs to get Sugar Belle's attention, much to her dismay.

Right from the cold open, we're "treated" to the Cutie Mark Crusaders being more obnoxious than they've been since "Twilight Time," chatting happily about invading Big Mac's privacy rather than asking him why he's going all the way to Starlight's village so much because... they think it'll be fun. That's the level of character likability the entire episode operates on, apparently assuming that the CMC pushing Big Mac to harass Sugar Belle in increasingly obnoxious ways is the height of comedy. At one point, he leans in to kiss her while she's sleeping, because the Crusaders are inspired by a Sleeping Beauty fairy tale. Sexual harassment? HILARIOUS!

I hate this episode.

Also, yes, the Crusaders are getting Big Mac to act out grand gestures from fairy tales, because they're idiots, and he's an idiot too. The Crusaders being detestable is one thing, but Big Mac is an adult and should know enough to question them. That he goes along with these twerps' ideas simply because they've riled him up enough speaks to a lack of maturity and self-control. He doesn't question kissing Sugar Belle while she's sleeping? The Crusaders take all the blame at the end, but Big Mac should have known to question some of these genuinely creepy acts.

At the end, Sugar Belle tells Mac and Feather Bangs to leave her alone, but the climax has him completely disregard that and sneak into her house to rebuild her counter. This is only sweet in comparison to what he was doing previously, and if Sugar Belle had again kicked him out she'd be entirely in the right. But this is the emotional climax, so of course she immediately thanks him and starts nuzzling him, because that's how you should reward someone who does the exact opposite of what you asked him to do.

I hate this episode.

At first, Feather Bangs is one of the episode's few successful gags, as his smug, smarmy attitude hits the same sweet spot that Zephyr Breeze did, but there's nothing to him aside from getting in Mac's way and repeating cheezy one-liners. It gets repetitive long before he begins singing lame pastiches of pop songs from over five years ago, and between those songs and his overall appearance, he resembles nothing so much as Justin Bieber circa 2010, a reference made especailly dated due to Bieber looking nothing like that anymore and no longer making music which sounds anything like that. He's still the best character in the thing, but that only speaks to how wretched everyone else is.

For all the elaborate exposition in the cold open, Sugar Belle doesn't do much in the episode aside from react to others, and her reactions are either swooning, surprise, or irritation. The episode's few charms come from the first, as early on her and Mac have a little chemistry, but the latter two are the ones which are most sympathetic because they reflected my own feelings of repulsion at Mac's behaviour. The episode makes no effort to develop her, and when she and Mac finally get together, it's hardly satisfying because her turn around to liking him again feels sudden, we don't know enough about her to care, and Mac's affection for her was only just introduced to us.

The animators go nuts, because apparently nobody bothers to reign them in anymore, and add pink hearts to Mac's eyes just in case the dialogue, which outright states that Mac has a crush on Sugar Belle, was too subtle. Whole scenes, like one interminable song competition between Mac and Feather Bangs, appear to exist entirely so the animators and composers can mess around, but the songs are far too cheesy, the scene goes on for way too long, and the story is weak enough that the songs are hurt by their context. At its core, this is just another story about some dude consulting people near him to get the girl, and while his creepiness doesn't actually cause the girl to like him (at least at first), that doesn't make it any less tiresome.

The only thing embellishing this story is that the original plans don't work, but those plans are so stupid that the story doesn't work as a subversion of traditional romantic comedies, and the scenes where Big Mac acts obnoxious or creepy towards Sugar Belle are still played for laughs as if they're not utterly insufferable. The moral might be the best part of the episode, but it too is pedestrian, and it's hurt by the fact that the Crusaders' schemes are inspired by fairy tales. I suppose that the episode isn't wrong to say that wooing someone should actually involve doing something which would make them happy, but it's worded that you shouldn't "try to impress them," and... wouldn't doing something which matters to them still impress them? What if a grand romantic gesture is exactly what they want? In context, the moral doesn't mean anything beyond "don't be obnoxious," and that's not good enough.

I hate this episode. 

The worst part is that while "Hard to Say Anything" is easily the season's least pleasant episode, it's hardly the only subpar entry this season. In what is rapidly shaping up to be the worst season for the show yet, it's impressive that this episode still stands out as being so vile, and between its obnoxious characters, poorly-delivered moral, generic plot and general lack of humour, this might just be one of the worst episodes of the entire show. At least S4's "Simple Ways" ends on a high note; this ends just as terribly as it began, and I cannot stand it. After this, tomorrow's Rarity and Applejack episode might not seem so bad, and I cannot think of anything more damning.

The recurring theme of failing to communicate isn't even present here. For fuck's sake.

Score:
Entertainment: 1/10
Characters: 3/10
Themes: 4/10
Story: 2/10
Overall: 25/100

 

If you like seeing me this angry, then some of my season 5 reviews at my offsite blog might be to your taste.