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On 4/20/2014 at 6:09 PM, PrymeStriker said:

I thought "Trade Ya" was really good, actually. Didn't have high hopes for it at first, but I ended up enjoying it. 

...Really?

...Hmm...I must've been smoking something (likely weed, given that quote is from 4/20), 'cause I always remembered this as a really bad episode. Eh, well, let's see which two evils I go with. This is "Trade Ya".

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So this episode opens up with some of the worst exposition I've ever heard. Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle, explaining to the other ponies why they're at the Rainbow Falls Traders Exchange thing....WHILE THEY'VE JUST ARRIVED BY TRAIN TO THE RAINBOW FALLS TRADERS EXCHANGE. Like, the other four had no idea why they were going to this place? Why did they spend time packing all their luggage to go, then? Just fucking awful exposition. 0/10. As they enter the event...............oh yeah, "triggered 'cuz Ranbaow Fauls is shit episud", there you go.............*ahem*.............they find that Twilight Sparkle has a whole welcoming committee considering she's a special guest. Why, you my ask? Uh, gee, I don't know, maybe because she's A FUCKING PRINCESS? How nice of the show to acknowledge such a pivotal plot-point once more. After the Skip Intro button skips introductions and cuts right to the dirty sex, we see all of our main characters indulging in the festivities. Rarity notes that you can get anything you want here, which is actually true. I went there myself once, in search of a crotchitizer, a syringe full of toothpaste for anal injection, and a chair with seven legs, and there was a whole stand dedicated to those specific items! They even had a combo deal. Buy one chair with seven legs and get three syringes full of toothpaste for anal injection free! That's when I traded my sister off to that pimp, if you can remember that joke from ages ago. Anyways, we finally see Twilight here at her bookstand. 

"I've got twelve copies of 50 Shades Darker I need to expel."

So now it's time for our main characters to split up into groups of two as per course of the writers. Rainbow Dash explains that they have a signed first edition of a Daring Do book out there, and she's gonna get it. Hey, Rainbow Dash. Since we're referencing a bunch of shitty episodes in this story, from "Rainbow Falls" to "Spike at Your Service" and even "Power Ponies"....why are you leaving out "DARING DON'T"?! Don't you fucking KNOW DARING DO PERSONALLY? Can you not ask her to sign any old first edition book yourself? Right, so Rainbow Dash's storyline is already bullshit, therefore Fluttershy decides "I'll just insert myself into this subplot for later use". Meanwhile, Rarity and Applejack decide to pool their stashes since they're both out in search of vintage shit, all the while Pinkie Pie stays with Twilight to help her auction off the books she doesn't want. Okay, so now our stories are set. Let's follow the worst one first: Rainbow Dash. She finds the book she's looking for, but the trader says she does not want Rainbow Dash's rusty horseshoe. She's instead in the market for a blowjob an Orthrus, which one of the other traders has. Ah, I see, so not only is this plotline going to be convoluted from the jump, but it's also going to propel forward through the dullest shit imaginable. Rainbow Dash is going to go from trader to trader getting things for the previous trader to get the trade from the original trader just to get the book. Wash, rinse, repeat. 

Rainbow Dash stands in horror as she realizes her subplot in this episode is doomed to suck.

Let's take our minds off of that, though, and focus on Rarity and Applejack's story. Both ponies happen to have found a super rare "vintage" item that's going to cost all of their collective stuff. As each opposing member examines the other's vintage item, we find that they're both extremely petty things. Applejack wants a rusted pan, and Rarity wants a broach she already owns that's just slightly aged. Both ponies think the other's item is shit, which leads to a clashing of the viewpoints. We'll return to this momentarily, we now have to focus on Twi-.........err..........back to Rainbow Dash's story? Uh.....okay. That's a bit odd. You'd think they'd got through the three subplots in a cyclic manner but....ugh, whatever. The Orthrus guy does not want Rainbow Dash's horseshoe either, but instead wants a new lamp in exchange for the Orthrus. So they go to a stand full of Discord lamps to find that the guy at the stand wants an antique chicken statue, and the antique chicken statue guy wants a crystal chalice, and the crystal chalice girl happens to want a rusty horseshoe. Perfect. So they trade that rusty horseshoe only to find that the chalice instantly breaks upon being touched. Fuck. Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie saves Twilight from selling all her books for some kid's broken pen. This proceeds to occur: 

...Okay, it's clear to see which subplot is the best.

Weanmhile, Applejack and Rarity have practically reversed their positions. Now they're competing to be the "better friend" by letting the other pony get what they want with the stuff they've pooled. This...actually got a little bit of a smile out of me. Not bad. Back to Rainbow's Shit Story. The chicken guy actually wanted a broken chalice for his broken chalice mural, so they trade the chicken to find that the lamp guy is out to lunch. Fuckity shit fuck. Meangirls, Pinkie Pie is exploiting Twilight's princess status to auction the books off. There's this pretty funny joke that got a chuckle out of me where Pinkie Pie says that Twilight was a big fat zero before she was a princess right in her presence. Anyways, back to Reading Rainbow. They finally manage to get all the items through everyone to trade the Orthrus for the book only to find that the bookseller no longer wants an Orthrus. God this Trader's Exchange is contrived. At least when I went you could hold people by gunpoint. Fuckin' pansies. Anyways, when Fluttershy shows her that the Orthrus just needs to be trained, the bookseller decides to give her the book IF Fluttershy stays with her and her house until it's trained. Rainbow Dash...........agrees.

..........Whore.

FFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFActually, you know what I just realized. As much as this part of the episode forces the mediocre moral down the chimney, it's actually a little more believable that Rainbow Dash would do this when you consider they paid extra close attention in the dialogue to make sure the audience realizes that Rainbow Dash doesn't realize what just happened. If you look at her in the moments when this is said, she's almost in a trance. Given last episode focused on her inability to focus, I'm actually less pissed with this part of the episode than I was when it aired. It's still shoddy, but not as shitty. Besides, she realizes she fucked up pretty quick. Menopause, Pinkie Pie has finally set the price too high for the books by noting how valuable they are to Twilight, which sends traders away but makes Twilight appreciate the books more, deciding she doesn't want to get rid of them. So, is the lesson here to hoard your shit? Huh. Too bad the best of the subplots gets a sour ending. Rainbow Dash comes in to interrupt everything by trying to get Twilight to say that the trade between Rainbow Dash and the bookseller was unfair...to which Twilight explains that it unfortunately is. Most people are like "BUT TWILIT THATS UR FRIEND TOO"....and I call bullshit. Yes, Fluttershy is Twilight's friend too, but someone in a position of power needs to be unbiased to make decisions. Twilight would've been accused of bias if she said the trade was unfair. I'm actually more impressed with this trial scene than anything else, despite it being a completely useless 50 seconds in the story that could've been saved if Rainbow Dash had just rejected the offer in the first place.

So who ever thought we'd see a purple pony up on that stool, huh? Huhhhh? Hehheheh. I'm a racist! 

In the end, Rarity and Applejack make up (because their plot got completely sidelined) and everyone learns that friends are more valuable than objects...which you'd have to be a serial killer in order to think otherwise...so this moral's pretty much only for me. Doesn't make it any less shit. So concludes "Trade Ya".

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...EHhhhhhee.eHEH. 

This episode's kind of off and on. While I have very few complaints with the Twilight/Pinkie and Applejack/Rarity stories, the Rainbow/Fluttershy one was pretty bad. It had a sloppy setup that I've refuted in the beginning of the review, a pretty dull string-along, and an ultimately shoddy resolve. I mean, it wasn't as bad as I remember, but that doesn't mean it wasn't poorly done. The other two were okay and rather good subplots that fell off the end due to the pacing of the episode. Twilight's story ended up virtually promoting hoarding considering Twilight decided to keep books she wanted to get rid of because she had no room for them, and the "Rarijack" plot was ultimately relegated to a running gag that was just "resolved" by the epilogue 'cause they very literally ran out of time. There's some pretty funny moments here and there in the episode, but with all these plots kind of tangling each other up and resulting in a pretty vapid moral, I'd have to say this episode's a bit of a clunker. "Castle Mane-ia" was the better episode in terms of splitting the group into twos. I'll have to give "Trade Ya" a 5/10.

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The ethnicity I hate the least is the most recent one.