See * for disclaimer

My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Live (Live Action, July 24th 2011, 30 minutes)

I don't expect much here. But I did the G3 live show so...

The costumes are the same style as the G3 The World's Largest Tea Party, but they don't really seem as well made. It may just be because we're a lot closer to them, or that the camera is now underneath them where in the previous outing the camera was above them.

The Grand Galloping Gala happens once a year. And *all* the ponies of Ponyville are invited now.

And all of Ponyville are split up into teams of three. That stage doesn't look large enough to take more than three of those costumes at a time, so that makes sense.

This is putting the Grand Galloping Gala in the spring, after all the seasonal chores were done. I think.

Twilight's cutie mark is only on one side, which is consistent with at least some of the toys, but not the animated show.

Wait, Applejack is responsible for the applebucking, and it must be done before the end of fall. Uh... I thought we were worried about... I'm confused as to what season we're dealing with now.

The Wonderbolts are promoted as Princess Celestia's exclusive acrobatics team.

The title music goes on with an empty stage, that's not really a good choice of stagecraft. You should never leave a lit stage empty for that long unless there's a specific in-show reason for it.

We've got a weird blending of G1 'silly pony' AJ and G4 'responsible' AJ. And she's billing herself as being the loyalist of ponies. That's odd.

I'm not sure these lines are recorded by the actual show voice actors or imitators. The recording I'm watching has some odd distortion that could be throwing me off. AJ's voice especially is weird.

Rainbow dash is injured? And the seasons move fast enough that there isn't enough time for her to heal before the Winter Wrap Up.

I... this is a weird blending of the entirety of Season 1. And the scenes are requiring those costumes to perform movements there is no way they can do. I normally *try* to avoid talking a lot about the quality of these episodes/shows beyond little jokes and the like, because I am not qualified to be a critic, but this one is a mess that even I can see. Why the heck are they pulling out Pinkie's Share/Care song? It's not really relevant here.

What? We were in fall a second ago, and now we're in the dead of winter without any form of scene change? The hell?

That sounded like a cow. What? Applejack doing Pinkie's Giggle at the Ghostie song... why? What? I'm so fucking confused.

And now we're at the end of winter, again without a scene change or anything to indicate time passing. And yep, Rainbow Dash isn't healed enough to fly.

And the Winter Wrap Up song, in three part harmony not being edited in any way to make sense in context. Twilight still has her lines about not knowing what to do, despite having already being put in charge of the team and the restriction on her magic coming out of nowhere.

Ahhhhh! Now the Gala song, without Fluttershy, Rarity, or Pinkie Pie on stage as they only seem to have Twilight, AJ, and RD puppets, but they've singing their lines anyway as if they are there. I just... wow.

That was... horrible. The only way to make sense of this script is to have watched all of Season 1 in order to fill in context not shown on stage. Yet if you do that, you'll be even more confused because they've *changed* the context in significant ways. The actors (both voice and puppeteers) did the best they could with what they were given, but it's pretty obvious they didn't put anywhere near the funding into the puppets, set, or script that this actually needed to pull of this story.