See * for disclaimer

This episode had a lot of controversy around it. So in addition to the disclaimer above, I'm going to reiterate that I'm not looking at judging the quality of the episodes. I'm just pulling out bits and pieces that are indicative of culture and worldbuilding within the episodes, plus noting things that amused me, because it amuses me to do so. Basically I'm taking things as presented.

Magical Mystery Cure (February 16th 2013, 22 minutes)

Summary: Twilight Sparkle casts an unknown spell written by Starswirl the Bearded, and then has to clean up the mess.

And finally, the Beatles. Magical Mystery Tour (1967) is a movie, a soundtrack to said movie, and a title track on that album. The movie is completely nonsensical, unscripted mess. No, don't think that's got anything to do with this episode. The episode is worlds better than that film.

Okay, sofa and quills. That's pretty darn random for a store. I've not been able to wrap my head around the business model.

And the magical musical number that everyone joins in on. I wish real life worked this way. Then again, my voice is a deep bass, so I'm not sure that would do well for these random musical numbers.

And we more have evidence that cutie-marks *can* be manipulated, even if it takes a lot of magical oomph behind it.

Whatever caused this cutie-mark change has re-written Rarity's memory to accommodate it. And honestly the amount of power behind the telekinesis to pull this off is extremely impressive. The clouds are above the mountains in this picture, so we're dealing with quite a range.

'Too last season'... so many layers to that pun. Fashion, weather. Well done.

Pinkie's mane has gone flat. And her accent... But Applejack's accent didn't change. Odd. So this cutie-mark change has modified all their memories, but hasn't necessarily given them the skills to carry out what they *think* they're supposed to be doing. Which makes Rarity's trick with the clouds even more impressive as that means she was able to pull that off before. And Pinkie's mane likely means that at some deep level, they are aware that this is wrong.

In each case, they seem to be carrying out what their impression of their counterpart was all about. Rarity believes Rainbow Dash is all about weather, because she defines ponies by their job. Rainbow Dash thinks of Fluttershy as a zoo keeper, Fluttershy thinks of Pinkie Pie as a clown, Pinkie Pie thinks Applejack is defined by her accent, and Apple Jack thinks Rarity as just a seamstress. This is pretty sad when you think about it, because it means they don't really understand each other at all for all their friendship.

Spike is aware of the problem, so whatever changes these pony's memories didn't affect him. It's entirely possible that only the ponies with switched cutie-marks are having their memories affected, which means all the other ponies of Ponyville are *really* confused as to what's going on right now.

Twilight seems to have something against postponies. She closes the door in their faces on a regular basis it seems.

So this is Starswirl's research journal. Which Twilight casts a spell out of, deliberately because she says she cast it, which did not conform to her expectations of spell construction "It doesn't even rhyme", and then immediately went to bed. For those in the IT industry, yes, this is very much like doing a release Friday afternoon and then letting all the issue tickets pile up all weekend. It happens, but it's daft.

Interesting. The colors on the Elements of Harmony re-arranged. The Loyalty gem has Fluttershy's color, the Laughter gem has Applejack's color, the Honesty gem has Rarity's color, the Kindness gem has Pinkie Pie's color, and the Generosity gem has Rainbow Dash's color. This is... not what I expected. It's right, but I expected the gem to change color depending on which pony got that cutie-mark, because the gems are in the shape of the cutie mark. Except they're not, the gems still represent the same ponies with their original cutie-mark, but have changed color to match the 'destiny' that they've taken on. This is deliberate, the animators and writers didn't do this by accident, and it's even more indicative that this is a cosmetic change with some mind control, not an actual change in destiny.

Now, was this what Starswirl intended? If so, he had to know enough about aware of the Elements of Harmony to be able to write a spell to manipulate them. Or he had to know about something *like* the Elements of Harmony... Exactly when he lived is a bit weird, as he's mentioned as being from a time before Celestia, and yet Celestia and Luna imply that they knew him personally. So it's possible that he's the one that gave them the information necessary to find the Elements, and that he was very, very old at that time. (I'm ignoring Season 4 here, as that's in the future.)

Nice callbacks to the various similar issues they've had before. Spike is actually being quite thoughtful, and honestly there's no harm in *trying* some of these cures that were successful before, or finding common threads and assemble a new cure our of the old ones.

The picture has the original cutie-marks on these ponies. So history hasn't been re-written.

The difference between restoring their memories of themselves, and showing them the memories others have of them is... bit more subtle than I expected to be honest. I can see the difference.

But that's not really what they did. They demonstrate that the afflicted ponies have the wrong skillsets, which trigger the memory reset.

Oh, Twilight, is that really bright, casting the spell when you still don't know what it does?

And all the elements join in on this one. Without conscious control of the bearers.

Suddenly Celestia, and this astral plane. And reference to Starswirl the Bearded not understanding Friendship to the same level as Twilight.

You get the distinct impression that Celestia is not in any way in control here. She's just there to keep Twilight from panicking.

And the first time the word 'Alicorn' is used in the series.

And the image is of Twilight's cutie-mark, with an additional star. This is... odd. It gets copy-and-pasted a few times, so it had to be a deliberate choice, but her actual cutie-mark doesn't change, so I'm not entirely sure why they did this.

Celestia uses completely different terms for the Elements. Ones that make a bit more sense to me, to be honest. Charity, Compassion, Devotion, Integrity, Optimism, and Leadership. Especially 'Integrity' and 'Optimism'. Those make *so* much more sense than Honesty and Laughter.

I'm going to have to assume that whatever enchantment makes the Guard have the same limited color-scheme is at work here on the banner-bearers. That seems a bit weird to expend energy on doing that, but hey, Canterlot.

Some old mansions/castles do have a specific 'speaking' balcony. It's arranged to have very special acoustics to help project your voice over the courtyard. It's never quite as efficient as being shown here and in other media, but it does technically help. You still need to know how to project your voice, which is part of the training of stage actors and singers.