Not gonna lie, aside from Return of Harmony and Make New Friends But Keep Discord, I was never really a big fan of Discord's episodes.. and well, this isn't an exception.
This review comes from the opinions of the poster himself. This does not reflect the opinions of the rest of the Brony community. Plot Summary: While Twilight Sparkle spends her weekend sorting books, she finds out her friends and Discord were having a good time during the weekend, and wants to know what happened.
I'll admit, one positive with this episode is it's intentions. See, a lot of people can relate to Twilight's conflict in this episode, which is worrying about missing out on stuff. Some people can feel bitter and sad when some of their friends get to enjoy something, yet they themselves didn't get a slice of that cake for themselves, and end up feeling left out. And it is pretty understandable for Twilight Sparkle to be upset and feel left out on what happened. But was it well executed? Ehhhh... not really.
For one, Discord's characterization is really off here, at least toward the ending. Since Keep Calm and Flutter on and even continuing in Twilight's Kingdom, we've seen him make friends with the Mane 6, which really shows development and growth for him in the series, and that's shown in this episode by him getting along with the other 5, which isn't really a problem. However, it essentially hits a downward spiral toward the ending, when he pulls an asshole move to Twilight, as he admits that he talked the other 5 out of not inviting Twilight Sparkle due to her book sorting. This little thing makes him seem like an asshole toward Twilight in the end, and it also provides another bad thing about the episode where it wrongfully puts Twilight Sparkle in the sort of "bad guy" position and the moral ends up becoming pointless. What I mean by this is that the moral was initially on a right path, but by showing that Twilight Sparkle was actually justified with her actions and that Discord was doing a bad thing, it doesn't really make sense in this context. The ending shows that, really, Twilight wasn't really the bad person (pony?) here and she actually had a good reason to suspect that Discord was up to something, so she shouldn't have been put in the wrong because of this. What I'm saying here is, the little twist in the ending takes out pretty much all of the substance the moral had.
As for the humor? Eh, it was mixed bag. As a Back to the Future fanboy, I laughed real hard at the little gag with Pinkie Pie being dressed up as Marty McFly plus the theme of BTTF sort of playing in the background, and the Bob Ross gag was also timed pretty perfectly, but a lot of the other gags got repeated over and over again a bit too much, to the point where they just got stale really damn fast and got really poorly used. It's essentially going "Hey audience! Remember the peanut butter hooves gag we repeated that you didn't even find funny in the first place? Well here it is again for the 50th time!1" Even to people who did find those funny, they most likely would've got tired of 'em as well. Heck, the characters in the show got tired of them by the end, so I think that should really be a clue right there.
It doesn't help that, to be honest, this episode is just really boring, especially for the first 2 acts. When I was rewatching it for the purpose of this review, there were times where I was having trouble paying attention to what was going on. It may have just been because of how low-quality the episode itself was or all the unfunny repeated gags, but whatever, it didn't really hold my interests for that long.
Overall Opinions: This episode is, well, mediocre. Not gonna lie, I kind of liked it at first, but after realizing it's problems and going back and rewatching it, it's really just a forgettable episode. I didn't mind what they were aiming for, but otherwise, the episode was dull, Discord was characterized badly, and the lesson losing it's meaning toward the end makes this episode one I don't care for.
4/10
My Episode Ranking: 1. Crusaders of the Lost Mark (S5E18) 2. The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone (S5E8) 3. The Mane Attraction (S5E24) 4. Rarity Investigates (S5E15) 5. Amending Fences (S5E12) 6. The Cutie Map (S5E1+2) 7. Make New Friends But Keep Discord (S5E7) 8. Hearthbreakers (S5E20) 9. Brotherhooves Social (S5E17) 10. Canterlot Boutique 11. Tanks for the Memories (S5E5) 12. Castle Sweet Castle (S5E3) 13. Party Pooped (S5E11) 14. Bloom and Gloom (S5E4) 15. Made in Manehattan (S5E16) 16. Slice of Life (S5E9) 17. What About Discord? (S5E22) 18. Princess Spike (S5E10) 19. Appleoosa's Most Wanted (S5E6) 20. Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep? (S5E13) 21. The Hooffields and the McColts (S5E23)