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Thrond

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  1. Thrond
    "In mid-2016, I introduced a new scoring system based on four criteria: entertainment/humour, characterization, themes/morals, and story. Each of these is graded out of ten, and are then added together to find a mean grade out of 100. Here, I will list every MLP episode I have graded on this scale, alongside their rating out of 100. For accuracy's sake, I will not attempt to grade episodes entirely on distant memory. Ratings might be subject to change with future rewatches, and this list will expand as I rewatch more episodes (especially since this provides incentive to go through the whole series again). For now, I've rated the following media as follows, out of 100:
    Season 1 (70/100) [72% enjoyed]
    "Friendship is Magic" -  85
    "The Ticket Master" - 70
    "Applebuck Season" - 75
    "Griffon the Brush Off" - 78
    "Boast Busters" - 55
    "Dragonshy" -- 78
    "Look Before You Sleep" - 38
    "Bridle Gossip" - 40
    "Swarm of the Century" - 68
    "Winter Wrap-Up" - 80
    "Call of the Cutie" - 73
    "Fall Weather Friends" - 90
    "Suited for Success" - 90
    "Feeling Pinkie Keen" - 73
    "Sonic Rainboom" - 78
    "Stare Master" - 53
    "The Show Stoppers" - 33
    "A Dog and Pony Show" - 73
    "Green Isn't Your Color" - 55
    "Over a Barrel" - 33
    "A Bird in the Hoof" - 88
    "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" - 93
    "Owl's Well That Ends Well" - 48
    "Party of One" - 100
    "The Best Night Ever" - 100
    Season 2 (74/100) [79% enjoyed]
    "The Return of Harmony" - 80
    "Lesson Zero" - 100
    "Luna Eclipsed" - 63
    "Sisterhooves Social" - 90
    "The Cutie Pox" - 43
    "May the Best Pet Win!" - 93
    "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" - 23
    "Sweet and Elite" - 85
    "Secret of My Excess" - 78
    "Hearth's Warming Eve" - 73
    "Family Appreciation Day" - 70
    "Baby Cakes" - 85
    "The Last Roundup" - 100
    "The Super Speedy Cider Squeezy 6000" - 50
    "Read It and Weep" - 95
    "Hearts and Hooves Day" - 80
    "A Friend in Deed" - 80
    "Putting Your Hoof Down" - 65
    "It's About Time" - 43
    "Dragon Quest" - 88
    "Hurricane Fluttershy" - 100
    "Ponyville Confidential" - 50
    "MMMystery on the Friendship Express" - 70
    "A Canterlot Wedding" - 68
    Season 3 (57/100) [50% enjoyed]
    "The Crystal Empire" - 80
    "Too Many Pinkie Pies" - 63
    "One Bad Apple" - 60
    "Magic Duel" - 60
    "Sleepless in Ponyville" - 90
    "Wonderbolts Academy" - 100
    "Just For Sidekicks" - 60 (I actually like this one though)
    "Apple Family Reunion" - 48
    "Spike At Your Service" - 43
    "Keep Calm and Flutter On" - 88
    "Games Ponies Play" - 25
    "Magical Mystery Cure" - 18
    Season 4 (71/100) [67% enjoyed]
    "Princess Twilight Sparkle" - 35
    "Castle Mane-ia" - 75
    "Daring Don't" - 65
    "Flight to the Finish" - 80
    "Power Ponies" - 48
    "Bats" - 43
    "Rarity Takes Manehattan" - 98
    "Pinkie Apple Pie" - 70
    "Rainbow Falls" - 45
    "Three's a Crowd" - 75
    "Pinkie Pride" - 100
    "Simple Ways" - 45
    "Filli Vanilli" - 78
    "Twilight Time" - 50
    "It Ain't Easy Being Breezies" - 88
    "Somepony to Watch Over Me" - 50
    "Maud Pie" - 60
    "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils" - 100
    "Leap of Faith" - 95
    "Testing, Testing, 1, 2, 3" - 65
    "Trade Ya" - 73
    "Inspiration Manifestation" - 80
    "Equestria Games" - 83
    "Twilight's Kingdom" - 95
    Season 5 (60/100) [46% enjoyed]
    "The Cutie Map" - 78
    "Castle Sweet Castle" - 55
    "Tanks for the Memories" - 28
    "Bloom and Gloom" - 100
    "Appleoosa's Most Wanted" - 73
    "Make New Friends but Keep Discord" - 85
    "The Lost Treasure of Griffonstone: - 50
    "Slice of Life" - 83
    "Princess Spike" - 43
    "Party Pooped" - 93
    "Amending Fences" - 38
    "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?" - 20
    "Canterlot Boutique" - 53
    "Rarity Investigates" - 100
    "Made in Manehattan" - 43
    "Brotherhooves Social" - 65
    "Crusaders of the Lost Mark" - 85
    "The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows" - 38
    "Hearthbreakers" - 63
    "Scare Master" - 53
    "What About Discord?" - 18
    "The Hooffields & the McColts" - 73
    "The Mane Attraction" - 50
    "The Cutie Re-Mark" - 53
    Season 6 (72/100) [71% enjoyed]
    "The Crystalling" - 93
    "The Gift of Maud Pie" - 90
    "On Your Marks" - 75
    "No Second Prances" - 38
    "Gauntlet of Fire" - 68
    "Newbie Dash" - 63
    "A Hearth's Warming Tail" - 100
    "The Saddle Row Review" - 90
    "Applejack's Day Off" - 48
    "Flutter Brutter" - 68
    "Spice Up Your Life" - 65
    "Stranger Than Fan Fiction" - 88
    "The Cart Before the Ponies" - 53
    "28 Pranks Later" - 63
    "The Times They Are a Changeling" - 88
    "Dungeons & Discords" - 88
    "Buckball Season" - 55
    "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks" - 98
    "Viva Las Pegasus" - 65
    "Every Little Thing She Does" - 58
    "Pony Point of View" - 43
    "Where the Apple Lies" - 53
    "Top Bolt" - 95
    "To Where and Back Again" - 85
    Season 7 (59/100) [40% enjoyed]
    "Celestial Advice" - 50
    "All Bottled Up" - 38
    "A Flurry of Emotions" - 93
    "Rock Solid Friendship" - 60
    "Fluttershy Leans In" - 35
    "Forever Filly" - 48
    "Parental Glideance" - 80
    "Hard to Say Anything" - 25
    "Honest Apple" - 40
    "A Royal Problem" - 80
    "Not Asking for Trouble" - 63
    "Discordant Harmony" - 80
    "The Perfect Pear" - 85
    "Fame and Misfortune" - 45
    "Triple Threat" - 70
    "Campfire Tales" - 53
    "To Change a Changeling" - 53
    "Daring Done?" - 35
    "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You" - 65
    "A Health of Information" - 78
    "Marks and Recreation"  - 43
    "Once Upon a Zeppelin" - 83
    "Secrets and Pies" - 63
    "Uncommon Bond" - 50
    "Shadow Play" - 48
    The Movie - 35
    Season 8 (64/100) [67% enjoyed]
    "School Daze" - 75
    "The Maud Couple" - 68
    "Fake It Til You Make It" - 35
    "Grannies Gone Wild" - 68
    "Surf and/or Turf" - 55
    "Horse Play" - 100
    "The Parent Map" - 35
    "Non-Compete Clause" - 25
    "The Break Up Break Down" - 78
    "Molt Down" - 80
    "Marks for Effort" - 83
    "The Mean 6" - 85
    "A Matter of Principals" - 43
    "The Hearth's Warming Club" - 83
    "Friendship University" - 73
    "The End in Friend" - 43
    "Yakity Sax" - 53
    "On the Road to Friendship" - 78
    "The Washouts" - 65
    "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place" - 65
    "What Lies Beneath" - 70
    "Sounds of Silence" - 43
    "Father Knows Beast" - 70
    "School Raze" - 65
    "Best Gift Ever" - 95
    Season 9 (66/100) [63% enjoyed]
    "The Beginning of the End" - 63
    "Uprooted" - 73
    "Sparkle's Seven" - 83
    "The Point of No Return" - 95
    "Common Ground" - 85
    "She's All Yak" - 53
    "Frenemies" - 85
    "Sweet and Smoky" - 50
    "Going to Seed" - 90
    "Student Counsel" - 58
    "The Last Crusade" - 65
    "Between Dark and Dawn" - 75
    “The Last Laugh” - 50
    ”3, 2, 1, Greaaat!” - 35
    "A Trivial Pursuit" - 35
    "The Summer Sun Setback" - 50
    "She Talks to Angel" - 68
    "Dragon Dropped" - 28
    “A Horse Shoe-In” - 73
    "Daring Doubt" - 65
    "Growing Up is Hard to Do" - 83
    "The Big Mac Question" - 58
    "The End of the End" - 73
    "The Last Problem" - 80
    "Rainbow Roadtrip" - 70
    Equestria Girls
    Equestria Girls - 60
    Rainbow Rocks - 88
    Friendship Games - 70
    Legend of Everfree - 40
    "Dance Magic" - 45
    "Movie Magic" - 70
    "Mirror Magic" - 25
    "Forgotten Friendship" - 60
    "Rollercoaster of Friendship" - 75
    "Spring Breakdown" - 33
    "Sunset's Backstage Pass" - 43
  2. Thrond

    Season 8 reflections.

    By Thrond,

    This year, I had an exit strategy. If My Little Pony wasn't entertaining me by the third episode of the season, I'd bail. As it turned out, I watched every episode, so clearly this season was an improvement over last year's wretched showing, and there's actually a lot of trends this season which were pleasant surprises for me. At long last, this show is making some serious changes to its approach which have been long overdue, and as it turns out, this season wasn't half-bad. I mean, it's two-fifths bad, and it retains some of the same issues the show has had for years, but it's a small improvement. What season 8 showed me is this: My Little Pony can improve, I can still have fun with it, and the people currently writing the show have no intention of getting their priorities straight. It's still a show which regularly overextends its reach, and it's still a show which has no idea what to do with its own main cast. But it's a more watchable version of that show this year, and even its failed experiments are a bit less dull and rigid than they were last year. It's still a show mostly made by people who care about telling good stories, and that's ultimately what keeps me watching. I just wish they cared a bit more about which series they were writing those stories for.
    So, first, the good. Most obvious is that the show has finally adopted a seasonal gimmick in the form of a so-called "School of Friendship," where Twilight and her friends teach all of the lessons that they've learned to students from across Equestria and beyond. It's not a gimmick which makes much sense, admittedly, as the show never explains where Twilight or her friends actually find the time to run the school, and none of them ever really seem to know what they're doing. But it's a breath of fresh air nonetheless, and it allows the show to tell stories which are a bit different from the norm. Say what you will about their respective quality, but episodes like "Non-Compete Clause," "Molt Down," and "Marks for Effort" take advantage of the school setting to explore stories which might not have been possible in prior seasons, and even when those episodes are bad, the change in pace is refreshing.
    Also refreshing is just how much emphasis this season places on continuity. There are multiple episodes which directly reference the passage of time, and "Molt Down" in particular introduces a notable change which affects every episode afterwards. The character of Neighsay, introduced in the premiere, appears briefly in "Friendship University," and characters from earlier seasons make somewhat more regular appearances this year as well, most notably Chrysalis in "The Mean 6," Lightning Dust in "The Washouts," and Rockhoof in "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place." The seasonal villain, Cozy Glow, makes repeated appearances throughout the season, every time seeming more and more suspicious. Don't get me wrong, there's still no tangible running plot, but there's a clear increase in serialization, which is a marked difference from the tepid experiments of prior seasons.
    In fact, there's definitely a sense that the show's willing to take more risks this season, and some stories here directly cover subject matter which the show was unable to in the past. For instance, the aforementioned "Molt Down" covers puberty in a very recognizable and obvious manner, while all three episodes featuring Neighsay relate to racism and xenophobia, and "The Hearth's Warming Club" explicitly presents a character as an orphan. It's not that the show has never covered these subjects in the past, but this year it seems to feel no need to hide them. A great example is "Father Knows Beast," which mines a lot of pathos out of Spike's missing parentage, not only for Spike, but also for Twilight, who tries to fill the void but worries she can't.
    Even more surprisingly, the show has returned a good deal of imagination to its worldbuilding. Whereas last season it paired simple parables with aesthetics ripped from world mythology, here it much more cleverly builds upon already established concepts to greater effect. In "Surf and/or Turf," the hippogriffs' divided identity is given a little more detail. In "The Hearth's Warming Club," holiday rituals and cultural stories from various non-pony species are explored. In "What Lies Beneath," the Tree of Harmony is revealed to be a sentient entity which is capable of learning. If there's any quality of this season which is an unambiguous leap forward, it's this, which finally puts the show in a world which lives up to its original groundwork.
    And then there's the absurd bloat of the cast, which is handled way better than it could have been. Six new characters are introduced in leading roles, and although all of their episodes are together, this ultimately bloats the main cast up to no fewer than 14 characters. That's a lot to juggle, and the show doesn't quite manage to make the balance work, but these "student six" characters get a handful of genuinely charming episodes mostly to themselves without taking attention away from the main six. Alas, this doesn't actually leave them much room to develop individually, so most of the episodes they appear in take a somewhat forceful approach to establishing their personality. "Non-Compete Clause" has Rainbow Dash and Applejack act poorly seemingly for the sole purpose of making the students look better, and "What Lies Beneath" contrives an adventure scenario to explore each character's greatest fears. I found myself rather fond of these characters, but their development could have been handled better.
    That's a recurring trend in season 8. A lot of the general trends of this season imply the show moving forward, but none of them are executed quite as well as they should have been. For instance, another character who I surprisingly enjoyed this season was Starlight Glimmer, whose caustic personality has been expanded upon while her seeming ignorance of social norms has been greatly reduced. Several episodes, especially early in the season, find her doing nothing worse than speaking somewhat tactlessly, and each of those instances is either reacted to accordingly or actually pretty understandable. But the writers can't resist having her make extreme impulsive decisions, like in "A Matter of Principals," where she casts a weird banishing spell on Discord, or "On the Road to Friendship," where she trades Trixie's cart without bothering to ask first.
    The thing is, this season has done enough work with her to make her lapses fit in with those of the mane six, and they're at least more interesting than what the mane six actually do this season. If there's anywhere that the school gimmick falls short, it's in giving the mane six something new to do, because season 8 falls back on bickering more than ever, reducing formerly nuanced relationships to irritating bickering that makes you wonder why these characters are friends in the first place. "Non-Compete Clause" and "The End in Friend" have characters act without even the slightest bit of consideration towards each other, and even that is less baffling than "Fake It 'Til You Make It" and "Yakity-Sax," which both have characters behave in ways which are completely inexplicable in the grand scheme of things. In a season which has more direct continuity than ever before, those lapses are all the more noticeable.
    There are other cases, too, which are more justifiable but still irritating. "Sound of Silence" is another episode which relies partially on bickering, and while at least those arguments are comparatively important and thematically justified, the characters still come across as overly stubborn. Meanwhile, "The Maud Couple" and "The Washouts" make heroic efforts to justify their central characters' behaviour, but can't keep those characters from seeming unreasonably insensitive. Even a genuinely funny episode like "Friendship University" is dragged down by implying that Twilight can't handle anyone making a competing school.
    The problem is implications: Pinkie Pie is implied to be so fragile that Maud needs to lie to her, and Rainbow Dash is implied to not be willing to accept Scootaloo taking any path other than what she chooses. These implications are appropriate for those episodes' morals, but they reflect poorly on those characters, and create a sense of distance which the show didn't have even as recently as season 6. These don't always feel like the same characters I fell in love with all those years ago. As with last year, I really do think the problem is that the writers come up with ideas for morals first and try to fit the characters into that, and while the results are at least somewhat less dreary this year, they still feel at best like a pale imitation of what the show is supposed to be like.
    One of the biggest tells is the rise in ambition, which after all of these years still hasn't been accompanied by an actual rise in nuance. "The Washouts," for instance, recognizes how authority figures' actions can push children away, but Rainbow Dash's actions often come across as an exaggerated caricature of such behaviour, making her less sympathetic in the process. On the other end of the spectrum, "Surf and/or Turf" has such a fluffy take on being divided between homes that it barely feels like a real problem, and doesn't resonate with any of the thornier issues it's superficially similar to. This is a regular problem with the season, and even episodes which transcend that, like "Father Knows Beast," suffer from exaggerated character behaviour and overly simplified morals. This show has proven time and time again that it can't live up to its ambitions, so it really needs to scale them back.
    Moreover, this show tends to be very predictable, so focusing too much on the big ideas doesn't offer enough to distract from that. A good example is "A Rockhoof and a Hard Place," which orients itself so completely around the main idea of Rockhoof feeling out of place in the modern world that it has nowhere to go but to repeat itself for several minutes. If the early seasons got surprising depth out of their simple themes, the new seasons aim so high that they forget that subtlety. Everything is telegraphed at the start, and then repeated several times before getting resolved in obvious fashion at the end. The worst example is perhaps "The Parent Map," which creates a mildly clever parallel and then repeats it every five seconds, because it doesn't trust kids to get the hint. A lot of the topics this show has brought up these last few years beg for a more sophisticated and poetic treatment than what they get here, but a children's show like My Little Pony might never be able to offer that.
    Still, this season was much less constrained by moralizing than last season, and some episodes clearly have other priorities. "Marks for Effort" and "Molt Down" seem way more interested in character development and creating relatable scenarios than in communicating a grand thesis, and "The Mean 6" has such a simplistic moral that it might as well not be there at all. Stuff like this makes me wonder what the show would be like if the writers approached it like a sitcom, or even a soap opera, because whenever it finally decides to relax a bit, it can still accomplish great stuff. Other episodes, like "Horse Play" and "On the Road to Friendship," find an ideal balance, telling simple stories with simple morals while spending most of their time veering from one gag to another.
    Ultimately, I guess the biggest issue is that a lot of season 8 still wasn't much fun to me. Here, all I really have to offer is raw numbers: I enjoyed 63% of episodes this season, and my average rating was 64/100. That's a huge leap over last year, but it doesn't even meet the heights of seasons 4 and 6, let alone 1 and 2. The even-numbered seasons are the good ones, but there's been diminishing returns ever since the second season, and this year, the charms simply weren't enough to overcome my increasing boredom and frustration with this show. I should be happy. It's done a lot of the things I've been demanding for years now, and even if the show's still in decline, few shows decline as ambitiously and weirdly as My Little Pony has. But watching this show has become a bit of a chore for me, and at this point it doesn't seem like that's ever going to change.
    My Little Pony season 8 was alright, but I'm starting to wonder if I'm done with this show.
    6/10
    Here's how I rank every episode of this season, with scores included beside the title:
    1. Horse Play (100)
    2. The Mean 6 (85)
    3. Marks for Effort (83)
    4. The Hearth's Warming Club (83)
    5. Molt Down (80)
    6. The Break Up Break Down (78)
    7. Road to Friendship (78)
    8. Grannies Gone Wild (75)
    9. School Daze (75)
    10. Friendship University (73)
    11. What Lies Beneath (70)
    12. Father Knows Beast (70)
    13. The Maud Couple (68)
    14. A Rockhoof and a Hard Place (65)
    15. The Washouts (65)
    16. School Raze (58)
    17. Surf and/or Turf (55)
    18. Yakity Sax (53)
    19. The End in Friend (43)
    20. A Matter of Principals (43)
    21. Sounds of Silence (43)
    22. The Parent Map (35)
    23. Fake It Til You Make it (35)
    24. Non-Compete Clause (25)
     
  3. Thrond
    I thought this series was done for.
    By August of 2017 Equestria Girls had fallen so low that new content was being cheaply outsourced. A new series was reportedly on the horizon, but one look at the so-called "Summertime Shorts," which were so awkward and poorly-made that they almost resembled a bootleg version of the series, gave little reason to hope. Surely this was a series with nothing new to say, and which the company making it had no faith in. Some moderately satisfying music videos were being released at the same time, and yet, the simple fact that these were sharing space with such cheap junk was truly dispiriting.
    The new series, which premiered on November 2nd on the "Discovery Family GO!" mobile app, didn't necessarily bring big changes to the series' aesthetic or narrative styles. In a lot of ways, it was doing the same things that My Little Pony had been doing for years. But none of it was cheaply outsourced, and moreover, one big thing was different. It would take a while to really become clear, but what the new Equestria Girls series finally brought to the table was a renewed sense of focus. All of the various identities which the series had grasped at over the years were finally synthesized into a coherent whole, there was a consistent focus on expanding the characters and the world, and best of all, this series was more consistently entertaining than either branch of My Little Pony has been in years. If it's not quite as substantial as the best My Little Pony stories, it does an incredibly satisfying job of setting the groundwork.
     

     
     
    In all fairness, many of the things this new series does were first seen in those musical "Summertime Shorts." For all their simiplicity, those offered catchy songs which expanded on these characters, pushing them in directions which are different from their pony counterparts while still being recognizable. "Monday Blues" shows Sunset and Twilight's home lives, whereas "Shake Things Up" and "Coinky-Dink World" give Applejack and Pinkie, respectively, part-time jobs which are noticeably different from those of the pony versions of these characters. Much more than even the Equestria Girls movies, these shorts began to establish how these characters live their daily lives, and how they fit into the world around them.
    Indeed, establishing those relationships is much of the appeal of the new Equestria Girls, which in its first season has found several inventive ways to fill in the details of its world while also establishing a consistent style. This new series contains both simple slice-of-life vignettes and more intense stories about magical threats, and what's most impressive about it is how cleanly the magical and mundane aspects of the series fit together. Frequently, the girls will use their superpowers for mundane purposes, and exploring the effects of Equestrian magic on the world is given equal weight to simply learning about the lives of the protagonists. Refreshingly, there's very little emphasis on monsters of the week, and in the first season, only two of the shorts address Equestrian magic in any serious way. Instead, that's mostly left for the longer "specials," which attempt to provide higher stakes and more thematic substance.
    The series is more or less broken up into three different formats: one is the regular series of 3-minute shorts, another consists of interactive videos in which you can choose the ending, and the third comprises two 45-minute specials. The regular series features the least emphasis on continuity, but it also includes most of the significant additions to the series' characters and world. One titled "A Fine Line" establishes that some characters from Friendship is Magic aren't even real in the human world, whereas another titled "Display of Affection" introduces art as one of Sunset Shimmer's interests. Other episodes will simply create brief scenarios in which the characters can bounce off of each other and show off their charms, and yet others double down on the show's magical element to create more fantastical vignettes.
     

    Perhaps the weakest entries in this series come from an ill-advised detour to a beach setting, which remains quirky and even offers a couple of genuinely funny shorts, but which also has moments of uncharacteristic cutesy pandering and generally less creative scenarios. The strongest, meanwhile, are divided in subject matter: "The Finals Countdown" and "So Much More to Me" are both incredibly catchy music numbers which have unusually solid lyrical themes for this show, whereas "A Little Birdie Told Me" and "Last Day of School" build great punchlines from these characters' personalities. The vast majority are set inside Canterlot High itself, and we even see the girls going to class every once in a while, as in the latter two aforementioned shorts. Even their band gets the occasional reference, as the short "Road Trippin' with Granny Smith" is specifically about the Rainbooms getting to a performance venue on time.
    The show keeps a very loose timeline, which certainly make all of its disparate parts feel more cohesive, but it also presents scenarios in ways which make sense for the characters and the world. Magical problems come up only when they disrupt the Girls' lives, and most of the extracurricular activities seen are either simple enough to occur on weekends or specifically take place within the school. There's also vague hints of chronology: none of the shorts following "Last Day of School" actually takes place in the school, and all of them except "So Much More to Me" focus on the girls' jobs. Despite that, it's never entirely clear whether the Girls have these jobs during the school year or just in the summer, especially given that Rarity in particular still works even before the "Last Day of School" short, to the extent of getting something of a promotion. 
     

     
    The "chose-your-ending" series, meanwhile, is genuinely surprising in how effectively it uses the gimmick. Despite featuring two of the weakest episodes in "Text Support" and "Opening Night," an unexpected number of the endings are genuinely funny or sweet, and there's even a running plot in several of them. Essentially, these chronicle a play being put on by Canterlot High, and there are even certain elements of character progression throughout, most notably in the form of Fluttershy being cast in a supporting part. Most of the main characters get their own episode, and although Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash are left out, they're regularly featured in the various endings. Even in the aforementioned weaker instalments, the characters remain their charms, let down by the quality of the jokes rather than by poor behaviour.
    The plot is kept consistent by making all of the endings essentially the same, with the only difference being how the predetermined conclusion is reached. This unfortunately doesn't leave much room for character development, which is an issue shared with the regular shorts, but there are hints of it: several shorts depict Fluttershy moving past her stage fright, while "Stressed in Show" involves a minor moral about taking a break when work is causing too much anxiety. It all comes together in a far more coherent manner than it has any right to, and the play itself is genuinely endearing both despite and because of its amateurish nature. Alas, they were released on YouTube with a significant gap in between, despite all of those elements of continuity, which suggests an lingering carelessness on the distribution end.
     

     
    The success of short-form Equestria Girls is put in stark relief with the relative awkwardness of the longer specials, which on the YouTube playlist are both cut into five different parts. Both are deeply formulaic and predictable, and both touch lightly on themes which are never sufficiently developed. Despite this, both are fairly entertaining, even if their respective attempts at seriousness get in the way. The first is titled either "Forgotten Friendship: Sunset Shimmer's Saga" or "Most Likely to Be Forgotten" depending on where you look, and it's admittedly the series' most significant attempt at emotional depth in a while. Indeed, it's a more successful stab at melodrama than either the 2017 specials or "Legend of Everfree," and it has a lot of good ideas: forcing Sunset to return to Equestria, a relatively complex antagonist, and a genuinely charming supporting role involving Trixie.
    But "Forgotten Friendship" is much too formulaic to make good on most of those ideas, and hits way too many familiar beats for its stakes to feel legitimate. It's immediately obvious that the status quo will be restored by the end, and the special is never quite insightful enough to make up for that. Nonetheless, "Forgotten Friendship" finds a lot of entertaining moments in that interim, especially from the pony Twilight Sparkle back in Equestria and from Trixie in the human world. The latter is the character who gets the most development, whereas Sunset is largely the same person at the start that she is at the end. Early on, and especially in the insufferable first part, Trixie seems to just be her usual egocentric self, but by the end she's revealed a degree of insecurity beneath her mask of bravado, which in turn makes her decision to help Sunset out all the more endearing.
     
     

     
    Indeed, if "Forgotten Friendship" has a main theme, it's about moving on from failure. Trixie manages to do that, and becomes a nicer person by finding someone who can relate, whereas the villain, named Wallflower Blush, tries to overwrite her own failures with Equestrian magic. The problem with Wallflower is that her motivations don't make much sense. Early on, they simply seem selfish, because they mostly stem from jealousy of Sunset, although there's also a weirdly contrived thread about everyone ignoring her for no apparent reason. Later, those motivations become actively confusing, as in the ending she says something vague about erasing bad social experiences, which in turn raises the question of why she got so angry at Sunset in the first place. Furthermore, Sunset doesn't bring anything new to that theme, so focusing on her generally prevents the special from exploring its more interesting ideas.
    A bigger problem is that this is a story about memory which doesn't show much of the characters' history. Wallflower's own past is decently relatable, but in the vague strokes provided, it's unable to justify her actions to the extent that would be required to make her sympathetic. Meanwhile, this is the story to finally feature Sunset's reunion with Princess Celestia, but in execution the meeting is so bland that it would have been better not to have them reunite at all. We see Celestia forgive Sunset, but of course she would. "Forgotten Friendship" barely suggests any specifics of their relationship, so the reunion is ultimately meaningless. At the very least, Sunset's behaviour here finally provides a link back to her past as a villain, but it's clearly presented as a lapse which she needs to get over, and otherwise there's nothing new that we learn about her here. Despite all that's entertaining about it, "Forgotten Friendship" tells us nothing about Sunset's past, present, or future, so what's even the point? Why did this story need to be told?
     

     
    To some extent, the same can be said about the second short, "Rollercoaster of Friendship." The difference, however, is that this second short doesn't take itself seriously at all, so even though it's even messier and less developed than its predecessor, it tends to feel a lot more like self-parody. Like "Forgotten Friendship," this one uses many of the cliches common to both My Little Pony shows, but it's also constantly mocking those same cliches, and spends way more time on simple vignettes. The result is something which would probably have been better had it just chopped the best vignettes into individual shorts, but which is nonetheless consistently funny from start to finish. Indeed, it doesn't even have an unfunny section like the first part of "Forgotten Friendship," and the results are some of the most entertaining moments in the entire series. Some of these, like Sunset and Twilight struggling with a ring toss, go as far as to codify the personalities of characters who until recently had been lacking.
    Alas, like "Forgotten Friendship," the main problem is the villain, Vignette Valencia. On the one hand, she's very funny, making frequent tossed-off references to her own villainy, and her sheer vapidity and selfishness makes her come across almost like comic relief. On the other, though, the special makes frequent toothless attempts to project deeper themes onto her, which only ever drags the story down. For instance, she makes some comments about focus testing which don't get nearly enough focus to have any bite, and the ending tries to redeem her by suggesting she'd be a perfectly decent person if only she had real friends. Even if there's some truth in that, that ending is the first time Vignette shows any deeper motivation than pure selfishness, and the special largely fails to explore her past in any detail. She works best as a joke character, and the special would have done much better if it had somehow turned her reformation into a joke as well.
     

     
    Meanwhile, there's a very simple story about Applejack clashing with a very stressed out Rarity over weird things happening at the park, and while this is generally handled as well as it could be, it's too simplistic to be particularly compelling. Applejack's envy of Rarity isn't particularly sympathetic, and is drowned out by her genuine concern for her friends anyway, whereas Rarity's stress is frequently amusing but not given nearly as much focus or internal conflict as Applejack. Neither of the two attempt to listen to the other, and while that does make sense, it ultimately robs the story of nuance which might have made it more interesting. Nevertheless, we actually do learn more about Applejack and Rarity here than we did about Sunset in "Forgotten Friendship," even if it's just a little more detail on their respective efforts at career advancement, so that's nice.
    It's also a good example of how these shorts have given Sunset Shimmer more of a personality. Despite being arguably the most appealing part of Equestria Girls in the past, she's often been somewhat bland, as until the new series she simply wasn't given enough in the way of flaws or interests. The new series does a lot to fill in the blanks: we see her paint in "Display of Affection" and draw in "Super Squad Goals," which suggests that she's artistically inclined, which strikes an interesting contrast with the technological and scientific focus occasionally hinted at in prior materials. Meanwhile, "Rollercoaster of Friendship" finally codifies her anger issues, which had been vaguely implied ever since Friendship Games, and adds the new dimension that she has a mean competitive streak. All of these serve to give her a unique identity in the cast, which is impressive for a character who until recently was little more than a watered-down version of Twilight Sparkle.
     

    Speaking of which, Twilight consistently acts more like her pony self now than the doormat we saw in Legend of Everfree and "Dance Magic." Although the natural penchant for leadership is absent, all of her other qualities are evident, and even with a slightly more passive personality, she's still recognizable as Twilight Sparkle, which I couldn't always say about her in the past. It's fun enough to see her constantly producing new robotics projects, but we also see her obsessive love of learning and her tendency towards anxiety. Making her more closely resemble her pony counterpart is a good call for the series, as the characters of Friendship is Magic are strong enough to carry the show on their own, and keeping them allows the new series to import their charms from the original show. There are some differences, but they're all explicable when the girls are viewed as younger, less mature versions of the same people. Equestria Girls, then, has all of the advantages of a prequel with all the freedom of a reboot.
    Even some secondary characters get fleshed out a little more: Microchips, a random geek with bit parts in the earlier movies, demonstrates a quirky bravado in a couple supporting roles; Maud Pie has a short largely focused on her, and is as delightful as ever; Zephyr Breeze shows up on a couple occasions with his winningly obnoxious personality still intact. The latter two in particular highlight what I think is one of the most appealing parts of Equestria Girls: seeing what characters from Friendship is Magic would be like in a more mundane scenario. The current series has proved itself very willing to balance that with further development of the musical and magical aspects of the franchise, and that's why it seems so confident in its own identity.
    The new Equestria Girls is hardly perfect, and it's not yet substantial enough to attract new fans, but it's as charming as My Little Pony has been in ages. If Equestria Girls originated on shaky foundations, the new series finds a fresh identity for it without betraying what made the original series so special, and it also sets itself up with limitless potential. In a lot of ways, it's the fresh restart for these characters which Friendship is Magic has been desperately in need of for years now, and the short format works wonders for creating charming and funny scenarios without the burden of moralizing. Fans of the series' magical and dramatic elements will find something here, but fans of more mundane and silly stories have plenty to love as well. This is a series which has finally found itself. 
  4. Thrond
    This list has been sitting on my drive, first draft done and awaiting revisions, for well over a year now. Since then, I promised not only to publish the list, but to expand it all the way up to 26 to fill a whole season's worth of episodes, which only led to further delays. Part of the reason was that I hadn't seen several of my favourite episodes in years, and wished to binge the whole show in order to confirm my opinions and see if anything else threatened the top spots. What I want from My Little Pony has changed significantly over time, and I believe my favourite episodes are reflective of that. As such, I believe that assembling this list can help explain why I love the show so much. Now, if the show really does end after season 9, I'll be writing a new list before too long, and maybe it'll be completely different, but nonetheless, here are my top 26 favourite episodes of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, in chronological order.
    To start with, here's a few ground rules:
    1. I'm limiting the list to the first seven seasons, simply to be fair to episodes I've only given one viewing, as season 8 is currently underway. With that said, if I did include season 8, the delightful "Horse Play" would absolutely be included.
    2. To match my "whole season" gimmick, two-parters are being counted as two episodes.
    S01E23: The Cutie Mark Chronicles
    written by M.A. Larson

    In the show's chronology, "The Cutie Mark Chronicles" is the first time we learned about the protagonists' pasts, and we've rarely gained a window into it since. While this episode is little more than a weakly-organized string of vignettes, the individual vignettes are individually delightful, showing us how each of the mane six received their cutie marks in incredibly charming fashion. Each flashback has its own solid emotional underpinning, and moreover, they're able to successfully condense the show's early strengths into brief bursts of charm, with each vignette successfully encompasses what their character stands for. Rainbow's is about the joy of accomplishment, Rarity's is about finding beauty below the surface, Applejack's is about staying true to your roots, etc. Add on a bunch of funny dialogue and you've got a real winner.
    S01E25: Party of One
    written by Meghan McCarthy
    For the most part, "Party of One" is simply a particularly strong example of the show's greatest strengths: it's colourful, upbeat, and joyously silly, and it's all centred around an obvious but solid moral about jumping to conclusions. But although the misunderstandings which form the main plot are ultimately predictable, they're amped up for maximum absurdity here, and even though Pinkie spends much of the episode in varying states of displeasure, she remains entirely silly. This episode is mainly remembered for the surprisingly dark scene of Pinkie having an apparent psychotic break, but that scene is simply one expression of how this episode successfully delves into Pinkie's insecurities and anxieties. Excepting that one scene, it's brilliant in balancing the show's usual silliness with that deeper character exploration. This show is at its best when it centres around that sort of anxiety, and here is one of the first times that it hit just the right formula.
    S01E26: The Best Night Ever
    written by Amy Keating Rogers
    By some margin the best finale of the entire show, "The Best Night Ever" is filled with many of the show's funniest and most memorable scenes to date. Like "The Cutie Mark Chronicles," it's split among six different storylines, this time without much connective tissue until they all intertwine in delightfully chaotic fashion. By touching upon each of the main six's interests and giving each of them solid goals, it serves as the culmination of everything the first season had established. More importantly, the episode is comprised almost entirely of one memorable scene after another, and not only does that make this one of the most entertaining episodes of the entire show, it also allows for retroactive emotional resonance as these characters have grown and come to achieve more of their goals. Meanwhile, the final lesson - that a bad experience can be made better by sharing it with good friends - is lovely, and provides a perfect summary of the whole season. At the start, they were complete strangers, but now they're as thick as thieves.
    S02E03: Lesson Zero
    written by Meghan McCarthy
    "Lesson Zero" is why Twilight is my favourite character. It's not her brightest moment, but just like "Party of One" was for Pinkie, it remains the clearest representation of her own anxieties. Perfectionism defines her just as much as intelligence and nerdiness, and while it's exaggerated here, fear of failure is a universal concern. Twilight's behaviour is genuinely creepy, which remains unusual territory for this show, but it's also really funny, and much more importantly, the show always takes her feelings seriously, no matter how strangely she acts. The lengths Twilight goes to are hard to relate to, but her motivations are always sympathetic, even when they're not enough to justify her actions. This episode is great in part because its central gimmick is so strange and surprising, and in part because it's filled with memorable scenes, but most of all because it balances all the cartoonish nonsense with real emotions. If My Little Pony is an exaggeration of reality, that doesn't make it any less effective of a mirror.
    S02E07: May the Best Pet Win!
    written by Charlotte Fullerton
    Rainbow Dash has never been more charismatic than she is in "May the Best Pet Win!," an absolutely joyous episode with a rapid-fire barrage of great jokes and some of the show's best action scenes. This is an episode where Rainbow makes movie sound effects just for her own amusement, and there's a sincerity to its energy and constant forward momentum which is simply irresistible. Of course Rainbow would set up a pet race to decide which animal she'll adopt. Of course she'll whistle "Flight of the Valkyries." Of course those are things she'd do, and the simple quirks of the various pet competition are immensely charming in and of themselves, but best of all, this episode retains Rainbow's boisterous personality without having it lapse into insensitivity. She comes to recognize the value of persistence, but she doesn't need to make some tremendous mistake to do it, and that context is perfect for such an upbeat episode.
    S02E14: The Last Roundup
    written by Amy Keating Rogers
    Such a strong example of season 2's nuance is "The Last Roundup" that it's easy to overlook just how entertaining it is. It's primary strength is gooey, sincere melodrama, with particularly deep characterization for Applejack, but it's also got a lot of great humour, especially from the always reliable Pinkie Pie. Rainbow Dash demonstrates a fair bit of depth as well, and while other characters don't get as much time to shine, everyone has one or two fun moments, and the myth that Applejack is boring is thoroughly debunked here by her relatively complex motivations in staying away from town. Sure, they're ultimately good intentions, but she's still hurting others in the process. Episodes like this which balance pathos and depth with humour and the show's beloved innocence are exactly why it became so popular in the first place.
    S02E18: Read It and Weep
    written by Cindy Morrow
    From the very start, Rainbow Dash's bravado was tied to her insecurity, but "Read It and Weep" is perhaps the most direct expression of that dichotomy. Her primary lesson here, which is coming to terms with liking something that doesn't fit her image, is something that's particularly relatable for some of the show's male fans, but it's also just a great moral in general, and moreover the various scenes of trying to hide her reading add to her depth as a character. Here, her insistence on "coolness" is matched only by her fear of others seeing the cracks in it. On top of that, this episode features a genuinely exciting adventure story, with a solid riff on Indiana Jones which perfectly fits Rainbow's personality. Sometimes, getting into a new activity just requires finding the right entry point, and if your friends are any good they will never judge you for the things you love.
    S02E22: Hurricane Fluttershy
    written by Cindy Morrow
    Gooey melodrama of the highest caliber, elevated by deep character relationships and a strong, emotional plotline. Every note of "Hurricane Fluttershy" is in the right place, and befitting an episode for the most fragile of the mane six, this is an especially sensitive episode, demonstrating sympathetic anxiety on Fluttershy's part and an impressive level of understanding from Rainbow Dash, all in favour of some of the most satisfying emotional highs in the entire show. Fluttershy's stories often revolve around overcoming some anxiety, but here it's specifically linked to bullying in her past, which in turn makes her journey to overcome it assist the struggling Ponyville weather team all the more delightful. The main conflict here is just impersonal enough to have massive stakes, but the majority of the episode is focused directly on Fluttershy's personal journey, and every second of the episode is working towards a common goal. There's an endearing simplicity to the whole thing, but it's the sincerity of the execution which really sells it.
    S03E06: Sleepless in Ponyville
    written by Corey Powell
    The first of three solo episodes focused on each of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, "Sleepless in Ponyville" succeeds most of all in how it takes Scootaloo's childish concerns seriously. Particularly significant is how this serves to deepen her as a character without leaning too much on her apparent wing disability. Like Rainbow Dash, she puts on a brave face to hide her anxieties, but Rainbow Dash knows that being brave doesn't mean you're not afraid. Hiding your fears to impress others is indeed a highly relatable concept, and as childish as Scootaloo's approach is, watching her learn to accept her fear is deeply charming. That she finally allows herself to show vulnerability to her idol is a genuinely moving character beat, and their relationship is truly adorable. This episode is as charming and funny as the best of the show, but it's that strong emotional core which really sells it.
    S03E07: Wonderbolts Academy
    written by Merriwether Williams
    Rainbow Dash has my favourite character arc in the whole series, and this is her last focus episode to get the balance between sensitivity and attitude correct. As interested as she is in showing off, she's still a sweet pony at heart, and "Wonderbolts Academy" stands out above all else for Rainbow's expressiveness, which enhances her story by wordlessly expressing everything she feels about what's happening around her. However disappointed Dash might be by becoming a wingpony, she still takes the role very seriously, because that's what's expected of her, and she only gives up when her values are directly offended. It's the best showcase for one of the best characters in the show, and it has a great antagonist too. Lightning Dust is as charismatic as Dash herself, and is one of the rare villains to seem genuinely remorseful at the end, providing yet more nuance to an already excellent episode.
    S04E08: Rarity Takes Manehattan
    written by Dave Polsky
    During my first few years with the show, I wouldn't have called Rarity my favourite of the main cast, and that was primarily due to her penchant for seemingly selfish behaviour. "Rarity Takes Manehattan" is the point where this changed, placing her generosity on full display by providing a profound challenge to everything Rarity values. The episode's charms all come down to her positive attitude and abundance of personality, and having that personality spun into something much more altruistic and positive is a refreshing change of pace from her earlier depictions. Providing a foil for Rarity's generosity in the form of a thieving rival allows for a genuinely powerful thematic conflict, where Rarity is forced to evaluate the value of such generosity in a cold world, and while her affirmative answer is inevitable, this episode makes her journey to reclaim those values convincing, and in both that and its plentiful superficial charms, it's absolutely irresistible.
    S04E12: Pinkie Pride
    written by Amy Keating Rogers
    Those essential challenges to characters' core values, as seen in "Rarity Takes Manehattan," were a recurring theme in the show's fourth season, and "Pinkie Pride" is undoubtedly the best take on them, an effervescent, infinitely joyous explosion of energy which just happens to feature deceptive depth. Even without the cameo from the one and only "Weird" Al Yankovic, the heights of absurdity this reaches are so inventive, so energetic, and just so happy that they'd still be utterly delightful, and better yet, they're paired with a meaningful bit of introspection from Pinkie Pie. Here, she lets her pride as the town's "#1 party pony" get away from her, and it's made clear how that pride in her status is intertwined with her need for approval, but also how it comes at the expense of the joy she so often strives to bring to her friends. You can never make someone happy by only thinking of yourself, and what makes this episode great is that it conveys that theme without making Pinkie Pie seem too selfish.
    S04E19: For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils
    written by Dave Polsky
    After "Sleepless in Ponyville," both Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom would receive episodes with similar takes on different themes, and of these, Sweetie Belle's is arguably the most well-rounded, with the best blend of moralizing and humour, and the most significant role for Luna to boot. Because Sweetie Belle is acting out of jealousy, Luna has a stronger connection to her than she had to the other two, and like the earlier episode, this episode boasts some fantastic nightmare imagery, albeit of an entirely different kind. Where Scootaloo was afraid of losing respect because of fear, Sweetie's problem is instead that she can't imagine the world outside of her own perspective. Her view of her sister is skewed by what she has and hasn't seen, and while this is what causes her to retaliate, she's also a sweet kid who never really wanted to hurt anyone, as made clear when she solves her own mistake. The Scootaloo episode established the winning formula of these CMC solo episodes, but "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils" perfected it.
    S04E20: Leap of Faith
    written by Josh Haber
    The near-universal excellence of these "key" episodes from season 4 does a good job of representing what the show did best in this era. If "Pinkie Pride" had the best balance of charm and depth, "Leap of Faith" instead veers further in the direction of nuance, providing arguably the most meaningful challenge of the whole lot. Here, Applejack finds herself lying to make her family happy, despite the fact that she's enabling Flim and Flam to sell literal snake oil. Lying, something that Applejack has always been opposed to, suddenly seems like a necessity, and while she remains doubtful throughout, that genuine uncertainty provides this episode with a degree of thematic power beyond even what the aforementioned "Rarity Takes Manehattan" and "Pinkie Pride" conjure up. If it's not as energetic as those other two episodes, that's not for a lack of charm and humour, which comes in large part from the amusingly smarmy Flim Flam Brothers and the always welcome antics of Applejack's family. Here's one of the few times that the show has managed to balance genuinely mature storytelling with its original charms.
    S04E25-26: Twilight's Kingdom, Parts 1 and 2
    written by Meghan McCarthy
    The show has never seen a change as significant as Twilight Sparkle becoming a princess, and many of her appearances in the show's fourth season struggled to come to terms with it. The finale, "Twilight's Kingdom," is widely remembered for its intensity and immense scale, but as appealing as it is simply as a spectacle, the episode's true strength comes in the smaller stuff. Twilight's coronation was a sudden and confusing event, and here the show acknowledges that, presenting Twilight being just as confused and adrift as you'd expect someone with such a spontaneous life change to be. The threat to all of Equestria isn't nearly as interesting as Twilight's internal struggle to find herself, and Tirek is such a great villain not just because of his menace but also because he's a perfect foil for Twilight's values. Season 4 spent so much time on the reiteration of values these characters already held, but only here is that intertwined with meaningful character development, as Twilight finds the reason for her coronation in the things she was doing all along.
    S05E11: Bloom and Gloom
    written by Josh Haber
    On one hand, "Bloom and Gloom" might be the least subtle of the CMC solo episodes which were such a highlight of the show's middle seasons. All of these episodes are defined by their nightmare imagery, but both "Sleepless in Ponyville" and "For Whom the Sweetie Belle Toils" save their nightmares for key climactic moments. "Bloom and Gloom," meanwhile, consists entirely of nightmares, surreal images floating in and out of existence but always representing sympathetic anxieties. The flow of events, which is only as choppy as Apple Bloom's emotional state, is exactly what dreams should look like in this show, and while the barrage of visual metaphors is always emotionally powerful, it's also surreal enough and treated with enough levity to be genuinely entertaining. All of these key concepts are tied together in one of the show's most profound morals: you may feel like your anxieties are absurd, but you're not alone. That this episode is so profoundly empathetic as well as clever and humorous marks it in my eyes as still one of the most impressive things in the show's entire middle period.
    S05E11: Party Pooped
    written by Nick Confalone
    In a show which doesn't always portray non-pony cultures in the most sensitive of lights, the cultural relativism at the core of "Party Pooped" is a welcome breath of fresh air. Here is an episode about respecting and accommodating cultural differences, all wrapped up in the form of a silly story about yaks smashing things. That remains unique within the show, and indeed, the specific form of humour utilized here is something not quite like any other episode. The quirky diplomatic focus of the story provides a peculiar undercurrent of anxiety to even the funniest jokes, and there's a unique thrill in seeing these characters freak out over new responsibilities which they're not even remotely qualified for. But that unusual tension only works because of just how clever the jokes actually are here, and the unique blend of quirky visual humour - a train being stopped by handful of grazing sheep, for instance - with the surprisingly high stakes is a joy not quite like anything else in the series.
    S05E15: Rarity Investigates!
    written by Joanna Lewis & Kristine Songco
    Currently my favourite comfort food episode, "Rarity Investigates!" is one of the rare My Little Pony episodes where every joke lands, which is in large part due to an inspired combination of characters, gimmick, and premise. Rarity and Rainbow Dash are a particularly underutilized pairing in this show, but here they have as much immediate chemistry as many of their more common counterparts. As if to make up for lost time, their early scenes before the plot kicks in are some of the most charming scenes of friendship from the entire show, and while their dynamic becomes more tense when the conflict is introduced, they're simply two of the show's most charismatic characters. What Rainbow and Rarity have in common is ambition, and that underlines their relationship here without ever being stated aloud. The mystery may be obvious, but it serves the core theme of trusting your friends when they trust you, and the episode is just so jam-packed with funny gags that it's hard to resist.
    S06E01-02The Crystalling, Parts 1 and 2
    written by Josh Haber
    "The Crystalling," which opened the show's sixth season, is in many ways a departure from the show's usual season premiere format. Rather than attempt to somehow provide even darker themes and even more exciting spectacle, it instead shifts its focus smaller, spending its entire first half on low-stakes slice-of-life hijinks. Not only is this a refreshing change of pace for this show, but the emphasis on insecurity, not only from the newly-reformed Starlight but also from her childhood friend Sunburst is as sympathetic and relatable as the show's earlier peaks, and provides a conduit for some of the show's more mature themes. Even when the episode dials up the spectacle in its second half, it's a simple, impersonal backdrop to Starlight's and Sunburst's issues, allowing some of the show's best character work to play out undiluted by the nonsense which plagues too many of the other two-parters. And it also has an infant with alarming, unmanageable superpowers, so that's a plus.
    S06E08: A Hearth's Warming Tale
    written by Michael Vogel
    A Christmas Carol has been done several times before, but never has it been submerged in this particular world, and I'd be surprised if it has been told in this particular way. "A Hearth's Warming Tale" already gets a lot of points for being one of the prettiest episodes of the whole show, and it earns even more for its phenomenal songs, but its most significant achievement is how it bends the source material. Greed never plays a part in the story, and instead, the Scrooge analogue is a metaphor for Starlight: a pony whose values have been twisted by a problematic childhood and who makes the wrong decisions for the wrong reasons, but means well enough to change. The sheer universal resonance which is rung out of this variation is enough to make Starlight's own backstory obselete, and in a show which is far too often risk-averse even in its original stories, this distinctive take on a classic tale is a welcome surprise.
    S06E09: The Saddle Row Review
    written by Nick Confalone
    Part of the tragedy of My Little Pony's safe storytelling is that these characters are all strong enough to withstand any sort of structural experimentation. "The Saddle Row Review" proves that with its unique mockumentary gimmick, which not only frames some of the show's best jokes in an unusual context, but which also allows for a refreshing touch of modernity even beyond what's seen elsewhere in the later seasons. Here, the show indulges its most sitcom-esque instincts, and allows for strong examples of character comedy which would so rarely be seen elsewhere in the show, such as Pinkie Pie passing off a large restaurant bill to the anonymous interviewer. It's this willingness to experiment with genre and structure which makes "The Saddle Row Review" so funny, and this show would do well to try this kind of thing more often.
    S06E19: The Fault in Our Cutie Marks
    written by Ed Valentine
    Dramatic irony forms the backbone of "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks," the show's most adorably dramatic episode to date, and the characters know it. From the very start, the premise - a griffon wants to have a cutie mark, but only ponies can get cutie marks - can only end poorly, and the episode's success is playing on that not for comedy but for drama. Levity instead comes from the chipper attitude of Gabby, whose sweetness and enthusiasm contrasts powerfully with the Cutie Mark Crusaders' growing desperation not to let her down. It's a perfect embodiment of the show's optimistic atmosphere, where everyone involved is genuinely sweet and only wants the best for the others, and that makes the looming spectre of disappointment all the more concerning. In the end, when the episode subverts expectations and goes out on a high note, it could not possibly be more satisfying.
    S06E24: Top Bolt
    written by Joanna Lewis & Kristine Songco
    A recurring feature of the show's later years is various attempts to position the protagonists into mentorship roles. These stories centre not around the mane six or Cutie Mark Crusaders learning their own lesson, but on them trying to teach a lesson to someone else, and how well it works is dependent on how good those secondary characters are. "Top Bolt" is the absolute best expression of this formula, with profound nuance from its new characters and even a smaller lesson for the old ones. Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle make a funnier pair here than ever, their contrasting personalities never getting in the way of their easy chemistry, and the new characters immediately show themselves to be among the most charming and three-dimensional in the show's entire run. It's fundamentally a story about the lies which keep us going, and how to persevere once they can no longer be maintained, and that strong theme resonates even as the episode sticks to silly banter and sight gags. If the show is gonna keep pushing the main characters into these roles, this is what it should look like.
    S07E03: A Flurry of Emotions
    written by Sammie Crowley & Whitney Wetta
    If there's one thing that was missing in the years since Twilight became an alicorn, it was an idea of what those new responsibilities would do to her already severe perfectionism. In its own way, "A Flurry of Emotions" depicts that perfectionism even better than "Lesson Zero," as it grants her more altruistic motivations and less horrifying behaviour while remaining nearly as funny. Here, she wants to be the best aunt possible and the best princess possible, but never does that intention seem selfish, and it's accompanied by the dorky enthusiastic charm which had been lacking from so many of her recent focus episodes. Meanwhile, baby Flurry Heart is made somehow even more charming, as not only does she retain her infantile silliness, but it's been combined with genuine sweetness, albeit from a very immature point of view. Together, Twilight and Flurry Heart are almost unbearably cute, and that cuteness is delivered in the form of numerous inventive sight gags and the occasional sweet cutaway to Flurry's adorable parents. It's an exceptional delight which proves the show still has some juice left even after all these years.
    My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic isn't what I would consider a show of consistent quality, and some episodes are certainly more entertaining than others. Still, even within a single show's run, I maintain that "good" and "bad" are largely a matter of taste, and the above are simply what I consider to be the most enjoyable episodes of this show. Perhaps you might have different choices, and if so, I'd be delighted to hear your reasoning in the comments below. 
     
  5. Thrond
    Melodrama is one of My Little Pony's foundational blocks. So many of the most emotionally affecting episodes of the show are melodramatic in nature, from "The Last Roundup" to "Hurricane Fluttershy" to "Wonderbolts Academy." But starting in season 5, the show's most dramatic episodes have become increasingly grand and pretentious in nature. Even the most naturalistic episodes of this time, "Amending Fences" and "The Mane Attraction," strained to have a greater point and to reflect the show at large, and then there are episodes like "A Royal Problem": tense, overstuffed, high-stakes stories which bear more resemblance to the two-parters than to the melodrama episodes of old. 

    Until now, the only episode like "Hurricane Fluttershy" in the past few seasons was "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks," that adorable, genuinely moving highlight of season 6. While "The Perfect Pear" has baggage which prevents it from reaching that level, it's every bit as emotionally effective in its own melodramatic, gooey way. It avoids any tough questions and builds on elements which the show never properly established, but goddamit, I wish the show were always this sweet and emotional and adorable. If "A Flurry of Emotions" represents half of what the show has been missing in recent years, "The Perfect Pear" represents the other half.



    When Apple Bloom brings home some pear jam for breakfast, Applejack and Big Mac immediately seek to hide it due to the longstanding feud between the Apple and Pear families. After some discussion, they then set out to ask Goldie Delicious, the Apple family historian, about the cause of the apple feud, and in the process learn a little about their parents, an Apple and a Pear who fell in love despite their family differences. Curious, they then seek out other family friends to learn the rest of their parents' story.

    The obvious question is whether this episode actually reveals why the Apple parents have been absent for the entire show. Unfortunately, "The Perfect Pear" never answers that question, and somewhat distractingly attempts to derive a emotional power from the parents' absence in spite of this. The dialogue softly implies that the parents might be deceased, but the show continues to be too cowardly to explicitly reveal that, and exactly when and how the Apple parents died is unclear. The way Applejack & co. talk makes me think even they don't know what happened to their parents, but again, the episode refuses to explicitly state that despite gaining a lot of its emotional power from the suggestion. Am I overestimating how much little kids can handle this? Death is a fact of life; would it not be nice for this show to try helping its target demographic with that?

    It's also distracting that this is yet another season 7 episode which attempts to derive emotion from something which was never established. Learning about their parents seems to mean a lot to the Apple kids, but exactly what is left up to guess work, because it's not even clear if they ever knew their parents, let alone for how long or in what capacity. Thankfully, the simple fact of the parents' absence is enough to carry many of the emotional beats, and a lot of this is down to the strength of the dialogue and performances. Nearly every character in the framing story speaks with evocative tones of affection and wistfulness, and the Apples add a slight hint of melancholy as well. I usually don't emphasize the quality of the acting, as this show always excels in that regard, but the comparatively muted and nuanced performances here add a lot to the episode's emotional power.

    The flashback structure of the episode is entertaining in its own right, as it allows the show to deepen secondary characters and make its world feel more lived in. Most of the ponies the Apples talk to are new to this episode, but even these new faces expand the show's world, and we also get to learn a little more about Mrs. Cake as well. Mayor Mare also appears, and her part of the story makes her feel slightly more integrated into the show, but it doesn't reveal much about her. It's also just nice to finally know who Applejack's parents were, even if we still don't know much about why they're not around and may very well never know.

    A lot of the episode's emotional beats are found in the main story between the Apple parents, namely their father Bright Mac and their mother Pear Butter. This story ultimately comes down to a much happier version of Romeo & Juliet, but the characters are deeply charming and their plight is easy to sympathise with. The flashback story has an abbreviated structure, and by necessity it jumps from beat to beat, but that just enhances its emotional pull. Both parents are only lightly characterized, but they're distinctive enough, and the flashback structure gives the spotlight to their situations. We see how heartfelt their love is, and we see how they're both torn between love and family. Pear Butter's ultimate choice to stay with the Apples is clearly a difficult one, and that's exactly what makes it so heart-wrenching.

    And it's just so sweet. The episode's structure carries that wistful tone from the performances, only showing us major highlights of Bright Mac and Pear Butter's romance, and while it's cliched and cheesy, I'm just a sucker for this kind of stuff, and it's structured perfectly here. We see a few small moments where they're starting to get together, then a song abbreviates their growing relationship, and then one small gesture represents its peak right before Pear Butter's father, Grand Pear, announces his intention to move to Vanhoover. It makes for a very mushy story, to be sure, but it's also an effective one, and I'm not gonna lie, I cried at the end. It's also enhanced by the framing story, which is triggered by Grand Pear returning to Ponyville to sell his wares and ends with him visiting Sweet Apple Acres to make amends. I can't discern an explicit moral from any of this, but it's all just so emotional!

    "The Perfect Pear" is irresistible on a level with some of the show's best episodes. It suffers from vagueness in certain areas, and I wish it had answered more questions about the Apple parents, but what we've got is adorable, moving, and surprisingly deep between the lines. The best moments here are small ones which only enhance the subtle melancholy of the framing story, and there's a powerful message about moving on after tragedy if you're willing to read that much into it. I still wish this episode based its emotions on something more tangible, and its refusal to address what happened to Applejack's parents feels cowardly, but even as is, this is easily one of the best this season and is an absolute delight from start to finish. We just don't get episodes like this that often anymore.

    Score:
    Entertainment: 10/10
    Characters: 9/10
    Themes: 6/10
    Story: 7/10
    Overall: 83/100   You can find more like this at my offsite blog. 
  6. Thrond

    Quick update

    By Thrond,

    At the end of my "Shadow Play" review, I promised:
    1. a season 7 wrap-up review,
    2. a top 10 Worst Episodes list,
    3. a top 26 Best Episodes list.
    I've not gotten around to the latter two yet, and for that I'm sorry; unless there's particular demand, I've decided not to go forward with the "Worst Episodes" list, as I'm tired of my own negativity towards this show. Such a list would probably look something like this:
     
    "Look Before You Sleep" "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well" "Games Ponies Play" "Magical Mystery Cure" "Twilight Time" "Somepony to Watch Over Me" "Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep?" "The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows" "What About Discord?" "Hard to Say Anything"'
    Although, were I willing to stretch beyond the show, Equestria Girls's "Mirror Magic" would absolutely make the cut. In any case. I still want to publish the favourite episodes list, but I haven't seen much of the show in a couple years, and my tastes have surely changed since then. No date promised, but it's still coming; in the I'll update my list of episode scores as I work through the rest of the show, concluding once I've rated every episode. 
    Thank you for your patience. 
  7. Thrond

    Season 7 reflections.

    By Thrond,

    This show needs direction.
    I've been saying that for a while. The show has become increasingly scattershot and inconsistent since as far back as season 5, and nobody involved seems to actually understand what to do with the main cast. These past three seasons have all been heavily reliant on new characters, heavy-handed moralizing, and various other crutches - anything to give them an excuse to not actually consider what direction the main characters should go in.
    This show has never been serialized, but there used to be certain recurrent themes and clear character arcs. I don't think that's been the case for a while now, and the show has been flailing since season 5. In season 5, the writers tried to compensate by straining for pathos every other episode. Season 6 softened the blow with an endless supply of freewheeling experimentation. But there's a sense of obligation to season 7, like the writers are simply going down a checklist, and even the best episodes ride on the back of easy premises and filled-in blanks. Far too often, characters act as vessels for the moral rather than the other way around, and the show's desperate efforts to do anything other than develop the main characters are more feeble here than ever before.
    What the My Little Pony crew forgets is that growing up doesn't mean throwing away the past entirely. The newer seasons are much more intricate than the earlier seasons, but this hasn't always been a change for the better, and few of these new writers seem to understand how to make these characters sing.
    To start off, let's return to a point I made halfway through the season, back in May: is the show still single-minded and stodgy? Honestly, I'm not sure I'd say that. There are definitely some episodes in the back half which indulge in digressions - "Not Asking for Trouble," "Triple Threat," "Once Upon a Zeppelin," et cetera. - and even though there's still a fair few which are a little stiff (notably, "Daring Done?" and "Marks and Recreation"), the second half is much looser, if still not especially satisfying. The show is still excessively moralistic, however, and alongside the aforementioned stiff episodes, even more humorous episodes like "A Health of Information" and "Once Upon a Zeppelin" are tediously insistent on expressing their main theme.
    But I think a bigger problem I've seen this season is that the show doesn't work very hard to justify its story beats. One of the worst examples is still "A Royal Problem," which is heavily reliant on the notion that Celestia and Luna's arguments are a danger to Equestria, but which never gives us any reason to accept this as true. But this is also a problem nearly every time the show introduces a new character. In "To Change a Changeling," why should I care about Pharynx returning? In "Marks and Recreation," what possible reason could I have to be invested in Rumble? Season 6 frequently gave texture and nuance to its characters, but in season 7, every new face follows the same formula: an attitude, a belief, and a connection to ground that belief, and these traits are frequently revealed through verbal exposition.
    Pharynx is aggressive. Pharynx believes the Hive needs better security. Pharynx, we are soon told, used to protect Thorax when they were young. Similarly, Rumble is charismatic. Rumble hates cutie marks. Rumble, we are later told, actually just wants to be like his brother. It's a formula which clearly wants to evoke sympathy, but which relies too much on exposition and not enough on character development. To be fair, though, season 7 has far fewer new characters than other recent seasons, and in some cases even adds a little more detail to characters we're familiar with. "To Change a Changeling" adds detail to Thorax's past, "Triple Threat" makes Ember significantly more distinctive than she was prior, and "A Royal Problem" does a great job of making the princess sisters feel human.
    Further, half of the new characters it does introduce tie into one of the season's greatest strengths, which is developing the mane six's family members. None of "Parental Glideance," "The Perfect Pear," or "Once Upon a Zeppelin" are perfect, but all three excel in the offbeat charms they give their protagonists. "Glideance" and "Zeppelin," in particular, depict their respective new faces in unexpected and distinctive ways, and while "Perfect Pear" is a bit blander, it does a great job of crafting endearingly decent individuals with sympathetic issues. Even outside of the new characters, Maud has her best appearance yet in "Rock Solid Friendship," and both Cadance and Shining Armour have their moments in the aforementioned "Zeppelin" as well as the glorious "A Flurry of Emotions."
    The humour is also a bit less strained in the latter half, but that's in part because many episodes simply have less of it. Some episodes, like "Fame and Misfortune" and "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You," heavily base their humour on scenarios which the audience is expected to find inherently funny, and others like "Campfire Tales," "Marks and Recreation," and "Uncommon Bond" simply don't have that many gags to begin with. There's also a higher quantity of genuinely funny episodes, like "Discordant Harmony" and "A Health of Information," but in some cases even these are offset by narrative clumsiness. "To Change a Changeling" is brought down by a directionless storyline, whereas "Secrets and Pies" is fundamentally asinine in ways which lessen the fun somewhat.
    Worse still is the show's increasing focus on dreary, unimaginative world building. As buildup to its finale, season 7 focused on characters called the "Pillars," but each of these are taken from simplistic tales inspired heavily by real-world mythology and grafted haphazardly onto the show's existing mythos. This is the closest the show has come to outright serialization, but we barely get to know the "Pillars," and their relationship with the mane six is generally superficial and impersonal. "Shadow Play" is arguably the show's least interesting finale, and while a lot of that comes from it rehashing the same formula beats established back in the early seasons, it also relates to an overly serious emphasis on the increasingly dull setting.
    At the very least, these stories are confined to three episodes, but they also speak to the show's unfortunate focus on predictable, externally driven conflicts. While there are still some gems like "A Health of Information" and "Once Upon a Zeppelin" where conflicts are derived from insecurities or character flaws, the show hasn't let up on narratives driven entirely by new characters or even faceless mobs. "Fame and Misfortune" is up there with "Fluttershy Leans In" as one of the most blatant examples, but other episodes like "Daring Done?" and "Marks and Recreation" suffer from the same problem. And while the formula beats are less transparent in these episodes, they still don't deviate far from what we've come to expect from this show.
    A lot of these impersonal episodes star the mane six, and those mane six episodes which do have some internal conflict tend to be simplistic or obvious. Consider, for instance, "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You," which involves nothing deeper than Rarity accidentally damaging her mane. Sure, it completely throws off her plans, but the episode is still focused enough on the damaged mane that Rarity's insecurity feels banal. Similarly, "Secrets and Pies" tells such a juvenile story that it makes everyone involved feel uncharacteristically immature. Even in episodes with a little more oomph, the writing can be awkward. "A Health of Information" makes Fluttershy weirdly hyper and Twilight weirdly relaxed, and while "Once Upon a Zeppelin" features some of the season's best characterization, Twilight's entire role in that episode is restricted to serving the moral.
    On the other hand are Spike and Starlight. The former is fairly underrepresented, but his appearances are mostly solid, and he's sympathetic in his only focus episode. Starlight, on the other hand, continues to lack distinguishing traits. The best I can figure out is that she's vaguely sarcastic, emotionally somewhat immature, and has trouble considering how her actions affect others. Sometimes, she carries a somewhat grounded air, but that feels inconsistent with her season 6 characterization, and because she has so few personality traits, she often just becomes bland. Further, the show keeps telling us to like her, but her episodes are almost never grounded enough to really explore her insecurities. "All Bottled Up" and "Uncommon Bond" make attempts, but even there, her personality appears to be dictated by the moral.
    All of Starlight's appearances come across like part of a checklist, and she can often feel shoehorned into episodes which she adds nothing to. There's no reason for her to be in "Fame and Misfortune," and only a joke or two would be lost if she were absent from "Triple Threat." The latter, as well as "To Change a Changeling," suggest she's a skilled manipulator, but this trait is absent from the rest of the season. At other times, she wallows in self-pity, but because as recently as "A Royal Problem" she was making dubious judgment calls, this feels unearned. Further, while she's praised for being snarky, this is largely because the mane six have lost a lot of their sass from the early seasons. Season 7 continues to return flaws to those characters, but they're often lacking some of the nuance they possessed even a single season ago, and Starlight hardly suffices as a replacement. And given that Starlight has more episodes than anyone else - six in total, almost all of which are mediocre to subpar - this soon became exhausting. At least Twilight's still great.
    Some have commented that the show is "delivering things fans have long asked for," but at what cost? To justify my starting comment about the show going down a checklist, I'd like to compare the season's trend of answering fan demands with its frequently simplistic storytelling. In "Fluttershy Leans In," Fluttershy is finally given a goal... and completes it within a single episode without a shred of self-doubt. In "Daring Done?," we finally get to see Daring Do struggle with an internal conflict... only for it to be dismissed entirely by the end of the episode. In "Marks and Recreation," we finally see someone who doesn't want a cutie mark... which induces zero self-doubt in the CMC, and is ultimately shown to be deflection. Time and time again, the show emphasizes a specific moral over the most interesting implications of a premise, as if it's trying to get these demands out of the way without actually putting in the legwork to make them satisfying.
    And excepting Twilight, none of the main characters consistently experience fresh challenges. Most of the mane six and Starlight have at least one unique story, but only Starlight in "A Royal Problem" is actually given some insight, whereas Pinkie in "Rock Solid Friendship," Rarity in "Forever Filly," and Rainbow in "Parental Glideance" have their fairly sympathetic concerns buried under a largely antagonistic role. Increasingly, the mane six have become the external force which act on secondary characters, and there's something genuinely dispiriting about having the characters I actually care about in this show dismissed in this way. It doesn't have to be like this. "The Perfect Pear" stands out as a particularly strong example, as the main conflict occurs in flashback to new characters whom might not even be alive anymore, with the actual main characters only being present to hear about these events secondhand. At least that episode is good enough to get away with it.
    Even the worst seasons of My Little Pony have their decent episodes, and this one isn't without it's gems. I enjoyed relatively little of season 7 - 40%, by my count, and I only consider around half of that genuinely great - but the inconsistency is something I have been putting up with for a while, even if this is perhaps the worst it's ever gotten. What bothers me more is the stasis, the refusal of the show to challenge itself or experiment. The show has stagnated for four whole seasons now, and even seasons 4 and 6, which I liked, didn't move the show forward as much as they could have. That I could handle as well. But season 7 is both stale and uneven, when I find both qualities to be the worst they've ever been in this show, and I'm not sure how much longer I can stand by it.
    40% enjoyed. Average of scores: 59/100
    Personal rating:
    4/10
    Next week: My top 10 least favourite episodes!
  8. Thrond
    Last year, I was worried that "To Where and Back Again" would be a by-the-numbers, over-serious finale which just rehashes the same plot points the show had been trucking out for years now. To my delight, it turned out to be something else entirely, and it quickly became one of my favourite two-parters in the entire show. "To Where and Back Again" excelled because it was a character-driven story which focused on the human side of the story rather than the rote details, and as such it was refreshingly light on exposition and action.
    Turns out all I had to do was wait a year, however, because "Shadow Play" is exactly what I was worried about back in season 6. It's the worst example yet of the show's increasingly dull mythology, and it's filled with backstory exposition which takes itself way too seriously. There are certainly moments of humour here which bring the episode to life, but the plot is just so formulaic that it's hard to be invested in any of it, and enough of the episode takes itself so seriously that the fun moments can't break the monotony.
    When Twilight Sparkle uncovers what happened to Starswirl the Bearded and four other ponies he calls Equestria's "Pillars" (ugh), she sets out to save the Pillars from Limbo, not realizing that doing so would also free the evil Pony of Shadows. Soon, she realizes that she's made a mistake, and must work with the Pillars to save Equestria.
    You might have noticed that the whole plot is dependent on Twilight making an obviously poor decision, and worse still, she does it despite Starlight (of all ponies!) trying to warn her of the consequences. Indeed, Twilight's sheer hero worship for Starswirl renders her nearly useless throughout the episode, and while this is the only blatantly stupid decision she makes, she also spends most of the episode just doing whatever he says despite outclassing him. At the end, Starlight suggests that there must be some way they could convince the Pony of Shadows to stop, but Twilight just... ignores her, apparently because she's so blinded by her idolization of Starswirl.
    It's a double-edged sword, too, because Twilight's sheer enthusiasm is also the episode's main saving grace. Watching her gush over the idea of having Starswirl back is frequently delightful, and it demonstrates how good this season has been at reviving her geeky charm. Other characters have their moments too: One scene in the Dragon Lands is genuinely entertaining, where the dragons are using Flash Magnus's shield for lava surfing. That's easily the most creative scene in the episode, and it's also fun to watch Rainbow Dash trick Garble into just handing over the shield. Another scene featuring Fluttershy is pleasant as well, and Pinkie has a good handful of fun lines, but all of them suffer from a lack of personal stake in the story.
    The mane six are only dominant in the first half, and the problem with this is that the first half has almost no stakes to speak of. Twilight is insistent that Equestria is "better with Starswirl in it," but that's hard to accept when the ponies have done perfectly fine for themselves without him. Because of this, it's hard to be invested in anything which happens in the first half, which is as incident-free as "The Crystalling" but without any of the anxiety or introspection. There's still funny moments, but most of the first half is focused on the mythology of the world, which is no deeper than five ancient heroes sacrificing themselves to lock away some ancient evil. The episode tries to build on this, but it never steps away from dull cliches.
    Further, much of the first half has the mane six just acting broadly admirable, and I have never found that particularly interesting. At times, it even breaks credibility: Applejack manages to stop a falling boulder with her hind legs, and Rarity somehow trims a whole overgrown garden in what can't have been more than a few minutes. Rarity's scene is especially annoying, because the caretaker of the garden talks a lot about one flower being "all she has left," suggesting that she somehow never thought to just trim the bushes a bit. Am I supposed to believe that? Meanwhile, Pinkie's lasts less than half the time of the others, despite being perhaps the funniest. Altogether, I'm just tired of watching ponies collecting MacGuffins. We've seen that several times before. It's time for something new.
    In the second half, Starlight increasingly takes the reigns from the mane six, and she's as bland as ever. I explained why she's such a dull character in the "Uncommon Bond" review, but suffice it to say that she's no more exciting here, and her main contribution - the experience of being forgiven - is territory which this franchise has explored better in the past, though perhaps not in the main series. Unfortunately, "Shadow Play" has almost nothing to add beyond that, and a lot of this comes from just how little there is to Starlight. She's still a tool of the plot more than an actual character, and that means that prevents anything she does from feeling organic, no matter how hard the writers try. We occasionally see Twilight doubting herself, but the episode spends relatively little time on that, and in the second half Twilight's friends are once again sidelined. We know that the mane six have stood up to authority figures in the past, and we know they believe in second chances, so it's hard to accept Starlight needing to set them straight.
    Ultimately, it turns out the Pony of Shadows used to be a friend of the Pillars by the name of Stygian, and that he and the Pillars both came to believe the other had betrayed them. The theme of misunderstandings which many episodes this season have followed comes to fruition here, but while Stygian is immediately sympathetic, neither he nor the Pillars are developed enough for this climax to have much emotional effect. We learn about Stygian almost entirely through exposition, and the Pillars themselves are given almost nothing in the way of characterization. Sunburst is present too, but he mostly serves as an extension of Twilight.
    And because the worldbuilding is so unimaginative, the large chunks of the episode dedicated to exposition very quickly become tiresome. At one point, the Pillars mention that they planted the Tree of Harmony, which is completely useless information because it explains very little about the Tree itself. Apparently they somehow imbued it with the forces they represent, but I never asked for the origin of the Elements, and it hardly explains why Twilight's cutie mark is on the tree. We still know nothing about how it actually works, so all the actual questions surrounding it remain unanswered. Plus, the map is shown to be able to locate not one but two other kinds of MacGuffins now, because of course it is. It's been awful for three seasons, so why should it stop now?
    Ultimately, the problem with the show's mythology is the problem with "Shadow Play." Rather than actually develop the world which exists, the showrunners like to just pile new aspects onto it while neglecting everything which came before. And that ultimately harms My Little Pony's world, which was initially one of the things which drew me to the show. When world is emphasized over character, you must have a good enough world to hold it up, and this show simply does not anymore. Combine that with a plot cribbed from earlier stories, and Starlight continuing to be bland while still taking over the story, and you've got the least exciting two-parter to date, even beating out the similarly dull "The Cutie Re-Mark."
    Score:
    Entertainment: 4/10
    Characters: 5/10
    Story: 4/10
    Themes: 6/10
    Overall: 48/100
    P.S.
    This isn't fun for me any more. If season 8 is a big enough improvement, I might return, but for now, I'm officially retiring my My Little Pony reviews. I'm gonna give the Equestria Girls series and season 8 a shot, but I'm not committing to either of them, and I'm definitely not going to take the time to write at length. Still, I need some closure, so I'll make a few more posts in the weeks to come before I retire this blog. First, an overview of season 7 at large. Second, an updated list of the show's Top 10 Worst Episodes. Third, a list of my 26 favourite episodes in the show. Finally, I'll be uploading my to-date score sheet in all its incomplete glory, which I may or may not attempt to fill out during the hiatus. If you want more of my writing, you can always check out the main blog, and if you want to keep up with whatever Pony opinions I still have, I'll try to keep the score list updated, and you can follow me on Twitter. Until next time. 
     
  9. Thrond
    Look, "Uncommon Bond" is perfectly inoffensive. It has a decent moral. The core dilemma is moderately relatable. It's not obnoxious, it doesn't have any structural defects, and doesn't feel lazy. But it's slow, safe, and mundane, and it predicates its entire emotional core on a relationship which hasn't been given much development. It's another season 7 episode which doesn't care about anything other than checking off boxes and getting a moral episode. I mean, at least it's competent and not entirely boring.
    But I can't stand this formula anymore. My Little Pony didn't become popular by being this slow and forgettable. And this one also has Starlight once again demonstrating few strong personality traits aside from self-pity and a disregard for others, which can only be offset so much by Trixie being funny and the others being sweet. I just don't like her anymore, and she's a dead weight on an episode which already doesn't do very much to elevate itself.
    I feel like I've made all of these complaints before. But I'm just so tired of this stuff.

    When Sunburst finally comes to visit Starlight in Ponyville, she's ecstatic, remembering how much they had in common. However, when Sunburst finally arrives, he and Starlight struggle to find common ground, and to her frustration, he spends more time bonding with her friends than doing things with her.
    To Starlight's credit, she humours Sunburst for a while. While he's talking to Twilight and Trixie, she mostly just stands awkwardly beside them, not really trying to understand them but not intruding either. Certainly, there's something relatable in the notion of a childhood friend being different from how you remember them, so it's easy to see why Starlight might feel frustrated. However, the show has done little to develop her relationship with Sunburst, and as such it's a little difficult to be invested in their reunion. It's still a strong idea, but as with many other episodes this season, it comes across like the idea is doing most of the heavy lifting while the characters merely serve as ciphers for it, and this isn't helped at all by the fact that Starlight just isn't a very flavourful character.
    Worse still, this is yet another episode where Starlight appears to have no particular interests of her own. Okay, she likes magic, but her studies are so directionless that they come across as impersonal. Sunburst bonds with Twilight, Trixie, and Maud because he catches them in the midst of something they both care about, but the problem with Starlight is that she doesn't seem to have interests aside from whatever Twilight tells her to do. What are her aspirations? What does she do with her free time? We so rarely see these things, and this particular episode doesn't even make mention of her interest in kites. The episode tries to take advantage of that, but it only underlines what a bland character Starlight truly is.
    Further, Starlight spends most of the episode sinking further into self-pity, to the extent that she eventually leaves when Sunburst spends too much time talking to others. Early on, she pays lip service to Sunburst's comfort, but her increasing jealousy of her friends eventually starts to feel selfish, especially since Sunburst still came all this way to spend time with her. To be fair, Sunburst perhaps deserves some of the blame, as he spends much of the episode mostly oblivious to Starlight's discomfort, and even expresses excitement about "spending time with Twilight" to her face. Frustratingly, he doesn't learn much of anything from this, but even though Sunburst is no saint, it's still hard to sympathize with Starlight, because it seems like she just quits because things aren't going exactly as she wanted them to.
    In one scene, Starlight shows Sunburst the mirror pool, even in spite of saying it might be dangerous. We never see her ask if he wants to go, and we never see her warn him beforehand, so it feels a little like she's putting him at risk just to score brownie points. I don't think that's intentional, but it's a lot harder to justify a later scene where she creates an illusion where the two are foals and back in their childhood home. It's slightly creepy, and it mostly just serves as a reminder that Starlight has issues which the show is never going to properly address. Things like these might have been easy to get past on their own, but in sequence, and combined with long montages where Starlight just pouts at Sunburst having fun with someone else, just make her feel self-centred in a way which she's just not funny or even distinctive enough to overcome.
    The episode isn't without its humour, but much of it is subtle and character driven. Trixie fares well due to her boisterous personality, but Twilight is little more than vaguely dorky, and while Maud has one or two fun lines, she's not given a whole lot to do. A bigger problem is that much of the episode plays out in languid montages, each of which involving Sunburst doing stuff with Starlight's friends. All of these are mildly charming, but they're also weighed down by Starlight's impatience. While the dialogue is mostly naturalistic, there's enough expository lines to remove any subtlety. I know that the moral is gonna relate to having things in common because ponies keep mentioning it, and Maud even gives away the actual moral before the end. Again, it's a nice concept - you don't need to have a lot in common to be friends - but having it all slowly explained to me just makes the episode feel dry.
    Another issue which I haven't mentioned, which pops up from time to time in the show, is the pacing and music. In contrast with the cheery rock guitars of the pilot, "Uncommon Bond" is filled with emotionless muzak and bland orchestral stings, and combined with just how long and talky these scenes are, it makes the episode feel airless even at its most charming. While this laid-back tone suits stories about bonding fairly well, it needs to be held up by sharp dialogue and strong characterization, and neither of those departments are something which this episode excels at.
    So again, the episode is hardly offensive or anything, but it's also dry and flat. We learn nothing new about Starlight, little substantial about Sunburst, and while the moral is fine, the episode doesn't add any bells or whistles to make it interesting. The feeling I get with episodes like this is just that the writers are checking off boxes. They don't have much of a story to tell, but Starlight and Sunburst reuniting is something they feel "must" happen, so they slap a moral on it, add some fluffy montages, and call it a day. And Starlight displays all of the issues which make her so unappealing to me, which weighs down an already forgettable episode. If you get anything out of this, then I'm glad, but it just comes across as soulless to me.
    Score:
    Entertainment: 4/10
    Characters: 4/10
    Themes: 7/10
    Story: 5/10
    Overall: 50/100
    You can find more episode reviews at my offsite blog. 
  10. Thrond
    There's a small list of My Little Pony episodes which I consider guilty pleasures. These are episodes which have enough clever gags and fun dialogue to keep me happy, but which have bad enough plots that it brings down my enjoyment somewhat. Season 2 had the sloppy but energetic "Putting Your Hoof Down." Season 3 had some of the show's best dialogue layered on top of the asinine "Spike at Your Service." I find these two episodes hugely entertaining, and even though their poor narratives kill my buzz a little, it's not enough to overcome their respective qualities.
    Joining this short list is season 7's "Secrets and Pies," which combines a threadbare storyline and off-base characterization with a ceaseless, energetic procession of clever gags. While I've often complained about episodes which don't have enough humour relative to plot, this episode is very much the opposite, with hilarious scene after hilarious scene which still can't help but drag as a result of how inane and thin the actual storyline is. But man, it's just so inventive and so madcap that I found it hard to resist, and it even manages to lessen the guilt somewhat by adding some nice insight at the end.
    When Pinkie Pie learns that Rainbow Dash didn't eat a pie she prepared, she realizes that she's never actually seen Rainbow eat one of her pies, and sets out on an investigation to find out the truth. Once she does, she sets up an operation to get Rainbow to admit that she never ate Pinkie's pies.
    On one hand, "Secrets and Pies" is as dumb as a bag of hammers. It stretches an exceedingly simple premise out to 22 minutes through extended scenes of rambling, and its entire problem is based on poor communication which seems uncharacteristic of the mane six in season 7. If Rainbow doesn't feel comfortable telling Pinkie that she doesn't like her pies, what does that say about their relationship? And if Pinkie isn't willing to just ask Rainbow what's going on, what does that say about her? Once again, Rainbow needs to be told what she was doing wrong, and once again, Pinkie treats even the smallest break in communication like the biggest deal ever. It's a distracting example of the ponies acting like small children, which is disappointing, because I've always considered the relative maturity of these characters to be a large part of this show's appeal.
    It's also such an unexciting, mundane dilemma. So what if Rainbow doesn't like the pies? This doesn't tell us anything new about the characters, and because the dilemma is so childish, the fact that everyone involves takes it so seriously makes the episode feel unusually juvenile. Perhaps that still has some value for the target audience, but it's not as compelling for older audiences. Further, because there's not a whole lot of story to wring out of this issue, the episode is constantly repeating itself. We see Rainbow disposing of pies about seven different times, and while Pinkie visits three different sites looking for clues, they all follow more or less the same formula of Pinkie grilling a nearby pony while acting incredulous. That's not even getting into the detours around the middle of the episode, including one which takes place entirely in Pinkie's imagination without giving any new information.
    But I have a hard time seeing "entering Pinkie's imagination" as a bad thing, and it leads to a really fun scene where Rainbow is imagined as a crudely-sketched supervillain, complete with pointy wings, sharp teeth, and eye beams. This particular scene is still pretty silly, but it's far from the only humorous scene in the episode. Like "Discordant Harmony," it's filled with long scenes of hilarious riffing, including a great cold open which ends with Pinkie referring to her "mid-morning pie-making chocolate fuel which keeps this pie-baking train chugging down the tracks," and nearly all of the dialogue is similarly glorious. Other exciting gags include the ever-escalating ways in which Rainbow disposes of pies, which begin with her simply throwing it in the dumpster and reach such heights as catapulting it to an open window, calling upon a swarm of kids to steal it, and tossing it into an elaborate chute to feed to her pet. "Secrets and Pies" may be as dumb as a post, but it's also as sharp as a razor.
    Even when there isn't a major gag to speak of, the episode is kept afloat by an almost exhausting supply of charm and energy. Despite the rough edges of characterization, Pinkie still has a lot of sweetness. For instance, she says she's celebrating Rainbow's 73rd anniversary of becoming a Wonderbolt simply because she couldn't wait any longer, and while that enhances her childishness, it's also pretty cute. Rainbow Dash also has some charming moments, especially near the end, where she reveals that she kept pretending to eat Pinkie's pies because she was afraid of hurting her friend's feelings. Again, that's rather childish, but it's just too sweet to be mad about, and there's a reasonable moral about honesty at the end as well, just for good measure.
    Other moments are reliant entirely on general flow and visual quirkiness. For instance, the first transition between Cloudsdale and Pinkie's party cave is a silly reference to the '60s Batman TV show, complete with a pastiche of the sound effect used in the same program. Again, the episode is comprised mostly of Pinkie rambling, but she doesn't miss a single beat, and the few moments where she isn't talking are punctuated with hilarious cuts to, say Gummy blinking silently, or Pinkie herself dropping randomly from the sky. The voice actors are clearly having a blast, and their audible enthusiasm is infectious. And then there's slapstick scenes, like Spitfire "accidentally" crashing into Pinkie, or visual goofiness like Pinkie standing on a wobbling pyramid of pies.
    In truth, explaining what makes this episode so fun would ultimately devolve into me listing every single gag in it. Unfortunately, some of these gags also become weirdly disturbing, like a late scene where we see Pinkie's eyes all dried up to the point that she needs to lick them to keep the moisturized. That's strange and creative, and I found it hilarious, but it's also gruesome in a way which doesn't mesh with the show's general aesthetic. Further, Rainbow feeding Tank all her pies is presented as Tank eating the entire tin whole, which then makes him sick and feels uncomfortably close to animal abuse. Combined with the juvenile storyline and character issues, that makes the whole episode just feel weirdly uncharacteristic of this show, and not necessarily in a good way.
    And yet I just can't resist it. So, yes, call it a guilty pleasure, but it's a pleasure nonetheless. There's a lot of elements in "Secrets and Pies" which are downright bad, and from a narrative and structural standpoint there's not all that much to praise. Add in some off-putting aspects like Rainbow's treatment of Tank, and you should have a recipe for a subpar episode. But that dialogue is just glorious from top to bottom, the voice performances have an irresistible energy, and every single visual gag is fantastic, so it's hard for me to dismiss the episode entirely, or even at all. In my brain, I know it's not very good. But it's one of the few episodes this season which I'd watch again in a heartbeat.
    Score:
    Entertainment: 9/10
    Characters: 5/10
    Themes: 7/10
    Story: 4/10
    Overall: 63/100
    You can find more episode reviews at my offsite blog. 
  11. Thrond
    Despite eschewing a lot of the tired story structures of the past, season 7 has several familiar tropes of its own. It's heavily reliant on externally driven stories where a main character is troubled by some external force, and many of these stories are written heavily to theme to the point of tedium. However, these formulas don't always ruin their stories, and many episodes transcended those tropes, either with nuance ("The Perfect Pear") or humour ("Parental Glideance"). 
    "Once Upon a Zeppelin" is still a little on-the-nose, and its conflict still has too many external actors, but it's the best example yet of how good jokes and a good moral can overcome smaller issues. It's another contender for the funniest episode this season, packed with sharp character-based humour while also giving more personality to Shining Armour and Twilight's parents. Further, it's one of the few episodes to actually explore how Twilight's new responsibilities affect her usual anxieties, and although it's a bit blunt, the moral of learning to draw boundaries is a rock solid complement for "A Health of Information."
    When Twilight's parents win a free zeppelin cruise, she's naturally suspicious, but decides to play along. However, when the family - including Shining Armour and Princess Cadance - arrive, they're shocked to discover that the main attraction of the cruise is none other than themselves, as run by Iron Will. Twilight, wanting to give her family the best vacation possible, agrees to play along with Iron Will's plans, and in doing so, forgets to enjoy herself. 
    If there's one thing I must give season 7 credit for, it's making the mane six's families utterly delightful. As was the case with Rainbow Dash's folks, Twilight's family is endearing and hilarious: her father Night Light is apparently a bingo enthusiast, and her mother Twilight Velvet has a major adventurous streak. Meanwhile, Shining Armour is given more traits, such as a fondness for small things and a tendency towards airsickness. Unfortunately, Cadance is reduced to just being a mother, and while the episode does its best to maintain her lovable sweetness, it only makes me wish more for her to have a chance to shine away from the family. 
    Best of all is Twilight, in yet another phenomenal season 7 role. One thing I've wanted from her since season 4 is some indication that she struggles with the responsibilities of being a princess, as her stressful personality and high self-expectations have always been a large part of what makes her so relatable to me. "A Flurry of Emotions" was the first episode to directly address the expectations that being a princess gives her, and "Once Upon a Zeppelin" makes them even more explicit while even making them relatable. Here, Twilight specifically mentions that she "needs to make the cruise ponies happy ... to be a good princess," finally addressing something the show has implied for years now. 
    While Season 4 also attempted to feature Twilight struggling with being a princess, but there it was so abstract that it was hard to relate to. Here, Twilight's anxieties are directly linked to trying to make others happy, which does a lot to humanize her. She wants her family to have the best vacation possible, even if it means she needs to sacrifice her own happiness. Everyone who cares about her tries to convince her to take a break, but she's too afraid that it would mean she fails those around her. To some extent, this moral about taking care of yourself as well as others is a repeat of "A Health of Information," but it's given freshness by the context and an emphasis on drawing boundaries. 
    While on the ship, a young stallion named Star Tracker wins a raffle which allows him to spend the cruise as an honorary member of Twilight's family. This character is one of the show's most impressive examples of condensed character development, as while he almost exclusively exists through a handful of sight gags, it's immediately apparent from his demeanour that he has difficulty with social interactions and may even have a small degree of social anxiety. Some of the ways this manifests are creepy enough to make him less endearing, but for the most part there's some real charm in his awkwardness.
    As a result, when he finally stands up to Iron Will at the end in defense of Twilight and her family, it's satisfying to see him get over this to protect ponies who have been nice to him, especially when he's committed a few social faux pas towards them. Similarly, although there's some catharsis to be found when Twilight finally snaps at him, it's also satisfying when she apologizes and even allows him to continue hanging out with the family. And all of this is despite his dialogue consisting overwhelmingly of stammering, often for no more than a couple seconds per scene. 
    In fact, despite my complaints about Cadance, she too shines best in the ending, where she's given the opportunity to comfort Twilight and give some advice. I still wish the show would grant her a little more nuance, and the speech still has too much to do with Cadance's role as a mother, but it's still wonderful to see these sisters-in-law bonding, which we haven't really seen since season 4. Similarly, when Twilight's family finally tries to make up for all the fun they had without her, it's really charming to see how much they really do care. 
    Iron Will is the captain of the zeppelin, and he's just as hilarious here as he was back in season 2. As an antagonist, he has the unique appeal of keeping his villainy entirely legal while still somewhat skeevy. He's particularly fond of covering his tracks with contracts he knows nobody will read, and this means that no matter what he pulls, he can always get away with it. This is particularly welcome, because his boisterous personality is an absolute delight here, and he has many of the episode's best gags, so knowing he can always come back is hugely promising. 
    The real humour just comes from the great timing and script, though. At one point, Iron Will tours completely random locations while making up princess-related details about them. At another, Shining completely fails to participate in an on-deck jet ski race because his airsickness is bothering him. This episode is packed with even more great jokes than the already delightful likes of "A Flurry of Emotions" or "A Health of Information," and might even be the funniest of the lot. 
    "Once Upon a Zeppelin" is a last-minute delight which combines the two things season 7 excels at: new family characters and Twilight Sparkle. With a great moral about drawing boundaries, some of Twilight's best characterization in years, and a consistently hilarious script, this is easily one of the season's best episodes. Plot-wise, it still sticks a bit too closely to theme, but it's also just so filled with humour and joy that I find it utterly irresistible, and combined with all those other admirable qualities, it's an episode which I have no hesitation about adoring. 
    Score:
    Entertainment: 10/10
    Characters: 8/10
    Theme: 9/10
    Story: 8/10
    Overall: 88/100
  12. Thrond
    The appeal of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic comes from a combination of factors. Aside from its lighthearted tone and cute art style, its characters are surprisingly three-dimensional, and its best episodes can be quite funny as well. This show's cult following didn't come out of nowhere, and much of it comes down to the show's main themes. To me, the most important part of Friendship is Magic's appeal is that so many of its stories revolve around the main characters needing to move past their own insecurities. This show does an excellent job with audience identification, even outside of the target audience, simply because it fleshes out its protagonists and treats them with empathy.
    On the other hand, My Little Pony: The Movie is asinine and derivative, and while there's several factors in its overall sloppiness, perhaps the greatest is that it trades the show's stories of insecurity for slapdash adventure cliches, seemingly assembled at random. What little remains of the show's soul is scrambled by the slapdash execution, which is too busy hopping from formula beat to formula beat to sufficiently develop even one of its characters, and it's all brought down by a truly wretched sense of humour. Perhaps it would be difficult to make a My Little Pony movie which really taps into the show's main strengths, but on the other hand, there's no reason it had to be this bad.
    (note: spoilers follow)
    When Tempest Shadow (Emily Blunt) attacks the Equestrian capital city of Canterlot on behalf of the evil Storm King (Liev Schreiber), Princess Twilight Sparkle (Tara Strong) and her friends Applejack, Rainbow Dash (both voiced by Ashleigh Ball), Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy (both voiced by Andrea Libman), and Rarity (Tabitha St. Germain) set out to stop them and save Equestria.
    That summary has more names than plot, and that's largely because there's barely any plot to speak of. In essence, the film consists of a handful of episodes defined primarily by the ponies' quest to find the hippogriffs, whom their monarch Princess Celestia mentioned before being captured by the Storm King. In the process, they hop from random setting to random setting, meeting a new handful of underdeveloped characters along the way. My Little Pony distinguishes itself from other animated features through a focus on talking rather than violence to resolve conflict, but because the characters are so underdeveloped, the story beats still come across as overly familiar. Any time we might have learned a little about the actual people in this story, the antagonists arrive to shove Twilight & co. off to the next predictable beat.
    Worse still, many plot points are dubious at best. On multiple occasions, the plot only moves forward because one of the ponies idiotically calls attention to herself, despite knowing very well that they need to keep a low profile. One plot point which is particularly dubious, although for different reasons, is near the end of the second act, when the film attempts to complicate its plot somewhat by showing a break in the main group's friendships. Unfortunately, this only occurs because Twilight acts blatantly out of character. This is irritating for fans, and since the film spends no time on actually developing these characters, newcomers won't have any reason to care about this contrived conflict.
    Frankly, characterization isn't exactly the film's strong point in general. Applejack is given almost nothing to do, Rarity, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash are reduced to caricatures, Pinkie Pie is significantly weighed down by the film's awful jokes, Spike is so minor that I forgot he was in this, and Twilight isn't allowed much of a personality at all. The one time when Twilight actually livens up is in the aforementioned second-act fallout, which is initiated by her attempting to rob one of the film's numerous new characters for seemingly no reason at all. Aside from just how far this is from her personality in the show, it's also something which I highly doubt neophytes will find endearing, which will make it even harder for them to be invested in the plot.
    The new characters, meanwhile, are far too underdeveloped to leave much of an impression. Capper (Taye Diggs) is your generic dashing rogue, and while the pirate captain Celaeno (Zoe Saldana) strikes an impressive posture, she too never becomes more than an archetype. Worst of all are the hippogriffs, most notably Princess Skystar (Kristin Chenoweth), whose constant chatter is immediately obnoxious and makes for perhaps the least tolerable stretch of the whole film. Like Capper and Celaeno, these characters are ultimately relegated to an extremely familiar archetype, but Skystar the probably the most memorable characters in the movie, if for all the wrong reasons. The ponies only ever cause trouble for these characters, and yet of course they return to help in the final act, because that's what happens in every movie like this.
    The new villains are more of a mixed bag: the Storm King is your run-of-the-mill snarky villain, and his already rote personality is made unbearable by the terrible script. Meanwhile, Tempest Shadow is little more than generically menacing, but the final act suddenly reveals a traumatic backstory which, for just a brief moment, revives the empathetic themes which define the show. Unfortunately, she's not made even slightly sympathetic after that moment, and everything she does after that strictly follows template. Plus, the quiet menace of Blunt's performance sometimes just comes across as boredom, which further diminishes the character's appeal.
    Despite my allusions to the script's terrible jokes, there actually aren't that many to speak of. Most of the film's humour is derived from the characters' personalities, but because they're all so simplistic, much of this humour falls flat, and Pinkie Pie in particular comes across as noisy and shrill. When actual attempts at gags are made, they're invariably weak, and several take the form of dated references or even cheap anachronisms. The first time we see a magical device ring like a cell phone, it's a novelty for this series, but when it's repeated later in the film, it just comes across as trite and lazy.
    What entertainment the film does provide comes from its songs and surprising dark edges. Most of the musical numbers are derivative, but they're at least lively and varied, and one or two are even catchy. More than one song feels like it only exists to fill time, but one which takes place on a pirate ship in particular is another of the film's rare flashes of empathy, and is perhaps the best example of the film solving conflict with dialogue rather than violence. Too bad the villains arrive right after to up the tension. On brief occasions, the scale of the setpieces transcends the tedious plot, but these moments are few and far between.
    A little more exciting is that this film is actually one of the darker stories in the franchise. In an early scene, all of the four princesses except Twilight are literally turned to stone, and several later scenes involve unscrupulous figures attempting to literally enslave the protagonists. There's even a scene where the main group appears to have drowned. These moments of intensity are more unique for the series than for kids' films in general, but they're the one thing which gives the movie any personality or life. There's also a scene or two which are quieter than the usual family feature, but most of the film is exhaustingly busy and loud.
    Finally, it must be noted that My Little Pony: The Movie heavily revises the series' aesthetic, and not always for the best. The character animations are significantly more detailed, but while this often comes with fluid movement, it can often seem overblown, like when a pose is held for a few seconds too long in a music number, or when lip flaps feature more frames than actually fits the dialogue. Every single new character design is colourful yet profoundly generic, matching their personalities. Much more troubling are the backgrounds, which contain a lot of detail but bury it in dark colours, and in contrast to the bright and cheery show, several of the environments here are painted in varying shades of red, grey, and brown.
    The line work is still consistently interesting, but the characters almost never feel like they're actually in the set, largely because the environments are either static or filled with conspicuous low-quality 3D models. Many objects are also shaded to have a distracting, almost plasticky depth-of-field effect, to the extent that it's difficult to tell where the 2D art ends and the 3D models begin. On a more subjective note, the level of detail at times feels like a betrayal of the show's appealing simplicity, but it's not hard to see the appeal of adding dimension and complexity to the show's art. If only it was better executed.
    Some of those backgrounds are genuinely pretty, and the songs at least have some life to them, but even those elements can't keep My Little Pony: The Movie from feeling double its length. The poor comedy and the poor characterization are merely the most significant of several issues keeping it down, and even the occasional glimmer of life can't save a movie without a context to support it. In fact, considering that the songs can be found outside of the film and presumably pack just as much impact, there's really no reason to watch My Little Pony: The Movie at all unless you're the most devoted fan of the series. It's hard to translate a the character development of a long-running show to the big screen, but there's absolutely no reason this couldn't have been fun on its own merits, especially given that some of the show's best writers are involved.
    I'm not surprised - all the warning signs were in the trailers - but just don't know how this went so wrong.
    3/10
    + Decent songs.
    + Occasionally gets surprisingly dark.
    + Detailed animation...
    - ...which is brought down by cheap backgrounds.
    - Extremely formulaic.
    - Wildly underdeveloped characters.
    - Very poor sense of humour.
     
    As a bonus: on my usual pony rating scale!
    Score:
    Entertainment: 3/10
    Characters: 3/10
    Themes: 6/10
    Story: 2/10
    Overall: 35/100
    I would generally round this to 4/10, but this is one of those cases where the averaged rating doesn't really reflect my personal rating. 
    Anyway, you can find my backlog of pony reviews at my offsite pony blog, and you can find many more movie reviews at my primary blog.
    (Also, I'd like to promote my Patreon, but I don't think I'm allowed to do that on this site. Link is on the main blog. If it displeases the mods, I'll remove this line.)
  13. Thrond
    With the Cutie Mark Crusaders now in the business of solving others' problems, their stories have a lot of potential to expand the lore of what "cutie marks" are, how they work, and what they mean to the inhabitants of this world. Last season, we got "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks," an adorable episode which fulfilled all of that potential and then some, exploring one of the two biggest issues imaginable for the Crusaders. "Marks and Recreation" follows up on the other half of the equation, but it lacks all of the things that made last year's episode such a delight.
    To be honest, I'm ready to declare season 7 a total wash. With only two episodes and the finale left, I don't see much hope that it'll step out of its usual formulas and finally pick up some humour or subtext. "Marks and Recreation," like many episodes this season, is didactic and not very funny, featuring only a few very flimsy jokes and a plot which hops from formula beat to formula beat all without providing anything of interest. This should have been a personal story on par with "Fault," but what we've got is yet another of those episodes where a dull new character needs to be taught what's right. I just can't deal with that.

    The Cutie Mark Crusaders are running a successful day camp when one day, a young Pegasus named Rumble shows up and declares his opposition to the entire idea of Cutie Marks. Soon, he has turned the entire camp against the CMC, and they need to find some way to get it back.
    The appeal of "Marks and Recreation" is dependent on two factors: Rumble's motivations, and the Crusaders' reactions to his actions. The former falls into issues I've been complaining about for a while: watching characters having no doubts and doing everything right isn't very interesting. Not everything the Crusaders do to deal with Rumble is successful, but the episode never suggests they might be in the wrong, and it's very interested in shoving them into a "mentor" role, something which I have always maintained as the death knell of this show's characterization, because the show often uses it as an excuse to shift focus onto new characters or tell overly moralistic stories, halting the characters' growth in the process.
    Still, this is hardly the worst example of the this mentor problem in the show. The Crusaders at least make mistakes, if only minor ones, and there's slivers of doubt here and there. The bigger issue is that the story beats are all overly familiar. This is yet another story where the main characters need to protect their work from an external threat which only escalates a third of the way in, and it's yet another episode where an ideological challenge actually stems from personal issues. For the Crusaders, there's no insight or novelty. and without allowing them to doubt their actions or values, it doesn't provide anything they haven't done plenty of times before. Whereas, "The Fault in Our Cutie Marks" was built on self-doubt and anxiety, this has the CMC just make the mature choice and move on whenever the story threatens to become interesting.
    Rumble, on the other hand, suffers from a lack of development and a charmless personality. It's hard to be invested in his issues, because on one hand we barely know him, and on the other hand his concerns with Cutie Marks are never taken that seriously. His main complaint is that cutie marks limit your options in life, but we've seen the CMC exploring other options before, so that doesn't ring true, even on the rare occasion where the episode lends validity to his criticisms. Eventually, he turns out to be the one limiting others' options, and by then his points have clearly been discredited.
    The thing is, the moral here has potential. Cutie Marks have always been a metaphor for maturity, so dealing with how life changes with adulthood could be an interesting take on the concept. When Rumble's criticisms are revealed to be projection, it reflects how he's afraid of growing up. But his motivation suffers from his lack of development. Is he jealous of his brother? Does he feel inadequate? Why does he feel he must be a great flyer? Answering these questions has potential, but they're never expanded upon.
    As a consequence, Rumble comes across as stubborn and selfish and little else, which makes him difficult to sympathize with. Growing up is scary, but his fears come across as childish and self-centred, simply because the episode doesn't give us enough time to really know him, and what little we understand about him is eventually just explained to us outright. It doesn't help that Thunderlane himself is little more than a bland sibling archetype, leaving us even less idea what their relationship is like. In their scenes together, we're not shown some secret insecurity on Rumble's part. He just upends the Cutie Mark camp because, as said, he's stubborn and selfish.
    Honestly, though, all of that could have been fine if it just had a better sense of humour. There's few real jokes on offer, and when it does conjure up a proper gag, it's nothing more exciting than a pony who likes to draw circles a lot. This sort of pedestrian humour comes across as very lowest-common-denominator, and it's absent from long stretches of the episode which rely heavily on Rumble's antics to hold attention. Unfortunately, because Rumble is such an underdeveloped and charmless character, that doesn't work either, despite a catchy song in the middle. With that said, the episode definitely builds energy during this song, and it'll work splendidly when removed from context. Might even be my favourite this season!
    But that's not true of the rest of the episode, which remains tiresomely on point from start to finish, building up to a moral which is admittedly acceptable enough, though not expressed as satisfyingly as it could have been. Because the Crusaders never doubt themselves, and because their role in the story is to teach Rumble the value of Cutie Marks, the episode has a broadly instructional feel which makes it a real drag outside of the musical number. It's obvious from early on that the episode will never provide any insight about cutie marks, so why waste the time? It would have been way more fun if we saw Rumble feeling insecure, or perhaps if Thunderlane was the focus character instead. In the latter case, we could focus on him worrying about his brother, which might have led to actual insight.
    Alas, "Marks and Recreation" isn't that, and instead is yet another crushingly dull entry in what's shaping up to be a crushingly dull season. The jokes are flimsy, the characters are flat, and while there's nothing wrong with the character interactions, the episode's just much too airless for that to amount to much. This season's new formulas were interesting at first, but now they've gotten just as familiar as the old ones, and they simply don't have as much to offer. Ultimately, I'll take a fun-but-unpolished episode like "A Health of Information" over this any day. Sorry.
    Score:
    Entertainment: 3/10
    Characters: 4/10
    Themes: 5/10
    Story: 5/10
    Overall: 43/100
    You can find more episode reviews at my offsite blog. 
  14. Thrond
    This is the second week in a row where an episode I never had much interest in proved to be a pleasant surprise. "A Health of Information" is kinda simple and rather expository, but it's got a breakneck pace, a strong collection of jokes, and some surprisingly high stakes which lend the episode a lot of intensity. As I've said before, this show doesn't need a strong emotional core or a sharp eye for continuity to impress me. Those things are nice, but before it has that, all I want from it is to be fun. "A Health of Information" is probably one of the 5 most entertaining episodes this season. Not bad for a story which seemingly only exists to set up the finale!
    While helping Fluttershy find a moss for  her sanctuary, Zecora catches a rare disease called Swamp Fever, which has no known cure and, if untreated, will eventually turn her into the same type of tree which gave her the disease. Blaming herself, Fluttershy immediately enlists the help of Twilight and spares no expense in finding the cabin of the Mage Meadowbrook, a healer famed for curing a great many diseases before vanishing suddenly. In the process, however, Fluttershy forgets to take care of herself.
    First and foremost, it must be noted that "A Health of Information" is easily the funniest episode since at least "Discordant Harmony." From Zecora's heartbeat sounding like a drum roll to Twilight becoming excited about Meadowbrook's diary, the silly gags keep coming, and they come at a much faster rate than other funny episodes this season like "Triple Threat" or "To Change a Changeling." The plot moves by so quickly that it never has time to lull, and the episode smartly fills that space with clever gags and cute character moments. A lot of the dialogue consists of characters just explaining the plot to each other and exclaiming how they feel, but even that is tied to individual personalities much more successfully than the likes of "Daring Done?."
    The cutest of these moments all come from Fluttershy, whose sheer determination is super endearing. Even more than "Flutter Brutter," this episode finds a comfortable balance between her soft demeanour, her caring personality, and her newfound assertiveness. This all seems quite admirable, but ironically, Fluttershy's determination is presented as an issue, since it leads to her not taking care of herself. Eventually, this culminates in her catching Spring Fever herself, which she continues trying to persevere through despite visibly suffering from severe symptoms.
    What makes this work so well is that it's so easy to relate to. Fluttershy starts neglecting her own health because of things which we usually admire in characters, and her feeling of being responsible for Zecora's illness is relatable and sympathetic. It's easy to imagine an alternate version of this story where Fluttershy's insistence is treated as a good thing, so when that's subverted and shown to be ultimately causing more trouble for both herself and others who worry about her, it's somewhat surprising, which makes for a very effective moral.
    Still, the characterization here does have issues, and a lot of them stem from the rapid pacing. While Fluttershy is mostly alright, she comes across as uncharacteristically hyperactive, which is a double edged sword. On one hand, it leads to a lot of the episode's funniest and cutest moments, but on the other, it's kinda distracting to see Fluttershy acting so weirdly. Maybe she had too much coffee. This weird hyperactivity extends to everyone else, especially Twilight, which is ironic given how the latter serves as the voice of reason here. Twilight tells Fluttershy to calm down, and even falls asleep on a pile of books at one point, but she too often comes across like she drank a whole case of energy drinks.
    Thankfully, this is yet another example of Twilight being great this season, and even her role as a voice of reason makes a little more sense here. Because we've so often seen Twilight becoming equally stressed out over much less important things than this, it makes sense that she'd know how to handle such stressful situations. Furthermore, it comes across better here than in "P.P.O.V." simply because she's been much more fallible this season, and it helps that she's also very funny in this episode, as in a brief scene where she and Spike are having a "cook off."
    This episode also introduces a new legendary character in the form of Mage Meadowbrook, and her flashback is perhaps the best one yet. Like Somnambula, we don't get a particularly deep sense of Meadowbrook's personality, but also like Somnambula, she comes across as charming and admirable, and the cultural aesthetic here is a bit less rote than any of the preceding legends, showing muted Cajun/Louisiana Creole influences without incorporating any tired mystical elements. This flashback is all about observing the natural world, and while its parallel for the main story is about as suspicious as that in "Daring Done?," that parallel also gives it the flavour which was missing from "Campfire Tales."
    Finally, and most intriguingly, the episode has surprisingly high stakes, as if Fluttershy and Twilight fail, Zecora (and later Fluttershy as well) will potentially be subject to a fate worse than death. This show can't directly mention death, but it can refer to characters slowly having their body warped into an immobile, toxic form, possibly being robbed of their sapience in the process. That's even worse than real swamp fever, which just causes death through anemia, and it gives the story a much higher level of tension than it might otherwise have. Rarely is there this much at risk in the show, and that makes the episode feel genuinely refreshing.
    Just when I was starting to give up on this show, it has surprised me with two unexpectedly enjoyable episodes which offer a lot of the things I missed this season. "A Health of Information" is upbeat and fast-paced, and gains a lot of energy just from having really high stakes. Top it off with a solid moral, some fun characterization, and the best "legend" yet, and what issues the episode does have seem minor given just how fun the whole thing is. See, this is what I want from the show. Give me more like this.
    Score: 
    Entertainment: 8/10
    Characters: 7/10
    Themes: 9/10
    Story: 8/10
    Overall: 83/100
    You can find more episode reviews at my offsite blog. 
  15. Thrond
    It's always the ones you don't expect, isn't it? 
    Last season, I was surprised to enjoy "28 Pranks Later," a fairly messy episode that was nonetheless made enjoyable by a handful of solid jokes and a decently creepy atmosphere. From the synopsis, it seemed likely to have a mean-spirited, vindictive tone, but unlike the similar "The Mysterious Mare-Do-Well," it used its plot as an excuse to have some funny visual gags and indulge in zombie tropes rather than wasting time humiliating Rainbow Dash for some anachronistic wrong. It was far from perfect, but it was the season's most pleasant surprise. 
    "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You" is less funny than "28 Pranks Later," but it's every bit as surprising. Despite its inherently awkward premise, the episode almost entirely avoids cringe comedy, and while what gags it does offer are mostly pedestrian, the episode's story structure recalls the show's earliest seasons in a good way. This is a story which gives itself time to breathe, which allows itself to be simple but relatable, which seems to understand the show's original charms. If only it were funnier, it would feel like a genuine return to form. Still, this is surprisingly pleasant! 
    When Rarity is being considered for the cover of a popular fashion magazine, she visits Pinkie Pie for event preparations just to find the latter celebrating the anniversary of the Cake kids' first sneeze. Much to her dismay, Rarity leaves this encounter with Silly String sticking to her mane, and the two visit Zecora in search of a natural cure. Zecora gives them one hair growth potion and one hair removal potion, but unfortunately Rarity grabs the wrong one and inadvertently destroys her hair even further. Lacking any way to instantaneously regrow hair, Rarity then needs to continue with her preparations while hiding her now-bald head. 
    As said, this seems like prime territory for cringe comedy. It could have shown Rarity going to desperate lengths to get things done while hiding her head, and that would have been nearly unbearable. Instead, though, "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You" simply depicts Rarity attempting to get through a day of hair-related plans without any hair to show, and while she eventually descends into histrionics, the tone is surprisingly relaxed. At no point does she embarrass herself, and even when she's actively hiding her face, you never get the impression that it's particularly bothering anyone, and she never goes to excessive lengths to hide her identity.
    There's even things this episode gets right which many others don't. This is one of the most low-stakes stories we've had in a while, and as such, it can pace itself out more without feeling unfocused. Like an early season episode, the story revolves around a somewhat fantastical yet still mundane problem, and it builds on this main premise without over-complicating it or smothering it in superfluous elements. It still could have used a couple digressions, but overall the episode has comparatively relaxed pacing, which supplies a little bit of charm. 
    In fact, "charming" is perhaps the best descriptor of the episode overall. Despite having a humour focus, it's somewhat sparse for jokes, relying a lot on inherently humorous situations, and that will always be subjective. Personally, I don't find Rarity awkwardly trying to get things done without being noticed all that funny, and most of the other situations are similarly mundane. Probably the most joke-dense scene in the episode is when Rarity tries to get Twilight and Starlight to magically fix her castle, but even then there's only one joke: each hair replacement is transported from somewhere else, and quickly falls apart. It's all very mild humour, and while there's nothing wrong with that, it's not terribly exciting. 
    At the same time, there's a lot of small pleasant moments. It's nice to see Pinkie throwing a party for the Cake babies, it's nice to see Rarity's friends trying to help, and it's nice to see Zecora again. Rarity's plight is too simple to be particularly interesting, and at times she comes across as slightly self-absorbed, but everyone around her is written on top form, even if they're never called upon to do much. Pinkie's the only one who does as much as Rarity, and while her antics are a little familiar this she has a few funny scenes, like one early on where she reacts to Zecora trying to nag her. Even Starlight isn't so bad this week, as for once her bluntness actually stands out as a unique trait. She's still superfluous, seemingly present just for a weak reference to the season 5 finale, but here she at least mostly stays out of the way. 
    Really, the worst part is the cold open, which goes on for three endless minutes of clumsy foreshadowing before the theme song kicks in. Thankfully, each scene is a little improved from the last, and by the time the episode returns to Ponyville's market street, the shaky parts of the first half have all but vanished. This is especially true of the episode's wonderful ending, starting when Rarity enlists Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy, and Applejack for help. The funniest scenes in the entire episode come from these three trying to give Rarity a makeshift wig: Applejack's is attached to a bonnet, Rainbow's is made of clouds, and Fluttershy's is assembled out of shrubbery by her animal friends. In each case, the issue is obvious, but it leads to the sight of Rarity leaving her cloud wig behind when she walks away, which has got to be worth something. 
    Finally, she cancels her photo shoot, and her friends stop by to break her out of her funk. In particular, it's nice to see Applejack being stern without coming across as rude or inflexible, and seeing Rainbow act primarily out of compassion without a note of egotism is incredibly refreshing even if she doesn't have much to do. Finally, Rarity's friends remind her of how much she's accomplished and how much she means to them, which encourages her to make the most of the situation. In the episode's denouement, Rarity combs what remaining hair she has into a makeshift mohawk, complete with multicoloured dye and a studded jacket, and it looks fantastic. 
    In the cold open, Rarity inspired a few fashion shops to offer new services, and in the middle we see her unable to make use of them because she's hiding her face. Finally, in the ending, we get to see her doing a little more to help out around town. She gives Filthy Rich her leftover flowers, provides some further advice for a local fan store, and... uh... buys a new couch. Okay, that last one fits less, but it's a nice moral: all you need is a little confidence, and you can still be the best version of you in a bad situation. Even when all your plans are ruined, you can still make the best of what you have. Plus, the episode goes out with Rarity saving Pinkie from an overflowing bubble bath, so that's a plus, and Rarity even gets on the magazine cover anyway due to her friends pulling a few strings. Altogether, this ending is filled with delights. 
    In many ways, "It Isn't the Mane Thing About You" demonstrates My Little Pony finally regaining an understanding of what once made it work. In tone, story structure, and characterization, this episode recalls the show's best years, and while the conflict and jokes still need a lot of work to reach those heights, there's a lot to like here. At worst, it's watchable and inoffensive, and at best it's as charming as anything else this season, and that's a lot more than I can say for many other episodes. So, again, it's not unlike "28 Pranks Later": decidedly flawed and occasionally boring, but with way, way more charm than I would ever have expected. It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised by this show. 
    Score:
    Entertainment: 6/10
    Characters: 7/10
    Story: 6/10
    Themes: 7/10
    Overall: 65/100
    You can find more episode reviews at my offsite blog. 
  16. Thrond
    Daring Do has long been one of the most consistently entertaining characters in My Little Pony. As an obvious Indiana Jones homage, she allows the show to tell the kind of adventurous stories which were always part of the package without being constrained by the characters, and her appearances often boast more charm and creativity than many of the show's other adventure episodes. Until this point, all three of her episodes were great fun, but Daring Do as a character has never been explored in great detail, and is often the individual to learn the least from her journeys.

    "Daring Done?" seeks to change that, giving Daring the kind of significant internal conflict which she previously lacked. However, in spite of its genuinely interesting premise, the episode does everything in its power to water down its own story, and features some of the worst humour I've seen in the whole show. Some decent worldbuilding keeps it from being entirely worthless, but that's faint praise when so much of the episode is an exhausting chore to sit through, and it can't even commit to the things which originally made it interesting.



    When Rainbow Dash and Pinkie Pie learn that Daring Do has announced their retirement, they immediately seek her out to find out why. Once they arrive, Daring informs them of a village called Somnambula where she's become despised for bringing destruction wherever she goes, and that it's made her think Equestria might be better if she just quits. Shocked, Rainbow and Pinkie immediately request to see Somnambula for themselves and get to the bottom of these stories.

    The idea of a heroic character actually leaving destruction in their wake is something which is often explored in superhero media, including the recent film Captain America: Civil War, and it's endured for a reason. There's a lot of interesting points to be mined from examining the unintended side effects of a hero's actions, and the irony of Daring Do hurting those she's trying to save has a lot of potential. Unfortunately, the episode eschews any sophisticated commentary in favour of having Daring Do repeatedly state how insecure she is and the townsponies repeatedly describe stuff Daring messed up. Since Rainbow and Pinkie are here to save Daring's reputation, we never get any chance to sympathize with the townspeople, so instead the first half of the episode just repeats the same motions over and over again.

    By the halfway point, the episode has copped out entirely and introduced a suspicious hooded figure who is manipulating the townsponies, and who eventually turns out to be Daring Do's nemesis Caballeron. So not only does "Daring Done?" refuse to engage with its premise, it ultimately dismisses its most interesting ideas, leaving no real themes aside from an extremely generic pro-positivity message. In the end, Pinkie spouts a whole spiel about hope, but this such a rote, generic platitude that it's hard not to wish the episode had committed to its initial premise. Given the direction the story takes, the only way to tie these two ideas together is to suggest that Daring Do should just ignore accusations against her, no matter how valid they may be, and that's genuinely troubling.

    Worse still, Daring herself is a total wet blanket here. The energy and adventurous spirit which she brought to all of her prior episodes is entirely deflated here, replaced with a constantly morose attitude which quickly becomes tiring. She may have been sympathetic if the entire plot wasn't about disproving her, but without that, her constantly downbeat attitude quickly becomes a drag, and this isn't helped by it being effectively her only personality trait. Despite its attempt to give Daring some character development, this episode refuses to change her from the straightforward hero we saw elsewhere, except without the charisma. By the time she finally has a chance to show off and fight the villain, she's become a background character in her own story, taking a backseat to Pinkie's expository moralizing.

    All of that might have been tolerable if the episode were at all fun, but it only picks up steam at the very end, and even that isn't executed very well. Before the climax, there's very little action, and the dialogue consists overwhelmingly of Rainbow, Pinkie, and Daring shouting exposition at each other. This is one of the noisiest episodes of the entire show, featuring near-constant chatter, almost none of which consists of anything but the characters loudly stating their emotions about something which is happening. There's no subtlety, no nuance, no subtext, and there's also barely any jokes in the mix. Too often, the episode mistakes loud shouting for humour. The show's not usually like this, and for good reason.

    When the episode finally gets to that climax, Rainbow is kidnapped by Caballeron, which Daring and Pinkie don't notice in time to prevent despite being within earshot. Rainbow is kidnapped really easily, and while it makes some sense in context, it's still really disappointing to see one of the show's strongest and most adventurous characters reduced to a damsel in distress. Daring and Pinkie being so nearby is significantly more annoying, however, and the actual rescue scene is underwhelming, since its traps are passed not with cleverness or agility but with a pure leap of faith. That fits the theme, but it's still really dull, and the dialogue continues to be nothing more than ceaseless exposition.

    Rainbow and Pinkie's characterization is a bit of a mixed bag. Rainbow is nearly useless, shouting obnoxiously at everyone around her without affecting anything. The thoughtfulness which she developed through the first four seasons is totally absent here, and her aggression is somewhat exaggerated. Pinkie is somewhat less irritating, but only because it's her job to present the moral. For whatever reason, Pinkie Pie is the empathetic moderating force to Rainbow's coarse screaming (which speaks to how bad Rainbow's characterization is), but despite having some pleasantly admirable moments, Pinkie is often just as shouty and obnoxious. At least the she isn't steadfastly in the right from start to finish, as Pinkie has some doubts around the midway point, although she quicly rebounds apropos of nothing.

    It's a good thing the setting's colourful, then, because it's the closest anything in this episode comes to being fully realized. The town of Somnambula has an Egyptian aesthetic, with brown, densely packed buildings and ponies wearing Middle East-inspired clothing, and we learn a story about an ancient pharaoh who the town is named after who saved a friend from a sphinx by walking blindfolded over a rickety bridge. Somnambula isn't given enough time to display a personality, but she's admirable enough, and the ancient Egyptian aesthetic of this story is interesting. It's just too bad that it's blatantly meant to reflect the main moral, and by contrived coincidence very closely parallels Daring and Pinkie saving Rainbow in the climax. To hammer in the parallel, the climax even has visual similarities to the Somnambula story, and that just makes the coincidence feel even more contrived. Plus, nobody ever sleepwalks in this episode, so it's unclear why the pharaoh and village have that name.

    "Daring Done?" is the worst of the Daring Do episodes, and it's not even a contest. The contrived storytelling, the simplistic characterization, and the loud, expository dialogue all make for a genuinely exhausting episode to sit through. It arguably offers some of the show's best worldbuilding in recent years, as Somnambula is a fairly colourful and distinctive locale, but that's not enough to make the episode anything but a complete slog, and all the poor writing soon grows oppressive. What a huge disappointment.

    Score:
    Entertainment: 3/10
    Characters: 4/10
    Story: 3/10
    Themes: 4/10
    Overall: 35/100
    You can find more episode reviews at my offsite blog. 
  17. Thrond
    Humour will do a lot to save an otherwise subpar episode for me, but I do have my limits. "To Change a Changeling" tells a largely uninteresting story with unclear themes and shallow characterization, but it also has a lot of great dialogue and humorous moments. The latter does a lot to keep the episode afloat, but there's only so many issues I can forgive before they start to overwhelm the humour, and while this episode is on the right side of the line, it's teetering near the edge, and it'd need to be a lot funnier for me to fully forgive a plot this dull.
    While Trixie and Starlight are travelling to the Changeling hive to visit Thorax, they're captured by an unchanged Changeling, who brings them to the hive under the impression that they're enemies. Once the misunderstanding has been cleared up, the ponies realize this Changeling is Thorax's brother Pharynx, who has been unwilling to share love or accept Thorax's pacifism. Seeing that Pharynx is making the other changelings uncomfortable, Starlight and Pharynx try to convince him to change.
    Pharynx is both the episode's greatest strength and its greatest weakness. On one hand, he's consistently hilarious, offering a variety of funny responses to both the pacifism of Thorax's community and to the ponies' attempts to befriend him. Having a character bluntly reject friendship isn't exactly something new to this show, but it's still fairly amusing, and the comic timing of Pharynx's curt dialogue is solid.
    The thing is, the show never gives us a reason to care whether he changes or not, and despite later upping the conflict to whether he even stays in the hive, the stakes remain low. Pharynx is consistently depicted as rude and inconsiderate, a nuisance at best who doesn't think of others in any sense aside from basic security. He's funny but never particularly likeable, and it's hard to even be invested for Thorax's sake, because we never get a sense that they have a close relationship. Pharynx never demonstrates much respect for Thorax, and even when a flashback shows us Pharynx defending Thorax from bullies, Pharynx then proceeds to harass Thorax himself. Thorax seems to care more, but aside from that unconvincing flashback, we're never given a good sense of why.
    But it's hard to actually hate Pharynx, because he's mostly harmless. The worst thing he does is kidnap Starlight and Trixie, and he releases them the moment Thorax tells him to. As a result, it's hard to muster up any particular emotion towards him. The most I got was thinking that he never deserved to be exiled, but the episode is barely even about that. While that does make it a little easier to see why Thorax might still care about him, it actually serves to make him less compelling, because he ultimately feels slightly generic and shallow.
    Starlight and Trixie fall into the exact same boat. Both are given some snappy dialogue, and Trixie's happy self-confidence is as amusing as always, but it's unclear what they're supposed to have learned from this experience, and because Pharynx isn't very sympathetic, their internal conflict over how to deal with him isn't very relatable. They eventually conclude that they should tell Thorax to kick Pharynx out, but while they're both very nervous about telling him, we never get enough details about the changeling brothers' relationship to really empathize. There's some inherent tension in telling someone to banish his own sibling, but that conflict lacks specificity and texture. Starlight is still kinda bland here and Trixie's boasting isn't always endearing, so this extra barrier to sympathizing with them is particularly unwelcome.
    Worse still, everything Starlight and Trixie successfully accomplish only serves to make matters worse for Thorax and Pharynx. When they debate who should tell Thorax to kick him out, Pharynx overhears and leaves of his own accord, and later Starlight plans to bring out the "caring" Pharynx from Thorax's flashback by luring a dangerous creature towards the hive. The latter, in particular, comes across as something which Trixie should have known to talk her down from, given that Snips and Snails did the same thing in her first appearance, and while it feels slightly more in-character for Starlight, it's unpleasant to yet again see her putting others in danger when left unattended.
    I don't even know what point Starlight and Trixie's screw up is supposed to convey. If there's a moral here about not bringing dangerous animals to a settlement, the animal in question doesn't show up long enough for that to be meaningful, and while it sets up something about giving your friends difficult advice, that plot thread is never properly resolved. The denouement suggests a moral about not writing people off as a "lost cause," because Pharynx eventually does rejoin the hive and transform, but it's not quite clear why the latter happened, because Pharynx doesn't really learn anything by the end.
    In its climax, the episode shifts gears entirely and pulls out a moral that, while not entirely absent from the rest of the episode, is unconvincing due to a few dubious plot aspects. The episode is trying to say that a nonviolent community like Thorax's still needs to defend itself against threats, but we know that Thorax was inspired to be nice by the actions of ponies during the invasion of Canterlot, so it's unclear why he doesn't already know that. While we know he's gentle and until recently wasn't very assertive, it reflects badly on him that he didn't recognize ponies still had means of defending themselves, given how much pony society has inspired the way he runs his hive.
    Furthermore, I'm just not sure what this episode is supposed to be telling kids. Suggesting that peaceful communities still need to defend themselves is arguably a timely message, but it also seems fairly political in nautre, and this show is targeted at people who are several years away from being able to vote. If it means to say anything about individual behaviour, then representing that by contrasting an individual with a society doesn't seem like the clearest way to communicate that, and the show already has morals about nice people still needing to stand up for themselves.
    So it's a good thing that the episode is funny, because that does keep it afloat in spite of all the thematic messiness and narrative tedium. "To Change a Changeling" is saved by its good dialogue and solid comedic timing, because what's here story-wise mostly falls apart under any scrutiny, and it fails to make its characters or main conflict compelling. As a whole, it's kind of a mess, but an entertaining mess is better than a boring one any day of the week, and it's hard to say that an episode with this sharp a sense of humour is entirely worthless. If only the plot were as good as the dialogue.
    Score: 
    Entertainment: 7/10
    Characters: 5/10
    Themes: 4/10
    Story: 5/10
    Overall: 53/100
    You can find more episode reviews at my offsite blog. 
  18. Thrond
    My Little Pony does not have interesting mythology. The fact is, the vast majority of its world and backstory are either heavily based on other stories or designed to fulfill a specific role. That doesn't need to be the case, but this is a children's program where most worldbuilding is made up during the scripting phase rather than taken from any grander vision, so the easiest route is simply transplanting ponies onto familiar stories from human mythology, or taking creatures from other fantasy stories and building a rudimentary, sometimes overly simplistic society around them.

    With "Campfire Tales," the show seems interested in finally adding some weight to its mythos, and yet it falls into all the same traps. There are three stories in this episode, but all three are simple moral lessons which transplant human cultures onto Equestria without exploring them in much detail. Add in a framing story which tries to tie that to the actual main characters of the show, and you have an episode which can't do justice to either Equestria's past or present. It's still nice to see a diverse range of environments, and there's moments of charm and tension here and there, but it's not enough to make the episode particularly exciting.



    When Rarity, Applejack, and Rainbow Dash go camping with their sisters (and Scootaloo), their plans are ruined by an attack from a swarm of aggressive bugs known as "Flyders," who drive them away from their campsite and into a cave. While there, they set up a fire and try to make the best of their situation by sharing their favourite legends.

    The first legend, shared by Applejack, tells of an earth pony named Rock Hoof from the guard village of Mighty Helm, who everyone said was too scrawny and weak to protect the village. When a volcano erupts, he starts building a trench to stop the lava, and spontaneously transforms into a stronger pony, rapidly expanding his trench to the river so the lava can flow harmlessly away from the village.

    Of the three legends, this has the least clarity, and its apparent message of perservering beyond what's expected of you is clouded by the fact that Rock Hoof could have been seriously hurt by the lava had he not transformed, and that transformation adds a mystical element which is somewhat hard to apply to the laws of magic in Equestria, let alone real life. Furthermore, Rock Hoof's story is by far the simplest of the lot, featuring the least buildup, the least detail, and the least context, and while that's not entirely unrealistic to real-life legends, it also prevents the story from having much of an identity.

    Unfortunately, this is also a major issue with the other two stories. The second is shared by Rarity, and involves a unicorn named Mistmane whose friend, Sable Spirit, is the empress of an unnamed state. Mistmane discovers that Sable is overworking her subjects, and surprised that her old friend has turned so cruel, confronts her in the palace.

    Despite being the most intricate of the three legends, the Mistmane story still relies heavily on simplistic characterization in service of a simplistic theme. Sable's oppressive rule is explained through a longstanding jealousy of Mistmane's beauty, which led the future empress to cast a failed beauty spell on herself, making her old and ugly, and leading her to want a palace with the beauty she could not have. Without knowing more about Sable, this just makes her seem shallow, and as a consequence, Mistmane's decision to restore her appearance in the end lacks weight.

    This second legend contains the strongest moral of the three, but it's still not especially clear. What comes across is that jealousy and obsession with physical appearances will eventually lead to cruelty, but Sable is such an extreme and uncomplicated example that this moral comes across as little more than generic children's show fluff - not without merit, but offering relatively little substance for anyone older than the target audience.

    Much of the problem is with how these legends are presented. They don't function as regular works of fiction, as they're only a couple minutes long and lack detail or nuanced characters, but they don't have the ethnographic appeal of fictional mythology either. The Mighty Helm story takes place in a Nordic society, while the Mistmane one has a Japanese aesthetic, but both of these cultures are entirely new to the show, and these legends provide very little detail about them. We don't know exactly where any of these tales take place, we don't know what their cultures are called, and we don't know if the societies they come from even still exist. Somehow, we know less about the world of Equestria than when we started.

    With that said, it is nice to see new environments. The town of Mighty Helm is at least named, and neither it nor the setting of the Mistmane story look like anything we've seen in the past. Rainbow's later story takes place in the Dragon Lands, but while we've seen that before, it's still one of the show's more visually distinctive locations, and it's never looked better. Unfortunately, all three of the cultures depicted are directly analogous to real-world cultures, and without any additional detail of where they fit into Equestria, they still come across as uninspired even in spite of how distinct they are from the rest of the show. Rather than unique worldbuilding which sets Equestria apart, we get familiar sights plastered directly from the real world which look like any number of other shows.

    Thankfully, while Rainbow's story has all the same problems, it at least boasts some decent action. This legend revolves around Flash Magnus, a lowly cadet in an unnamed kingdom's Royal Legion who is flying over the dragon lands with his squad to meet their comrades. Along the way, they're attacked by the dragons, and several Legionnaires are captured. In order to rescue his comrades, Flash volunteers to lure the dragon away, and is given a fireproof shield to help. Once the rescue has succeeded, he lures the dragons into a thundercloud, where get zapped a few times and then retreat. Flash's bravery is praised by his comrades, and his commander lets him keep the shield.

    As said, this third story has all the same problems: almost no cultural detail, two-dimensional characters, and a simple moral. In this case, the moral is about the merit of bravery and putting yourself in danger to help others - again, fine enough, but not too compelling. However, it also contains significantly more action than the other two, and adding the stakes of Flash's captured comrades helps give the story at least a little weight. More importantly, the scene of Flash flying away from the dragons while defending himself from their fire is fast-paced and genuinely thrilling, which gives this story some of the energy which the other two were sorely lacking, and the final twist of Flash leading the dragons into a thundercloud is easily the most clever plot point in the entire episode.

    That action is significant, because these legends are played entirely straight, with very little humour to offer. The Mistmane story also has a visually distinctive action scene, but it's played with particular seriousness, as is the rest of that story. The only note of humour across all three is Flash Magnus emerging from the thundercloud charred and frazzled, providing a little levity after a genuinely intense chase sequence. Otherwise, these stories are entirely po-faced, and they're neither complex nor creative enough to justify that.

    Instead, the episode's attempts at humour are found in the framing story, which features light banter between the Crusaders and their sisters as well as a few weak visual gags. Frankly, only one of these lands: in one digression from the Mistmane story, Sweetie Belle says she too would be surprised if one of her friends turned evil, to which Apple Bloom retorts that she "knows how they get when they miss breakfast." That lands, but otherwise the the episode relies heavily on limp callbacks to "Sleepless in Ponyville" and caricatured depictions of Rainbow Dash and Scootaloo. It even throws in a grotesque facial expression or two.

    To be fair to Dash, she gets a few pleasant moments which emphasize her relationship with Scootaloo, but most of her dialogue consists simply of her declaring her own awesomeness. It's not just that she acts confidently and recklessly - she does that, but it's mostly fine, excepting a few boneheaded encounters with the flyders. It's that not a single scene can pass without her at least once stating how awesome she is. Even if we accept that she'd still boast constantly in season 7, it's just annoying to have the same joke repeated ad nauseam, and you'd think Rainbow would tone it down out of some respect for her friends.

    Scootaloo is even worse, though. Her nervousness from "Sleepless in Ponyville" has ballooned into her being the scaredy-cat of the group, which completely misses the point of the earlier episode. In "Sleepless," she was just as scared as Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom, but felt the need to hide it in order to impress Rainbow Dash. Here, she's afraid of everything, whereas Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom are completely fine for the most part. This is a completely new character trait which we have never seen before, and there's no other punchlines to save her scenes from falling flat.

    This framing story is also very strained and predictable. Of course something goes wrong right when they set up camp. Of course the ponies need to make the best of what they have. Of course they lock themselves in, then find a way out as soon as they start looking. And of course the CMC declare that they had a great time despite all the setbacks. It's just so stale and predictable, and the lesson has already been done as far back as season 1's brilliant "The Best Night Ever." Even the legends seem to echo that main lesson, though it's faint enough that it could just be a coincidence.

    Still, there's some charm to be found in the framing story, mainly in the relationships between the CMC and their sisters. Apple Bloom is visibly enthusiastic about Applejack's story, Rarity and Sweetie Belle display some affection, and Rainbow Dash at one point comforts Scootaloo when the latter is scared. It's mainly that general sense of sweetness which keeps the framing story afloat, but that's only barely enough to keep it from being a total wash.

    Mostly, it's the environments and the Flash Magnus story which keep "Campfire Tales" afloat. It's just pretty enough, just charming enough, eventually just exciting enough to not be boring, but there's not much here to be excited by either. Poor humour, derivative storytelling, and weak world building hold the episode back. The latter two are par for the course, but the former is what's really disappointing. This show doesn't have an interesting enough world to sustain an entire 22 minute episode, but with enough solid humour, it could have still provided a little bit more detail to Equestria without feeling so flimsy. Alas, it was not to be.

    Score:
    Entertainment: 6/10
    Characters: 4/10
    Themes: 6/10
    Story: 5/10
    Overall: 53/100   You can find more episode reviews at my offsite blog. 
  19. Thrond
    One of my weak spots as a fan of this show is pony politics. Good or bad, if a My Little Pony episode revolves around the main characters struggling to adjust to new responsibilities - especially if said responsibilities are related to diplomacy - then I'm bound to get some enjoyment out of it. "Triple Threat" is a little too predictable to be on par with "Party Pooped," my favourite episode of this type, but it delivers the sympathetic internal conflict which always drives these episodes, and has a lot of charming and funny moments to boot, as well as a great moral.

    If anything brings "Triple Threat" down, it's the story itself, which is very predictable and is often expected to drive scenes with few jokes to liven things up. "Triple Threat" admirably gives its story more time to breathe than many episodes this season, but it still refuses to add any twists or even unexpected quirks, and while there's enough fun moments to carry the rote narrative, it's simply too familiar to sustain attention through the entire 22 minutes.

    Still, this is a major improvement over the likes of "Forever Filly."

    When Spike accidentally invites both Ember and Thorax to Ponyville on the same day, he fears that if they meet, their contrasting personalities might lead to a breakdown in relations between the two species. In order to prevent this, he enlists Twilight and Starlight to keep the two leaders apart, and in the meantime, the map calls on him to solve a friendship problem, adding even more stress to his plate.

    "Triple Threat" is not very polished story-wise. Spike appears to have invited Ember and Thorax on the same day entirely due to disorganization and absent-mindedness, which is rather unlike him, and nobody ever suggests that they allow the two to meet and see what happens. Spike knows both personalities enough that his belief that they could start a war is about as founded as Starlight's fear of Nightmare Moon returning in "A Royal Problem," and there's never even the slightest doubt that Ember and Thorax will get along just fine once they actually meet. Even the introduction of the Cutie Map is superfluous and predictable: it's immediately apparent that the greatest friendship problem is the one Spike has created, and his attempts to find a friendship problem amount to a couple mildly amusing sight gags at most.

    But that's unsurprising at this point in season 7. Thankfully, this episode has stronger comedic chops than others like it, and every time it sinks into tedium, another solid joke pops in to make the episode entertaining again. Be it Twilight's bizarre fixation on chairs, Ember munching on the palace walls, or Thorax getting distracted by pretty objects, the episode is filled with fun moments, and even the return of the Cutie Map provides a distraction from the weak story. "Triple Threat" is hardly the show's most fun episode, and it doesn't have the rapid-fire jokes or joyous mood of something like "A Flurry of Emotions," but it's still frequently entertaining, and much of this comes down to its main characters.

    On one hand, Thorax is somehow even more charming than in his previous appearances. His gentle demeanour leads to a lot of solid moments, and although none are quite as good as his arrival in Ponyville, simply getting to see him be gentle and sweet is a delight. He's just so earnest and chipper that even the moments where he's dryly reacting to the plot have a little charm to them, and his dynamic with Spike continues to be organic and pleasant. He's here to tell Spike about some Changelings who don't want to share love, and this marks the second episode in a row which set up a future episode. It's nice to see My Little Pony experimenting with serialization, but the rest of the episode treats Thorax's issue as not being respected enough by his people at large, so this moment of setup only bogs the episode down.

    On the other hand, Ember is massively improved over her debut, largely because the show has placed more emphasis on her aggressive mannerisms. She does what she wants, and isn't happy when anyone gets in the way of it, and although it's not always fun to watch her be inadvertently rude due to not understanding pony customs, gags like seeing her munch on the pillars of Twilight's castle are irresistible, and it's just nice to see her made slightly more distinctive than she was in "Gauntlet of Fire." The episode even tries a little harder to separate "pony customs" from "friendship," as Ember briefly mentions at least one trick scares ponies was very popular among dragons, although it still sometimes falls into the trap of conflating the two.

    The episode's best moment comes at the end, when Ember and Thorax finally meet. They misinterpret each other as attempting to threaten Spike, but as soon as they realize they're both Spike's friends, they also discover that Spike had been trying to keep them apart, which upsets them. Later, they get an adorable scene of talking to each other about their problems, and agreeing to help each other with them. Ember doesn't understand friendship, so Thorax helps her react to problems by talking instead of with displays of aggression, and Thorax is struggling with being respected. so Ember teaches him how to assert himself. In the end, they showcase these lessons by expressing their anger with Spike, and while both serve as good lessons on their own, that additional lesson of giving contrasting personalities a chance to get along is very solid as well.

    And then there's Spike, who one would think is way too young to be in any sort of diplomatic role, but who is sympathetic in part because of that. As with "Party Pooped," half of the fun here is just watching Spike freaking out, although without "Party Pooped's" frantic pacing it does get old after a while. Since season 4, Spike has been fairly reliable for starring in episodes about overcoming some sort of insecurity, and while his episodes are rarely the most polished of the show, I still think that the show is at its best when it revolves around insecurity. Here, we see that Twilight's tendency to freak out over insignificant things has begun to rub off on him, and while the episode proceeds to belabour that point unecessarily, it remains sympathetic nonetheless. Spike gets some funny moments, but they're not as common as those of his guests, and at times his constant worry goes from sympathetic to just tedious.

    Finally, both Twilight and Starlight are present here. Twilight's winning streak continues with a quick gag about how Spike learned his panicking from her, and the weird introduction of an obsession with chairs is a blast, but she's not given nearly as much to do in the second half of the episode. Starlight, meanwhile, is finally coming into her own as a character, but I must admit that I'm still not particularly interested in her. Her mild snarkiness feels kinda hypocritical given the absurd things she does, and since the mane six and Spike often have lines just like that, it doesn't set her apart very much either. Furthermore, because she's very similar to Twilight, the two have a somewhat uninteresting dynamic, and "Triple Threat" chooses to joke about their similarity rather than actually emphasize what differences exist in an amusing way. She does appear to have an easier time manipulating Ember and Thorax than Twilight does Thorax, and that amusingly reflects her past, but while that further sets her apart from Twilight, it doesn't really match the big gags which everyone else has, and she's not given very much to do in the back half either.

    Still, "Triple Threat" has plenty of moments, and while these mostly come from Twilight, Ember, and Thorax, Spike is also sympathetic and relatively charming, and it's just interesting to see another pony episode which deals with diplomacy, even if the novelty is starting to wear off. Despite the rote plot, the episode is frequently entertaining, and the combination of a delightful climax and not one but three great morals does at least a little bit to make up for the predictability. Thorax and Ember are two of the best characters she show has introduced in recent years, and their charms would have been enough to elevate the episode, but as always, it's Spike and his relatable insecurities which give his episodes their heart. Not the best episode, but solid.

    Score:
    Entertainment: 7/10
    Characters: 8/10
    Themes: 9/10
    Story: 4/10
    Overall: 70/100   You can find more episode reviews at my offsite blog. 
  20. Thrond
    And that's a wrap. This is the last piece of Equestria Girls content we're getting this year. Three shorts, 66 minutes, and yet not a single note of substance. "Mirror Magic" is easily the worst of the three shorts, rehashing ideas from earlier two-parters while piling on other tiresome tropes and possessing absolutely no emotional resonance whatsoever. All three shorts are vacuous and mostly unimaginative, but whatever positive qualities were present in the other two are largely absent here. It does nothing to move the series forward, isn't particularly funny, and is filled to the brim with lazy storytelling and characterization. It is an absolute waste of time.

    If you'd asked me last year, I would have said that Equestria Girls should really expand into being a proper series. Now, I just want it to be over with already. None of these shorts demonstrates even the slightest interest in exploring what actually has potential about this world and these characters, and that would be fine if they weren't also committed to these hollow, derivative, thorougly tired storylines. "Mirror Magic" has a bad villain, a predictable structure, limp gags, and one-note characterization, and I do not understand why it exists. It's stagnation of the worst kind, and completely absent from it is the heart and charm which drew me to My Little Pony in the first place.



    Sunset Shimmer is worried about a magical threat showing up, so she goes to Equestria to talk to Princess Twilight. Princess Twilight is away, so she talks to Starlight Glimmer instead. Starlight wants to go to the human world, so Sunset brings her. Meanwhile, Juniper Montage bristles over being thwarted by the Rainbooms, is stuck with a dull job at a movie theater, uses the mirror to take her revenge. Starlight and Sunset need to stop her.

    As with most things Equestria Girls, a disproportionate amount of "Mirror Magic" is simply devoted to setting up the main plot, especially with several scenes devoted to Juniper whining about the Rainbooms and toying around with her magic mirror. In "Rainbow Rocks," this was fine, because the plot started fairly quickly, and the buildup to the final showdown also featured Sunset and Twilight's character arcs. By contrast, "Mirror Magic" has no emotional scaffolding for its conflict. Juniper's motivations are still vacuous, and there's no profound contrast between her and the protagonists aside from the most obvious idea that, like Twilight, Starlight, and Sunset, she did something wrong and is saved by friendship.

    In a turn which is sure to irritate a lot of people, Juniper is convinced to give up her sinister ways simply through being offered friendship. I'm not usually bothered by this kind of thing, but the film fails to establish a reason for me to care, and as a result, it feels like a rehash of earlier stories, especially the climax of Friendship Games. Juniper spends the majority of the special whining and looking at her reflections, and as a result she just comes across as self-absorbed and vapid. She's definitely not funny, as every gag in her scenes is trite and predictable, and even if she were, all those gags are at her expense, and as such it's hard to sympathize with her enough for her reformation to mean anything.

    Meanwhile, Sunset and Starlight are off being bland again, and surprisingly, pairing them together reveals nothing about either of them. As I'd feared, putting two bland characters together results in a bland dynamic: Sunset just expresses anxiety about a magical disaster happening, while Starlight is excited about being in the human world, and neither expresses even a single personality trait beyond that. Bizarrely, Starlight also has a new chipper attitude which feels inconsistent with her relaxed persona in "Rock Solid Friendship," and she adds absolutely nothing to the special whatsoever. Her enthusiasm over the human world is more or less meaningless, the humour she brings is largely rehashed from the first film, and her heart-to-heart with Juniper at the end could have just as easily been delivered by Sunset or Twilight. Her presence is wholly extraneous.

    Just to dispel any concerns that "Mirror Magic" would be at all creative, it gets the mane six and later Sunset out of the way simply by having the villain capture them without a fight. In "To Where and Back Again," this worked not only because the episode didn't waste time on the captured ponies, but also because that capture added to the protagonists' anxiety. But neither Sunset nor Starlight have anything close to a meaningful character arc, and Juniper's is shallow and meaningless, so it feels like little more than a lazy way to move the plot forward. The final battle does derive some tension from the world inside the mirror falling apart, but there's no real tension because we know this show won't actually hurt these characters.

    Worst of all, this special tells us nothing new about the characters or the world. The cliffhanger from "Legend of Everfree" remains unresolved, we learn nothing new about the geodes, not a single returning character develops at all, and we learn absolutely nothing new about their lives, either. Instead, we get a bunch of beats rehashed from better movies and episodes, and the one thing this special does change about the series is that the main friend group now has Juniper and Starlight added to it, because what this series needed was two charmless new characters to bland it up even more. It doesn't even have the good courtesy to have some decent jokes, as characters run at the mouth without ever saying anything interesting. It's just so boring. 

    And that's all we're getting from Equestria Girls this year. One entertaining special, two dull ones, and absolutely no substance whatsoever. Perhaps this series shouldn't get its own show after all, because if these specials are any indication, it has absolutely nothing left to offer. "Mirror Magic" in particular is an irritating rehash which sees the series spinning its wheels, doing the same thing it always does only with less conviction and heart. You've seen everything here before, and the execution is so charmless that I don't know what anyone could get out of it. I still think those first three movies have a lot of merit and charm, but if this is where Equestria Girls is going, I want out.

    Score:
    Entertainment: 3/10
    Characters: 2/10
    Themes: 3/10
    Story: 2/10
    Overall: 25/100  
  21. Thrond
    Alright, we've got one of those meta episodes here, and this one is directly criticizing the fandom, so I'm gonna need to take a step back and try not to take it personally. The show has never gone this far in addressing its viewers before, and while I know there's a lot of people who get overly aggressive with regards to this show, I don't think all of the criticisms presented here are entirely fair. If you're gonna criticize the people who support your product, you should really proceed gently so as not to alienate them, and "careful" doesn't really describe My Little Pony anymore. Instead, we get a strained metaphor which seems vaguely contemptuous of the adult fanbase in general, and doesn't supply a whole lot of sympathy for or even understanding of what it presents as the "other side."

    But that's all subtext. The real reason why "Fame and Misfortune" doesn't work is that, like so many other episodes this season, it relies entirely on characters being creepy or irritating for humour, and even though it has the benefit of not making a recurring character unsympathetic, it's just not weird or creative enough for these obnoxious, unpleasant ponies to be anything other than obnoxious and unpleasant. However I might choose to interpret the subtext, I just don't enjoy this sort of humour, and that holds back the episode for me.

    When Twilight helps some kids work through a disagreement, she's reminded of her old friendship journal, and decides it might be worthwhile to release it to the masses. The book becomes a hit, and while her friends are initially delighted, they soon find that much of the new attention given to them is less than desirable. Deeply bothered by this development, Twilight frets over how to solve their problem.

    There's not much of an arc to "Fame and Misfortune." Once we're confronted with the initial problem - people who read the friendship journal being creepy and aggressive - there's not much story left to tell, and fair portion of the running time is dedicated to just seeing the various ways in which these ponies are being obnoxious. We see them harassing Fluttershy. We see them crowding Rainbow Dash. We see them laughing inappropriately at Pinkie Pie. In the final third of the episode, Twilight starts to wonder if she made a mistake by publishing the journal, but she doesn't really act on that until the very end, when the mane six counters the townsponies' complaints by singing about how they have flaws, like everybody else.

    And, to be fair, they have a point. If I compare season 7 to season 5, I find I much prefer the former season's attempt to give the mane six meaningful flaws to the latter's efforts to scrub those flaws away. As someone who's often argued in favour of their flaws in season 6, I should have some appreciation for this moral, but it's just a bit too didactic for me. The way the episode spends most of its time detailing different types of unpleasant fans feels, like many other episodes this season, just a bit too on-the-nose, and as a result I don't have a lot of fun with it.

    The thing is, I think I would have had more fun with the episode if it hadn't dedicated so much time to ridiculing this behaviour. I rather enjoyed the early parts, where humour was primarily derived from the personalities of the characters, and any scene where Pinkie Pie just goofs around is as fun as it's always been, but any of those scenes where the mane six are being stalked, or are frustrated that their morals are being criticized, or are otherwise simply reacting to someone else being unpleasant are much less enjoyable, because there the focus is on behaviour which is already clearly meant to come across as unpleasant, so there's not much levity to latch on to.

    Initially, I was fairly aggravated by how the episode seemed to regard criticism, but I think that was an overreaction. Taking a step back and applying a bit of context, it becomes clear that scenes such as the one where Fluttershy is being tormented for "learning the same lesson over and over again" have just as much to do with harassment of writers as with general criticism. I know that's something which happens, so I can't blame the crew for wanting to bite back at it. That's also what was probably intended with later scenes where the townsponies crowd Twilight's castle, as is made clear from just one look at how aggressive these ponies are with their complaints, not to mention the fact that they've decided to shout them at the source rather than keep them to themselves and their friends.

    But I think the episode focuses too much on specific criticisms. Returning to that Fluttershy scene, for instance, it attempts to argue with a common point that Fluttershy episodes tend to revolve around the same ideas, making it seem like she never develops. It attempts to refute this claim by saying that people won't always be able to internalize a lesson after only learning it once, and while that's fair, it's still true that most of Fluttershy's stories up until season 6 revolved around her being scared, and that the variations between them were often very subtle. Even if the writers don't agree with these criticisms, it's not like they're invalid, and attacking your critics isn't a good look.

    What bewilders me more about this scene is that it's an issue which the show has actually made steps to fix, and Fluttershy's characterization in this very episode would not be possible if the show hadn't taken those criticisms to heart. It's Fluttershy who talks back to these harassers, and aside from initially curling up into a ball when we first see her being harassed, she doesn't display the cowardice or shyness which made her episodes feel repetitive in the show's middle seasons. The episode is refuting a criticism which is no longer relevant, and I'd be quite confused to learn that people still make that claim after season 6.

    The first sign that the journal might not be received exactly as Twilight intended is when she meets collectors who bought the book simply to preserve it and resell it later when its value increases, and these are the funniest of the episode's collection of weirdos simply because one, they have the most organic dialogue, and two, they're the most unexpected of the lot. You can see why Twilight might be less than pleased with that, but the next ponies she meets are simply criticizing Rarity among themselves because they think she took too much credit for an event, and I think the mane six ought to have expected that. If you're gonna put something even that autobiographical out to the public, it shouldn't be surprising when people make judgments about you from it.

    Furthermore, these ponies aren't bothering the mane six with their opinions, so I don't see how that fits the subtext about fans being too aggressive with their responses to the show. Of the surprisingly wide variety of morals offered here, I think this best fits the implied thread that people will always criticize your work and you just need to deal with it, but I don't think the episode puts much emphasis on how the mane six should deal with criticism, and that makes scenes like this feel unbalanced. Similarly, if the episode at large is supposed to be a metaphor for My Little Pony fandom, then I think featuring a few adults who are actually respectful to the mane six would make it feel a bit more fair. The episode initially made me defensive, and while I no longer think that was entirely reasonable, I still think this episode could have done more to feel less mean-spirited towards its own audience.

    Another issue is that I don't think the friendship journal works very well as a 1:1 parallel for the show. For one thing, the way the dialogue is written sounds like criticism of a story, whereas the lessons given in that journal are all based on what are (in-universe) real events. When characters are shouting at Fluttershy or Twilight, they don't really sound like they're talking about something presented as an advice book with context from real events, and aside from being rather distracting, that lack of subtlety just isn't very sophisticated. Applejack's issue, which is that ponies have begun trying to join her family, is less conspicuous in this regard, but it's still more disturbing than particularly funny.

    Thankfully that song at the end is delightful, and although the musical number relies a bit too much on imagery of the ponies standing in a line in front of a simple background, parts also have a lovely pop-up book motif which makes up for the more dull shots, and the song itself elevates the entire sequence, with a catchy hook and solid, reasonably insightful lyrics about how one needs to take a person't flaws with their virtues. I might need a little more distance from my initial overreaction to really listen to it on its own, but unlike many other songs from the past few seasons, I can easily imagine myself doing that.

    When I first started reviewing My Little Pony episodes, I did so because it was something I found fun. I liked looking at this innocent cartoon and analyzing its hidden depths, and this is still something I get a kick out of when there's an episode I really like. But it's not as much fun when I don't find the broader strokes of the episode very entertaining, and while "Fame and Misfortune" has a lot going on, I didn't enjoy watching it a whole lot, and that's not something I'm happy about. I've been very critical of season 7, and it's often just been because I'm not having much fun. The subtext that I used to enjoy picking out is usually pretty explicit nowadays, and that can be fun to critique and analyze in its own way, but it also makes picking through a tedious episode less rewarding. I've tried to be fair to "Fame and Misfortune," but even interpreted in the most charitable light, I just don't find this kind of story especially fun.

    Maybe it has a point, though. I've been awfully grumpy about the show lately, and I'm not having as much fun writing about it as I used to.

    Maybe I should take a break.

    Score:
    Entertainment: 3/10
    Characters: 6/10
    Themes: 5/10
    Story: 4/10
    Overall: 45/100

    That's way higher than I was expecting. See, I keep telling you that overanalyzing this show makes me like it more.    You can find more episode reviews at my offsite blog. 
  22. Thrond
    Thanks, Australia. 

    I am generally biased in favour of Discord. The only episode starring him which I didn't at least enjoy a little was season 5's "What About Discord?," and that episode was meant to be unpleasant. A character who can bend the laws of reality to his will gives a lot of room for funny and creative visuals, and the only thing really holding him back is that he's always seemed like an unpleasant person to be around. He's always appeared emotionally immature and somewhat apathetic about how others feel about his actions, and this has made it increasingly unclear to me why the mane six tolerate him.

    Earlier episodes have usually dealt with this either through Discord claiming to teach someone a lesson, or through having Discord himself learn a lesson, and while "Discordant Harmony" mostly leans towards the former, it also does a better job than any episode before it of making him sympathetic and even likeable. Its need to serve up creative visuals still results in Discord irritating almost every pony in his vicinity, but his intentions in this episode are better than ever, and those visuals are pretty creative and delightful anyway. The visuals do a good job of distracting from the exposition, and the moral is rock solid, making for an all-around enjoyable episode.



    During a tea party with Fluttershy, Discord suggests that he host their next get-together. However, once he actually begins planning for the party, he struggles to find supplies that are as special (read: surreal) as he would like, and is irritated by ponies expressing surprise that Discord is friends with Fluttershy. Eventually, he figures that all this chaos might not be to Fluttershy's tastes, and removes the nonsense he conjured up in favour of a nice, pleasant setting.

    "Discordant Harmony" has an unconventional structure which makes a simple description of premise difficult, as the main conflict takes a significant change in the final third of the episode, and before that shifts focus multiple times. For the most part, the episode revolves around Discord attempting to impress Fluttershy, but midway through, Discord's methods shift dramatically, and near the end, his attempts to be "normal" not only underwhelm Fluttershy but also result in him literally beginning to fade out of existence. In the interim, a good percentage of the episode is simply Discord riffing, first on the party goods he's picking up and then on his own party. Thankfully, said riffing is every bit as amusing as Discord always is, and is accompanied by creative imagery like singing teabags, flying kettles, and at several points Discord literally speaking to a clone of himself.

    That clone is perhaps the highlight of the episode, not only because the banter between the two Discords is hilarious, but also because it demonstrates his surprisingly sympathetic internal monologue. It's no surprise that Discord cares about Fluttershy, but hearing how concerned he is about what she thinks of his tea party does a lot to humanize him. The clone is clearly only telling Discord his own thought process, and more than anything the show's done before, this helps us get into his mind and sympathize with him. It helps that he's not actively antagonizing anyone this time around, but he still demonstrates some emotional immaturity with how he reacts to others, and scenes where he's exasperated that stores don't stock fantastical items are a little awkward even at their funniest. Discord's behaviour here is certainly a step in the right direction, but the show still struggles to make him sympathetic without grounding him.

    Still, making him sympathetic does a lot to make his place in the show easier to understand. His relationship with Fluttershy is genuinely adorable, and whereas prior episodes have often featured him stretching Fluttershy's patience, here it's nice to see him being considerate of her, and it's every bit as nice to see how fond she is of his chaotic nature. Like the show is sometimes prone to do, it creates unintentional romantic subtext by hitting some notes too hard, but when Fluttershy starts messing up Discord's house in order to save him from fading away, it's genuinely adorable. Starting in season 6, Fluttershy has improved immensely, and as terrible as "Fluttershy Leans In" was, she demonstrates just how much better a character can become when given a wide range of stories. Here, her newfound assertiveness is blended with her long-held compassion better than in any episode since "Flutter Brutter," and not coincidentally this is her best showing since then as well.

    However, while this episode thankfully breaks from the rest of the season by allowing for extended comedic scenes, it still suffers from an overabundance of exposition. As funky as the visuals are, they're generally accompanied by Discord rambling, and Discord also spends a lot of time explaining his feelings. One plot point is triggered by Pinkie Pie telling him something which could have been a moral in another episode (although it was a red herring), and when Discord starts fading out of existence, Fluttershy explains it and exposits what she must do to make it stop. Discord needing to stay chaotic to exist makes some sense, but it's still something which was made up for this episode and which is dropped on us in expository dialogue, and that's a major contender for this season's worst habit.

    "Discordant Harmony" also has one of the most satisfying modern touches since "The Saddle Row Review" in the form of Discord going to a supermarket. The show's setting becomes murkier and murkier over time, and each new modern element further dilutes its original simplicity, but at the same time, seeing a supermarket in Ponyville is genuinely refreshing. Just as refreshing is Pinkie's random appearance as a one-scene supporting character, continuing this season's trend of having the main characters just randomly appear around Ponyville. It does a lot to make the show feel more alive, and it complements the season's hyper-focused storytelling. I still wish for more ensemble episodes like we had in the earlier seasons, but I am glad for the consistent acknowledgments that the mane six are still just one part of the Ponyville community.

    If there's one thing which really holds the episode back for me, it is the climax, which yet again indulges in cliche to embellish an otherwise solid slice-of-life story. After "Rock Solid Friendship," this is the second time that the show awkwardly forced in some excitement to make a somewhat nuanced main conflict much simpler, and here it's even worse than "Rock Solid Friendship," because the episode would have been just fine without it. The (honestly pretty great) moral is that Fluttershy likes Discord for who he is, and that he doesn't need to change to impress her, and this does tie into Discord literally vanishing because he tries to be something he's not, but the episode could easily have reached that conclusion without raising the stakes, and if anything, those stakes make the moral weaker. Instead of staying the same because that makes everyone happier, Discord stays the same because his life literally depends on it. If anything, that fantastical element makes the story a tiny bit harder to relate to, although the moral is still plenty strong even with that barrier.

    "Discordant Harmony" takes a strong step in the right direction with Discord, making him sympathetic and his relationships understandable without compromising his surreal appeal. Despite its flawed climax and its reliance on exposition, it's a funny, touching, and adorable episode which expands on Discord and Fluttershy's friendship while providing a strong moral in the process, and I hope this becomes a model for other Discord episodes in the future. Imagine him having this level of cameraderie with Twilight rather than tormenting her all the time! "Discordant Harmony" is a very promising evolution of a consistently delightful character, and it does a solid job correcting the biggest problem with his episodes.

    Three good episodes in a row! Let's hope for more.

    Score:
    Entertainment: 8/10
    Characters: 9/10
    Themes: 8/10
    Story: 7/10
    Overall: 80/100   You can find more like this at my offsite blog. 
  23. Thrond
    Okay, so "Dance Magic" was a fluke. This second short, "Movie Magic," is still low-stakes and impersonal, but it's a lot funnier than the first short, and makes much better use of both the Rainbooms' character traits and some of their magical powers as well. While I may dream of nuanced character arcs and satisfying narrative payoff, all I really ask of My Little Pony in all forms is that it's entertaining. I always felt that "Movie Magic" had the most potential of these shorts, and although it would benefit from being a bit snappier story-wise, the pacing is still brisk enough, and there's enough fun jokes and neat character moments this time around to entertain. Nice!



    When Rainbow Dash & friends are invited to the set of the new Daring Do movie, some carefully-selected props approved by Daring Do author A.K. Yearling are stolen, and the Canterlot High girls immediately set out to find the props and save the movie.

    That's about it, really, and the mystery is both too obvious and too easily resolved to excite. For the most part, the characters are simply running after shadows, and while there's a little bit of sleuthing, most of it is inconclusive, and when the Rainbooms actually find the culprit, it's largely by accident, and primarily based on a single piece of evidence. Narratively, that's not especially satisfying, and like "Dance Magic," the plot stops dead in its tracks for a comedic digression, this time featuring those old Power Ponies costumes. Still, in the context of Equestria Girls's increased focus on superpowers, that's a fairly apt reference, and at one point we even get to see Twilight using her power to pick a lock while in full costume. It's a pretty cute reference even if I'm not super impressed by such callbacks, and thankfully it's accompanied by some relatively fun use of the mane seven's powers. I'm not super excited about that permanent magical element to begin with, but if it's here to stay, I'm glad it's used in fun ways.

    Pinkie Pie gets more lines this time around, and that does a lot to make the special more entertaining. At one point, she reveals there's a cupcake mountain on-set, and in another scene, she chugs chocolate pudding straight from the bucket, which might have been less amusing were it anyone else but feels perfectly in-character for Pinkie. Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle also stand out, as their enthusiasm for Daring Do brings a lot of energy to the episode and allows for a few solid gags. Twilight in particular seems to be rapidly improving with each special, and while she doesn't quite take command yet, she's noticeably more confident here, which helps a lot with making her feel like her pony counterpart. While those three are the highlights, everyone gets their fair share of good lines, and even Sunset displays a little more personality than usual.

    All the new characters around the movie set are fun as well. The role of Daring is being played by Chestnut Magnifico, a stereotypically demanding movie star who is revealed to have environmentalist leanings, and whom both Rarity and Fluttershy want badly to meet. While Chestnut isn't a particularly deep or unique character, she has a commanding screen presence, and it's fun to watch her stomp around the set grumpily when things aren't going well. Film director Canter Zoom is even less distinctive, but he's amiable and has some solid lines, so it's fun to watch him dealing with all the chaos on-set. Both of these characters are used sparingly enough that they don't outstay their welcome, which is especially good because neither is especially well-developed.

    The most significant new character is Canter's niece Jupiter Montage, who is adorably enthusiastic in her few scenes, and who turns out to be the ultimate culpript. Her reasons for sabotaging the movie set are petty, but the special never suggests we're supposed to sympathize with her. The scene where she's caught seems to exist partially to set up the next episode, and the motivation dump doesn't add much to her character, but it serves its purpose well enough. In any case, she too is used sparingly here, and she's charming enough in her early roles even if it's pretty obvious that she's the villain.

    On top of all the solid lines, there's also some nice visual gags, and the episode does a lot more with its improved animation than "Dance Magic." I've already mentioned Pinkie's gluttonous pudding consumption, as well as the Power Ponies costumes, but there's also a lot of enjoyable facial expressions, and some fun moments of slapstick like Rarity getting hit by Chestnut's trailer door. Furthermore, the actual area of the Daring Do set is nicely designed, even if certain cuts make the geography unclear, and the scenes which represent the movie itself are energetic, filled with detail, and generally a lot of fun to watch. Finally, a couple brief scenes near the middle feature the Rainbooms chasing after Juniper, and while they maintain the pace, they're not really imaginative or tense enough to be satisfying. That mostly comes down to the mystery not being very compelling, however.

    With a better storyline to tie it all together, this could have been the epitome of what Equestria Girls could be, but even as is, it's a fun step in the right direction which checks most of the boxes for what I want from this show. It has hints of what the girls are interested in, it's frequently funny, and it demonstrates what familiar stuff from the show looks like in the human world. I still crave more personal stories and character development from this series, but for now this is a very entertaining addition which I hope leads to better things in the future, maybe even in series form. All I really ask of My Little Pony is to entertain me. "Movie Magic" delivers on that front, and for now that's enough.

    Score:
    Entertainment: 8/10
    Characters: 9/10
    Themes: 5/10 (honestly, I'm not sure if this even counts; Equestria Girls has never cared about moralizing.)
    Story: 6/10
    Overall: 70/100   You can find more like this at my offsite blog. 
  24. Thrond
    Up until now, Equestria Girls has only told stories equivalent to the main show's two-part episodes. Even Legend of Everfree, which tried to incorporate several slice-of-life elements, eventually came back to having a magical villain threaten the camp, and the three films before that established high stakes from the beginning. As fun as some of these movies are, much of this series' appeal is in seeing familiar faces in this new, mundane, relatively familiar setting, and I've always hoped it would focus more on the individual lives of the main characters than on whatever event or villain caught their attention this week.    "Dance Magic" isn't really that, but it is the first Equestria Girls installment to not feature a magical villain, and it's also by far the most low-stakes entry in the whole series. Considering that, it's a shame that the special is such a simplistic bore, expanding on easily the least interesting part of Legend of Everfree the least interesting way possible, and completely failing to build up to My Little Pony's most basic moral in quite some time. It has more energy than Everfree, but that's not saying much, especially when its story is even emptier. While I enjoy that "Dance Magic" has lower stakes than previous entries, those stakes are so impersonal that the entire story is impossible to care about.  After inadvertently wrecking Camp Everfree, the Rainbooms begin searching for ways to raise money for repairs. Once car washing only gives them half of the necessary funds, Rarity decides to enter in a music video competition but makes the mistake of revealing their plans to Crystal Prep students (the same from Friendship Games) who will be competing against them, who promptly steal the idea. Distraught, Rarity and the Rainbooms need to find a new concept for a music video.    Considering that My Little Pony has often done a good job of giving its storylines at least a slight amount of depth, it's always disappointing when it comes up with something this simple. Unsurprisingly, "Dance Magic" is written by G.M. Berrow, whose "The One Where Pinkie Pie Knows" and "Fluttershy Leans In" were similarly impersonal and shallow, but "Dance Magic" actually has slightly more introspection than her usual fare. That's not to say it has much, as two-thirds of the episode are still built around Rarity reacting to outside forces, but she does eventually overhear the Shadowbolts complaining that they don't have a song, and she realizes that the two groups could team up and split the prize money.    While this isn't a bad moral per se, it's also an exceedingly simple one which is likely to be entirely useless to all but the youngest members of the target audience, and it's one which the majority of the episode doesn't so much as hint at. It's not like Rarity rejected this idea previously, as the special never even suggests that it was an option beforehand, and as a result it feels tacked on to a story which until then was lacking in any depth or nuance. The most Rarity ever questions herself is when she needs to come up with an idea to get more money, and otherwise she's either reacting to issues on the video shoot, the Crystal Prep students stealing her idea, or her friends' silly alternate video ideas. It's all rather dull and difficult to be invested in.    Furthermore, neither camp has particularly compelling motivations. While it's nice that the Rainbooms are fundraising for Camp Everfree, we never really see why they decided to do this, and it's not an especially personal goal for any of them, so it's difficult to care. Worse, the Crystal Prep students want the money because they promised to hold the school dance on a yacht, which they really shouldn't have if they couldn't pay for it, and which is an awfully vapid goal anyway. The special does little to expand on the personalities we saw in Friendship Games, and while these characters were always one-note, their gags have diminishing returns here.    Unfortunately, the Rainbooms suffer from the same problem. They're all in-character, and they all have something to contribute, but the special doesn't derive a whole lot of humour from their distinctive personalities, and in many cases it repeats character beats from the show proper. At one point, Rarity is self-pityingly eating ice cream, and while this does serve a narrative purpose, it also feels a bit like a rehash of the same gag from the show's "Inspiration Manifestation," and the other six are mostly background ornaments who drive the plot forward but don't do too much else. Every once in a while, the special gives one of the characters a funny line, and their music video ideas are mildly amusing, but for the most part, the special isn't particularly funny, and that makes the dull plot all the more bothersome.    At the very least, Twilight is better here than she was in Legend of Everfree. There's a dropped thread where she retracts a criticism of Rarity's plan, seemingly due to peer pressure, and the special emphasizes her analytical side enough that she arguably has more in common with her pony counterpart here than she did in the previous two movies. Unfortunately, while her timidity fits her background, it still doesn't feel a whole lot like the Twilight from the show, and while there is merit in that, I still feel it misses the point of the whole Equestria Girls series. Sunset Shimmer, on the other hand, doesn't do much in this at all, and what lines she does get do little to establish the personality she's increasingly in need of. This isn't her story, so that's fine, but what lines she does get are a little bland.    And then there's the song itself, which is profoundly generic and probably ranks up there as one of My Little Pony's least memorable to date. It's just a generic dancepop song with vapid lyrics, and the hook isn't even that catchy. It's a fairly well-executed genre pastiche, but it's not a very distinctive one, and even the accompanying visuals don't feature much other than generic dance choreography. There is a fun rap verse from Pinkie, and that portion features a welcome change of background as well as the fun sight of Rainbow Dash breakdancing, but if this entire short was building up to this musical number, you'd hope for something more creative at the very least. If nothing else, the animation is better than ever, and while the models haven't seen major improvements, the animations are even more detailed and fluid than they were in Legend of Everfree. But what's the point if there's nothing interesting to animate?    "Dance Magic" feels like an afterthought, and that's weird, because it's been more than half a year since the last Equestria Girls release. It would be more understandable if this were simply one episode of even a 13-episode season, but we're only getting three of these, and it's quite obnoxious that an entire third of this year's Equestria Girls content is this shallow and rote. It adds nothing to the series, it's not very imaginative, its plot is simple to the point of tedium, and it doesn't even have a solid moral. It's not offensive or anything, but for the life of me, I don't know why anyone would want to watch it.    Man, I miss "Friendship Games."   Score: Entertainment: 4/10 Characters: 6/10 Themes: 5/10 Story: 3/10 Overall: 45/100   You can find more like this at my offsite blog. 
  25. Thrond
    God damn it.



    My Little Pony has been in decline since season 3. While I still have a soft spot for the third season, its short length and terrible finale were a step down from prior seasons, and in the years after, the show struggled to achieve the strength of its early years. To me, though, season 6 moved away from that decline, showing a willingness to experiment and adding a satisfying new element in the form of Starlight Glimmer. But rather than continue what worked in season 6, season 7 has resumed the show's fall from grace, and thus far is quite possibly my least favourite season yet.

    Like season 5, my first issue is simply a lack of quality control. This time around, only four of the eleven episodes broadcast so far have been good. While this show has always been uneven in quality, most past seasons have at least been enjoyable most of the time, but season 7 has been consistently disappointing, and often for many of the same reasons.

    Last year, My Little Pony suffered from the occasional episode which seemed to write its story entirely around a moral, character consistency and good humour be damned. Rather than backing off from these simple, formulaic stories, however, the show has attempted to smooth over the cracks. The main conflicts of episodes are often very simple, and always have specific goals in mind which everything else is bent towards. In episodes like "Forever Filly" and "A Royal Problem," not one scene goes by which doesn't serve the plot, and especially in the former's case, the result is stories which have little breathing room for the character moments or silly gags which made this show fun in the first place. Characters are still bent to the plot, but this time the show makes an effort to explain their actions, and yet that only contributes to the feeling of single-mindedness which plagues so many episodes this season.

    Unlike season 5, the issue isn't necessarily that the show takes itself too seriously, but that the actual humour tends to be forced and irritating. Because most of these episodes are focused exclusively on their storyline, the vast majority of the show's humour is based on noisy characterization, as in "Rock Solid Friendship" or "Honest Apple" or really the vast majority of episodes this season. So many of these episodes revolve around a character acting irritatingly, whether it's Trixie, Applejack, Pinkie, or even Rarity. Even in better episodes like "Parental Glideance," humour is derived from the exact same source of one character acting in a way which irritates another, the only difference being that the tone is lighter and the visual gags are stronger. In most other cases, many visual gags are surprisingly weak, and those which do succeed are often hurt by the context of one character irritating another.

    All of which might have been more acceptable if the actual stories told were a little more inventive, but most of them feel formulaic. Most episodes end in the most predictable way possible: Of course Maud is in danger out of Ponyville. Of course Rarity overhears a moral from Sweetie Belle. Of course Applejack makes an effort to save Rarity's fashion show. The show has attempted to evolve in so many ways, and yet it falls back on all the same story structures, and often the same single story structure of one character irritating another until something bad happens and they learn to stop. This is "All Bottled Up," "Rock Solid Friendship," "Forever Filly," "Hard to Say Anything," and "Honest Apple," nearly half of the season. Others, like "Celestial Advice" and "Fluttershy Leans In," lack much plot at all, and struggle to muster up enough humour to justify that.

    Furthermore, because these episodes are all so laser-focused on their morals, they often struggle to feel organic, and that's before considering episodes like "Celestial Advice" and "Fluttershy Leans In" which seem to exist only because the writers feel some sense of obligation. "Forever Filly" and "Hard to Say Anything" both have chunks of backstory exposited at the beginning which were never set up prior, "Honest Apple" revolves around Rarity making the very dubious choice to let Applejack judge fashion, and "A Royal Problem" revives the dreaded Cutie Map. Combine that with just how simple the plots of certain episodes are, and it can feel like the writers gave little attention to anything other than what's absolutely necessary to their moral. This means there aren't too many unnecessary scenes, but it also leaves these episodes dull and lacking in personality.

    While the show attempts to give some depth to each focus character, most of the mane six have yet to grow a whole lot, and character beats range from insufficiently established (Fluttershy wanting to build a sanctuary, Rarity growing distant from Sweetie Belle) to seemingly redundant (Pinkie giving others space, Applejack learning to appreciate fashion). It's often hard to relate to these character beats, and while Rainbow Dash gets by a lot better, her one episode doesn't appear to recognize how sympathetic and relatable her situation is. There's a feeling that the creative team isn't comfortable with these characters, and although each episode includes details which attempt to justify the focus character's behaviour, these often feel just as inorganic as the character beats.

    On top of that, many of these story ideas echo popular episodes of prior seasons enough that without sufficient buildup they feel like retreads of past glories, despite often differing from those prior episodes. Rather than developing Pinkie's other sisters, we get to see Maud again. Rather than further exploring her business, we get another episode about Rarity and her sister. Rather than exploring fresh, new dynamics, we get the Rarity/Applejack team up again. Apply the same to Big Mac in a romantic setting, Fluttershy asserting herself, Starlight screwing up, et cetera. The season does further develop characters like Princess Celestia and Flurry Heart, but this development is often still heavily confined to what little is relevant to the moral and main plot. The one thing which the season does that's truly a breath of fresh air is ditching the two-part premiere formula, but it failed to offer an adequate replacement.

    Still, this is easily Twilight's best season since becoming an Alicorn. While "Celestial Advice" continued the trend of restricting her to a princess/mentor role, subsequent episodes have made a heroic effort of reviving the traits which made her so endearing in the first two seasons and giving them new context. In "A Flurry of Emotions," her dual status as a Princess and an aunt inspires her tendency to put high expectations on herself, and in "A Royal Problem" we see her unhealthy worship of Celestia and her tendency towards extreme panic. The latter episode also provides the closest thing we've yet gotten to nuance in her relationship with Starlight, as Twilight's own worrying ultimately provokes Starlight's anxieties. Twilight was once my favourite character, so this return to form is genuinely thrilling.

    But that brings us to Starlight, the real elephant in the room. As with Josh Haber last season, showrunners Joanna Lewis & Kristine Songco have decided to primarily write episodes revolving around her, and with none of her appearances so far handled by a new writer, there's a general impression that she's the character the old writers care most about. On one hand, this is a problem because it's previously had a generally negative impact on the main six, but it's also a problem because Starlight is such a bland character that she might benefit from the fresh perspective that a new writer could bring. Starlight's increased separation from the main six makes her feel more like a replacement than ever, and yet she doesn't bring anything fresh to the show. While her new friendships feel genuine, the self-doubt and underdeveloped morality which made her so novel in season 6 are rapidly vanishing, and she still lacks any distinguishing traits to replace them.

    Part of this is season 6's fault for failing to develop her beyond her specific story arc that season, but as with the main six, season 7 isn't willing to fix its predecessor's issues, and instead is content to include Starlight in stories which she doesn't feel like she belongs in. Her apperance in "Rock Solid Friendship" is deeply conspicuous, and "A Royal Problem" includes her in a conflict which she has so little personal attachment to that the Cutie Map needed to send her. Every single one of her focus episodes feels like ticking off a checklist, and she's yet to have a single low-key slice-of-life which doesn't inevitably feel like it's forcing her character arc. There aren't any episodes where she exists as a minor character in someone else's story, and when she does appear next to the main six, it only highlights that she simply lacks many unique traits.

    Maybe all of this is because of the show's limitations. Since so many stories have now been told with the main six, the only way to tell new morals is to force them in some way or another. In some cases, that's imposing new character dynamics on the old characters, whereas in others it's shoving Starlight into stories where she doesn't fit. But I don't buy that. People don't stop growing, and if you have as strong a set of characters as My Little Pony has, there's no reason that new morals shouldn't be able to come naturally from the ponies' personalities. It shouldn't need to be this forced. I can't really say why this season in particular has gone so wrong, but after season 6 moved so far in the right direction, all of these steps backwards are nothing short of heartbreaking. 
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