S08:E12 - Marks for Effort

[Thrond 3,263]

Cozy Glow seems genuinely sincere here. Aside from mistaking Twilight's cutie mark for "control," all of the hints to her true personality are really subtle; at times she seems faintly manipulative, but it seems to me like she really did care about the CMC. I'm not entirely sure what her game is in this episode. There's an alternate universe where her power-hungry attitude was slowly eroded by the school until she learned what friendship was really about. Then we wouldn't get some of the best episodes of season 9 though...

You can see for a brief moment that Twilight is genuinely sad to tell the CMC to stay away. She doesn't know what they actually did for Cozy, and she was already a little frustrated with them after they kept making a fuss about joining the school. And yet, I wonder if she would cut them more slack if she didn't have to consider what was best for the school. It also leaves room for the best scene Starlight Glimmer ever got. The school has been so good to her that I can barely imagine her without it anymore. 

Also, the mane six's classes seem pretty cool; contrast these with what they were trying to do in the premiere, and the new classes just seem so much more natural. There are a lot of episodes this season which use the school gimmick to great effect, but this has a good claim to being the absolute best of them; this episode would absolutely not be possible before this season. The high points of season 8 are so fresh that I would have happily watched a whole show at that level of quality. 

Edited April 14, 2020 by AlexanderThrond

[JMTV99 1,353]

So, this was the episode introduced Cozy Glow. Eh, I wasn't all that impressed. I find her character very annoying, wasn't all that compelling, and I just can't take her seriously. Even as the final villain of the series, she wasn't all interesting. A filly who wants to learn about friendship is one thing, but taking advantage of the power of friendship without any explanation nor a backstory just left me very confused and annoyed.

But that's from Season 9. On her own appearance in this episode, she's somewhat tolerable, but she didn't grab me all that much. 

As for the main plot of this episode? CMC wants to become teachers at The Friendship School? Really? That's a bit too soon, IMO.

Plus, I don't like Twilight's attitude towards the CMCs in this episode. It didn't really sit right with me since I thought she was really cool with them before.

Besides Starlight's meme face that got a laugh out of me, this episode overall was just BLECH! It's nothing special.

[Moony the Cat 3,702]

Even though Cozy Glow was kind off spoilered to me trough the fandom, i still enjoyed her introduction and she just seems to be a really nice character. Overall i enjoyed this Episode.

[Antiyonder 1,153]

The episode is present on this compilation at the 21:31 mark:

A solo video will be posted when uploaded.