EqG Mini-review: "Holidays Unwrapped"

Does nobody do any work in EqG-world when it snows?

Here we are, then. With the final Friendship is Magic episode now a few weeks behind us in the rear-view mirror, here's the final Equestria Girls special. This is actually not a special in the usual sense of the word, although it was marketed as such. It's a collection of several scenes, and it was written by Anna Christopher – who I'll confess I knew nothing whatsoever about before "Holidays Unwrapped" appeared. Was it any good? Well, past the cut you'll find my short assessment.

Honestly, this was quite a disappointing way to go out. While it did have its moments, it was short on anything truly memorable. The pacing often seemed off, with certain scenes really dragging. When you've only got six or seven minutes for the whole thing, that's a problem. A good example is the "fake snow day" montage in the first scene. Admittedly that one has another problem, of being an idiotic setup in the first place, but the slowness makes it worse.

I did crack a few mild smiles at the snowball fight scene that followed; it was certainly less dull than the section that preceded it. I didn't really care about Pinkie Pie's soufflé, but there were at least some amusing cameos along the way. Zecora appeared, and Flash Sentry got to make himself look silly again. Even this one, though, could have been told in little more time than a conventional three-minute short. It dragged more amusingly, but it still dragged.

"Right. Now at least we don't have to see this stuff."

Things kind of started mushing together in my mind after that. The cider scene was stupid to an extraordinary degree (hi, I'm Apple Bloom, and I can't tell if my friends are real) and unaccountably made the FlimFlams into full-on villains. The one with the charity toy heist, or whatever it was, was funny for about the first third and then it... yeah, you got it. Dragged. Pinkie Pie did a far funnier spy joke in the FiM S3 premiere. The scene's ending with Twilight was mildly funny. Mildly.

Ah, hello again Zephyr Breeze, how wonderful to see you. Actually, I quite liked this one, but then I enjoyed "Flutter Brutter" which half the fandom hates. :D I even found Snips and Snails quite amusing. And then we're sorry but it's time to go – so let's have the Mane Six dressing up as a cornucopia for no reason at all. The last time we'll ever see G4 characters, probably, and how do we end? With them pretending to be pieces of fruit. And terrible puns. I mean, I like terrible puns, but these were mostly the bad kind.

Overall? I can't help but have a sneaking feeling that Hasbro maybe actually knew what they were doing when they put the tin lid on S3 of EqG. Because "Holidays Unwrapped" was a pretty darn disappointing way for the Not Monster High girls to go out.

Yays

• Some fun cameos (Derpy/Bulk!)
• Zephyr Breeze is awful, but he was fun here
• Nice to have generally low-stakes stuff
• Sunset's snowflake memory – amazing, but fridge-horror-y

Neighs

• The dialogue really wasn't very sharp for the most part
• Pacing veered between decent and glacial
• Flim and Flam being shown as straight-up thieves
• Can long montages be restricted under the Geneva Convention?

★★