 |
| I wonder how many of FiM's first viewers spotted this clever foreshadowing shot? |
S1E01: "Friendship is Magic, part 1"
Written by Lauren Faust
10 Oct 2010
My original rating: N/A
IMDB score: 7.6
The one with the Rain-blow-dry.
Thoughts: The very first thing we see is the book opening – it would finally close over 220 epsodes later. The very first voice is Nicole Oliver's, and quickly we're into the storybook-style opening and the dramatic story of Nightmare Moon's banishment. Then it's back to Flash animation in its S1 form, which these days looks a bit sparse but still quite nice. Meeting the Mane Six is pretty fun throughout, and long-running concepts like Sparity and the Wonderbolts are efficiently introduced. "Ten seconds flat" also shows nice attention to detail. Mind you, Ashleigh Ball's voices for Applejack (especially) and Rainbow aren't quite there yet. Twilight's snarky personality is a joy to revisit, but her sometimes thoughtless treatment of Spike is less so, as is the dragon's partial illiteracy – thankfully swiftly forgotten. Nightmare Moon makes a fine villain in the short time she has on screen, and (despite an anachronistic CMC shot) the final scene works very well. All in all, a very promising beginning!
Choice quote: Twilight to Spike: "Focus, Casanova."
New rating: ★★★★
Next up is "Friendship is Magic, part 2" [You don't say? —Ed.], which I'm looking forward to very much as the series' first big adventure!
I always had a small nag about the first two episodes: They are essentially the same as the first two episodes of Foster's House for Imaginary Friends. It made the whole thing seem incredibly formulaic on my first viewing, and repeated viewings didn't convince me of the contrary. Honestly, if I hadn't started by watching a later episode (Green isn't your color), it is possible I wouldn't have jumped in the pony bandwagon at all!
ReplyDeleteIn keeping with my justified reputation as someone almost entirely ignorant of modern animation, I've never actually seen Foster's. Not a single episode. Indeed, I don't think I'd even heard of it until I'd started watching MLP and people mentioned it in connection with that. Given what you say, that may well have helped make Pony seem fresher to my eyes.
DeleteOn which note, did (any of) you ever watch 'Wander Over Yonder', and in particular the episodes Lauren Faust had a hand in writing?
DeleteI watched a couple of episodes when they first came out. They didn't grab me, though. I really can't remember much about the series beyond its visual style, to be honest.
DeleteI was at least aware of Foster's Home, but I've only ever seen a handful of episodes (even though I wrote a crossover of it...) I've only watched two episodes of Wander, and like you, it didn't grab my interest.
DeleteI don't know how well the drama elements of this hold up, but the interpersonal and comedy parts are superb. All of the M6 introductions are great (and Pinkie's gasp turning out not to be just a random joke was wonderful), but my favourite part of the episode is Twilight trying to sleep through the house party. Everything about that scene is perfect, from a clearly drunk Spike with a lampshade on his head, to Twilight's snarky "meh meh meh!" impression of him - it's the scene that made me realise this show was going to be a bit different to most of the half-hearted cack my daughter was into.
ReplyDeleteOh yes, the party sequence is fun all round, from the moment the lights go on. I suppose it's a good sign that I had real trouble getting my "Thoughts" paragraph down to a vaguely manageable length!
DeleteI've been watching along with the show too by the EqD rewatch streams on Saturdays and reviewing them too.. Missed the first one of the two Friendship Is Magics, though, so I still have to catch up with them, though I've been really enjoying Episodes 3 through 6 otherwise!
ReplyDeleteRe-doing the pilot should be interesting, as whatever they were figuring out aspects of the show still, as you would with any pilot really, it's clear right from the get go that the quality level is far more in line with other top-notch kids' cartoons on Cartoon Network and the like. There's a lot of similar feelings in the early seasons, and this first one especially, to Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Faust's previous show, and also one many of the early writers worked on too. No embarrassing toy commercial was this!
Right from the get-go, the characters sparkle with personality, and that, more then anything else (well, the show's non-cynical tone too, I suppose), is why this show captured the imagination of as many viewers, young and adult, as it did.
I know of your own reviews over on Fimfiction, and I most certainly intend to comment on them! I'll be waiting until after I've seen the episodes in question, but as my schedule is faster than EqD's that will only be relevant for the first few eps of S1. :)
DeleteDo correct me on this, but isn't it right that "The Ticket Master" was originally written as a pilot for the series? I haven't seen that in ages, and haven't yet done so for this rewatch series, so my memory could easily be playing tricks.
Kind of. Faust's early 11-minute version of that was included in the Bible, to help sell the show to the executives. But once Hasbro approved 22-minute episodes, it was rewritten with the help of Amy Keating Rogers. However, by that point, due to production schedules, this two-parter would, as I understand, have been the first to have a finished script send up to DHX for production.
DeleteSo while Ticket Master was an internal pilot, that was only in the form of an early script. The show didn't have a pilot in the sense of one where they wait to see audience reception before ordering a full series, so when I say this two-parter is the pilot, I mean mostly in the sense of both starting the series and setting up the initial status quo. The live-action scripted show sense of a pilot doesn't really apply to animation directly - the closest equivalent is a show beginning as a short that is then green-lit for a full series (quite common with Cartoon Network, and on occasion with Nickelodeon too).
I didn't personally start watching the show until S4 aired, so a lot of the big developments within the fandom up until that point had passed me by. Genuinely I'm not sure how confident I am in saying I'd have carried on watching if this episode had been my entry point. The quality compared to other shows at the time is favourable, and there's nothing wrong in a pilot episode that is by-the-numbers. But on the whole it didn't do a whole lot for me by the time I went back to watch it.
ReplyDeleteRewatching it now was certainly an interesting exercise, not least in observing the ways the show canon has refined itself (sometimes even consistently!) over the years. I very much enjoyed watching some genuine Sparkle snark, and Nightmare Moon has always stuck with me as one of the show's better antagonists.
And goodness, they really did bring so much life into the background during the later series. It's almost unsettling watching static ponies again. Oh how we've been spoilt!
The first episode I watched as it first aired was the S2 finale, so I too missed a lot of the establishing stuff. I think the existence of a large and active fandom by then certainly did help me to decide to continue, but would I have stayed for the show alone? I honestly don't know. Probably, but not certainly.
DeleteI will admit that the first time seeing this 'series', particularly this first part of the opening season, I had no idea what I was in for. I wouldn't say I was going into this series as a major skeptic, but rather I was going in because I already expected this series to be your typical, run-of-the-mill television series made to appeal for a female audience. It didn't help that I grew up at a time when 'My Little Pony Tales' used to be the FIM for fans back in the 90s and even the 80s series felt very dated (Don't get me started on Gen 3, I was watching other shows long before I got into MLP in general). And yet... And yet I was still curious as to what this show could offer, given it was created by Lauren Faust, who did work on the 'Fosters' series (Which I'll admit was fun, though Bloo was my least favorite character). To think it would all began the moment the book opened in the style of Disney openings (And a long ways we'd have to go since).
ReplyDeleteMuch like with Part 2 (Which I'll get into more if there's a post about that part), the opening of the series (Much less the first season) feels formulaic with several nods to Disney (As we'd see in other episodes). When we are introduced to Twilight Sparkle, she's in a way like Belle: A pony with her nose stuck in a book, considered odd even by her Canterlot neighbors, but unlike Belle she doesn't prefer talking to any pony except for her assistant, Spike. But then just when she discovers some major event about to come up and tries to warn her teacher, she is instructed to go to this tiny town to prepare for a big festival and next thing you know that's when the formula really gets into play. But in a way, this is how we'd be introduced to the cast who'd make up the majority of the series. We get a brief look at their characters, what their hobbies are, their personalities, and this is long before we'd have a particular pony we'd consider a favorite (I won't forget how many fans initially disliked Rarity due to her initial behavior).
This episode was indeed an early time for MLP fans before the whole 'Brony' sensation literally blew through the roof. We get a much younger Applejack (At least when we compare her voice to how she speaks now), we get a few blink-and-you-miss appearances from certain background ponies (Though at this point almost every pony is the same), and for the short time we get a look at our first major antagonist (Not from any familiar media in MLP) she'd come across as this Maleficent character that we expect to feel threatened by with all this build-up. Little did we know, this would be the start of bigger things to come for the series... We just didn't know it yet.
As a first impressions episode, initially this was a cute episode. I wouldn't say it was anything grand or significant at the time, but rather the show was meant to introduce us to our characters and give us a brief glimpse of the pony world. True the early episodes of the first season are rather dated at best, but looking back at our roots in terms of the series the episode does show charm, it has some cute moments and there were some parts that did make us laugh (Like when Twilight mistook hot sauce for a drink... That happened to me many years ago, mistaking hot sauce for salsa for chips). At least this show would prove better than 'Littlest Pet Shop'.
Crowd: BOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yeah, I said it!
As it happens, I'm currently enjoying (over on YouTube) The Feral Brony's blind reactions to Tales. I've seen that series already (Melody is best pony) which helps make it more fun. :)
Deleteif there's a post about that part
If all goes well, there'll be a post about every single episode, all 200-plus of them! :)
To think that before Kelly Sheridan would portray the reformed antagonist and student to Twilight, Starlight Glimmer, she'd portray Melody in 'MLP Tales'. I didn't even realize that until I checked back on the casting and I was like... Holy cow! Even Chaira Zanni, whom we'd know for being 'Daring Do' a.k.a. A.K. Yearling, had a role as the 'Tales' version of Bon-Bon. As for the remainder of the '7 Pony Friends', as the 'Tales' show refers to the group, well Maggie Blue O'Hara did have one role in 'FIM' as that Strawberry Sunrise lassie (The one who insulted Applejack's apples I believe) but... That was a one time gig.
DeleteFollowing the lineage of who had been in MLP cartoons before FiM (Tabitha was in G1!) is quite the rewarding experience. :)
DeleteAs someone who managed to first watch the show on Netflix so WAS able to start from the beginning, I have to admit the pilot "almost" didn't pull me in.
ReplyDeleteI loved the characters, but "Giggle at the Ghosties" almost had me turn it off. It was such a switch from the rest of the tone of the episodes and it took me a while to start liking the show music.
Thankfully the story and characters were strong enough for me to go "oh just one more episode" and the rest is history.
I was probably well into season 2 before I was hooked on the music and ironically this is what I find most disappointing about the later seasons, the music just wasn't as fun and bouncy season 4 onwards. There are still some songs I liked, but I think pre-season 4 they are all fun to listen to.
Giggle at the Ghostly had a similar effect on me that was immediately mitigated by "Tell me she's not..."
DeleteI had not been expecting self-aware humor, and it got me through to the pilot's end. XD